This Opening Day opens a new chapter for the St. Louis Cardinals
Some of baseball’s proudest traditions were on display at Busch Stadium on Thursday ahead of the season opener for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Tampa Bay Rays.
An oversized arch was carved into the outfield grass, players anxiously asked where they needed to be and when they needed to be there to get a look at the Budweiser Clydesdales, and a major league manager engaged in spirited discussion and debate over his constructed batting order.
It’s never too early to get started.
In a move that was forecast toward the tail end of spring training, top prospect second baseman JJ Wetherholt was penciled into the leadoff spot for his MLB debut. As a consequence, shortstop Masyn Winn, who holds a .376 slugging percentage over more than 1,300 big league plate appearances, became the Cardinals’ cleanup hitter. It is an atypical construction, all involved readily acknowledged, but one designed to maximize at-bats for the team’s most dangerous hitters and allow them to get to what they believe can be a high-octane offensive identity.
“I like the overall profile of JJ in that lead up spot for a lot of reasons,” manager Oli Marmol explained. “He does a really nice job of using the whole field, has some real hit ability, and then controls the strike zone in a way that allows for on base outside of hits. So that part I like, and unconventional when you think of Masyn in the four, but at the same time, [if] those guys get on ahead of him, this is a guy that’s hard to double up on the ground, makes a lot of contact, and has the ability to drive in some runs. So I like that part of it.”
There are other strategic considerations to the alignment that are bound to pop up later in a game. With Wetherholt leading off and Victor Scott II entrenched in the ninth spot, they represent back-to-back left-handed hitters who could tempt opposing managers into a favorable matchup with lefty relievers later in games. In a world of the three-batter minimum for pitchers, sandwiching Iván Herrera hitting second between Wetherholt and Alec Burleson is designed to be a substantial deterrent.
“Somebody gets to third base with less than two outs, they trust me to put the ball in the air and get that guy in,” Winn said. “This lineup is a little weird. Obviously there’s not as much power in that four hole as some other teams, but as far as getting the job done, moving runners and stuff, I think it’s gonna be good.”
There is no guarantee the lineup will remain consistent from day to day. If Thursday’s gambit falls short or is revealed to have obvious flaws, Saturday’s alignment could look significantly different. On a day that’s undoubtedly special, however, there is some level of unspoken benefit and symbolism in allowing Wetherholt to make his first impression in front of a full stadium of eager fans.
On the warmest home opening day for the Cardinals in recorded history, there is an unspoken — and sometimes quietly spoken — desire to see a crowd in a furor, looking at a new chapter of baseball in St. Louis with hope for the future rather than doubt about the present. No player more thoroughly represents that future than Wetherholt, a top prospect who is being counted on as one of the earliest-arriving members of a potential core of the next championship-caliber team in the city.
“I guess if there’s bonus points for symbolism, we’ll take the bonus points,” president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom said. “I don’t want to speak for Oli about the lineup, but [Wetherholt] never gave us any reason to think that he shouldn’t be here, and I think that’s true too about where he’s hitting. It should be fun.”
Bloom, on his first opening day leading baseball operations after two years as an adviser, again emphasized his desire to approach a season that could reach competitive doldrums with candidness and clarity toward the fan base. There is very little pretense about these Cardinals as a candidate to reach the postseason, but there’s a great deal of optimism around the foundation-building that has been painstakingly undertaken over the past few years.
“One of the coolest things about this fan base is you don’t need to prompt them to take anything from this,” Bloom said. “They know what to do. They know what this is. They understand what the standard is. The fact that we’re young this year, this is probably just as much as — or more than — any fan base in the league, these guys can get behind young players, and I’m excited for our fans to feel that.”
The players are similarly excited to feel it. Yohel Pozo, who made an opening day roster for the first time in his big league career, checked several times with team staff on where he needed to be and when, sketching out the best path to witness the Clydesdale parade while still catching his ride in a truck around the warning track.
The players know what to do. They know what this is. Whether they can reach desired heights in the short term is certainly open to question, but the desire and eagerness exist. It pours out of them as easily as sweat under a stifling, cloudless sky.
On Thursday afternoon, that was true in significant quantities on all fronts. The lineup wasn’t the only unfamiliar part of opening day; the weather felt just as strange. The rest, it seems, will take care of itself.
