Effectively Wild Episode 2448: Season Preview Series: Yankees and Cardinals

Summary

—

Effectively Wild Episode 2448: Season Preview Series – Yankees and Cardinals

Podcast: Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Hosts: Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Meg Rowley (FanGraphs)
Guests: Gary Phillips (New York Daily News), Derek Gould (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Original Air Date: March 4, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode of Effectively Wild continues the annual Season Preview Series, focusing on two of MLB’s most storied franchises: the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. Ben and Meg are joined by beat writers Gary Phillips and Derek Gould to dissect each club’s offseasons, roster outlooks, organizational directions, and expectations for 2026. The episode is a lively and candid deep-dive full of insight, historical perspective, and characteristic dry humor.

---

Previews and Banter

WBC Spring Weirdness and Naming Rights ([00:00]-[09:00])

• Ben and Meg begin with spring training banter, particularly about Team USA in WBC warm-ups taking on mostly full MLB teams like the Giants and Rockies.
• Light-hearted riffing on the mismatch of a “super team” versus a patchwork opponent:
  • “I don't envy Adrian Hauser or whoever has to go up against a modern murderers row here.” (Ben, [00:46])
• Case in point: Rockies vs. Team USA being described as a “cosmic joke” but, per Meg, “it's baseball. Baseball's weird. Maybe the Rockies will win.”
• Digression into spring training ballpark naming rights, sparked by a correction on Goodyear Park not being a corporate sponsorship, but named for the city—which is itself named for Goodyear Tire.
  • “That's one way you can get the benefit of naming rights without having to pay for them: get the entire town named after you.” (Ben, [05:14])
• CoolToday Park is revealed to actually be part of a private equity behemoth, much bigger than the hosts’ original “charming” mom & pop assumptions.
  • “We were briefly charmed by the name of that brand, but perhaps we shouldn't have been.” (Ben, [07:39])
  • “If you were making up a villainous private equity group in a movie... it would be the Wrench Group. That's Netflix Christmas movie stuff.” (Meg, [08:06])

---

News: Jerkson Profar PED Suspension ([08:26]-[12:56])

• Jerkson Profar faces another PED suspension with the possibility of a lifetime ban looming, leaving Braves’ vibes “bad...for multiple reasons.”
  • “He has one more PED suspension to go until he achieves the full Henry Mejia of being banned for life.” (Ben, [08:52])
• Discussion on the diminishing frequency of PED suspensions among MLB players and the increasingly tough-to-justify excuses for repeat offenders.
  • “It's hard to trot out the same excuse, because accident works only once really...Even then, it's, well, you should have been more careful.” (Ben, [11:08])
• Reflection on Profar’s legacy now likely being overshadowed by the suspensions rather than his on-field comeback.
  • “This is probably what he'll be remembered for. More so than top prospect who struggled and then eventually seemingly made good. Until this happened.” (Ben, [14:41])

---

Yankees Season Preview with Gary Phillips ([20:07]-[57:58])

Offseason Inaction and Roster Construction ([20:07]-[23:57])

• The Yankees mostly stood pat, resigning their own free agents but eschewing major external additions except for trades like Ryan Weathers.
• Gary Phillips says this perception is “fairly accurate,” and fans’ agitation at the lack of new faces is understandable, but the continuity is defensible:
  • “The Yankees had baseball's best offense last year...on paper, this is a good team.” (Gary, [21:20])
• The importance of getting ace Gerrit Cole back is emphasized.

Bonehead Plays, Fundamentals, and Boone’s Status ([23:57]-[27:25])

• Persistent narrative of Yankees’ summer swoons and fundamental lapses; Gary suggests lack of urgency may be the root:
  • “I do wonder sometimes if the Yankees have just not enough urgency when they're in the middle of these ruts—too much of a macro view...I don't know if I always sense that type of mentality from the team.” (Gary, [26:03])
• Perennial calls among fans for a new manager, but the front office stands pat with Aaron Boone.

Infield Alignment: Volpe vs. Caballero ([27:25]-[32:51])

• Discussion around new shortstop Jose Caballero and what it would take for him to keep the job over Anthony Volpe.
  • “I think Volpe is going to get a chance to be the shortstop again.” (Gary, [29:37])
• The organization’s mixed messages and the ripple effects of playing through injury (Volpe’s torn labrum) are dissected.
  • “[Volpe’s] metrics at the plate were a lot better prior to the injury...but defensively, the shoulder wasn't preventing him from charging balls. The footwork was a big problem.” (Gary, [31:04])

Outfield Situation and Jason Dominguez’s Future ([32:51]-[37:38])

• The outfield is loaded, with Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, Trent Grisham, and prospects like Dominguez and Spencer Jones in the mix.
• Grisham’s QO was expected by the Yankees (“they did provide themselves coverage in the outfield”), but his future role is not guaranteed.
• Dominguez is slated for AAA playing time due to defensive struggles in left and lack of righty bench need.

Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and Elbow Watch ([37:38]-[41:42])

• Little left to preview with Judge: “He’s pretty good.” (Gary, [37:20]), but perhaps Yankees fans can look forward to Judge’s stolen base aspirations for comic value.
• “Every Yankees fan listening to this preview just broke out into a sweat at the idea of him going that much.” (Meg, [38:45])
• Stanton’s ongoing elbow issues: “He can’t open a bag of chips,” but will play, and his bat remains vital for balance.

Prospects: Spencer Jones and More ([41:42]-[43:36])

• Jones wowed in spring, but must cut strikeout rate and prove in-zone contact before pushing for a roster spot.

Cody Bellinger’s Fit and Rotation Health ([43:36]-[47:35])

• Bellinger “was not Kyle Tucker and commanding the salary that Kyle Tucker wanted,” and fits the Yankees’ desire for flexibility.
• The rotation remains strong if healthy—Rodón, Cole, and Schmidt are at various stages of rehab.

Cam Schlitler & Bullpen Evolution ([47:35]-[51:56])

• Schlitler refining existing pitches rather than adding a new one for 2026; MLB rotation slot likely.
• Bullpen is built of “flyers, projects, and lottery tickets,” with David Bednar as closer.

Minor League Depth and Abs Challenge ([51:56]-[55:25])

• Carlos Legrand stands out as a AAA call-up candidate.
• Yankees experimenting heavily with the ABS challenge system, identifying best zone judges among hitters.

Success Metrics for 2026 ([56:07]-[57:58])

• “I can't say anything other than them winning a World Series. Right. That is what fans have been conditioned to expect…” (Gary, [56:38])
• Still, Gary candidly notes the club needs a better bullpen, health, and a bit of luck to reach that mark.

---

Cardinals Season Preview with Derek Gould ([59:57]-[124:21])

Departures, Direction and Quick Rebuild Philosophy ([60:44]-[68:25])

• The Cardinals’ winter saw a major, multi-pronged teardown: Michaelis, Contreras, Arenado, Sonny Gray, and Brendan Donovan all gone.
• “Slim down the payroll, move to a younger model, rethink, rework, replenish the roster. Heavy focus on player development.” (Derek, [61:45])
• This is not a five-year rebuild; the plan is a quick reset with pitching ready soon and top position prospects staged for rapid ascension.

Haim Bloom’s Role and Collaborative Culture ([68:25]-[74:05])

• Bloom’s “gap year” as heir-apparent was spent overhauling player development and building infrastructure to fast-track his vision.
• “He wanted more of a free flow of information...less of a scout just filing a report...more going back to them." (Meg summarizing Bloom’s approach, [71:39])
• Bloom’s collaborative philosophy is now baked into the baseball ops DNA.

Attendance Woes, Brand Fatigue, and On-Field Inspiration ([74:05]-[79:43])

• Cardinals suffer the largest consecutive-year attendance drops in MLB, attributed to decline in product quality, absence of heroes (Pujols, Molina), and a stale team personality.
• “They kind of were like the sitcom that stayed a season too long.” (Meg, [76:30])
• Regional draw diminished; reconnecting with the fan base is now paramount.

The Next Core: Weatherholt, Wynn, Scott ([79:43]-[87:49])

• 2025 first-rounder J.J. Weatherholt is tabbed for the Opening Day second base job; he’s “a very polished, confident in control hitter with a surprising amount of pop.” (Derek, [80:11])
• Mason Winn and Victor Scott II could be elite defenders at up-the-middle spots—Cardinals hope for more offense, but even “just” glove plus speed could rejuvenate era-appropriate baseball in St. Louis.
• “It goes back to...what kind of on base percentage does he need to have just to be an everyday player, and is that the same as all of a sudden he's a star because of his speed and his willingness to steal..." (Derek, [85:36])

Gorman, Walker, and the Corner Bat Questions ([87:49]-[92:05])

• Nolan Gorman gets a reset at third; Jordan Walker looks to translate defensive gains into offensive progress—this is a make-or-break year for both as franchise fixtures.
• “If they want to be a part of this core, it's now or not...it's either going to happen this year with the Cardinals or they're going to be looking for it to try to happen elsewhere.” (Derek, [91:55])

Nutbar’s Health and Catching Depth ([92:05]-[101:31])

• Lars Nutbar’s injuries have prevented him from fulfilling his statcast superstar profile. Recent foot surgery brings renewed hope for both quality of life and on-field speed.
• Cardinals developing an extraordinary pipeline of catching prospects:
  • Ivan Herrera’s offense is real, but defensive progress and health are essential.
  • “If Herrera can be a reliable catcher for 60 games...that changes the Cardinals right? I mean, it just does.” (Derek, [96:47])
  • 19-year-old Ronnell Rodriguez already turning heads with his bat in spring games.

Arms in the Minors and the Strikeout Imperative ([101:31]-[106:25])

• Joshua Baez (OF) and Louis Gastelum (RHP, wicked changeup) are AAA-adjacent names worth watching.
• The rotation has lived with low strikeout rates for years, a trend that the org is desperate to reverse now: "Timeline for raising that strikeout rate is March 26th...they want it to be yesterday." (Derek, [106:25])

Switch-Pitching Curiosity: D’Angelo Sanja ([109:06]-[111:48])

• Cardinals still allowing “switch-pitcher” D’Angelo Sanja to develop both sides, though a right-handed primary role is likely.

What Success Means for 2026 ([111:48]-[115:02])

• The two tracks of success: excite the fan base (entertainment/youth movement) and emerge from 2026 with clarity on the core for the next contention window.
  • “If they end this season wondering who their next core is, they have their answer. It's not here. So success has to be that they've found it.” (Derek, [114:51])

Manager Marmol and Yadier Molina’s Shadow ([115:02]-[123:48])

• Yadier Molina remains an icon and is more involved with the club, but the org is clear it’s Oliver Marmol’s ship—for now. Marmol’s rapport with Bloom and the front office is solid.
• Recent high-profile PR/clubhouse challenges (Contreras/O’Neill) attributed to poor communication, but not insurmountable or solely managerial failings.

Memorable Quote:
“They were expected to live up to the brand without the brand name roster...When they were good on offense, they were thin on pitching...it just never coincided.” (Derek, [118:01])

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On New Approaches to Ballpark Naming Rights:
  “One way that you can get the benefit of naming rights without having to pay for them is just get the entire town named after you.”
  – Ben Lindbergh, [05:14]

• On Repeat PED Offenders:
  “Accident works only once really...It's, it's worse in this case because those people was you. You were the one it didn't work for.”
  – Ben Lindbergh, [13:07]

• On Yankees’ Boneheadedness:
  “I do wonder sometimes if the Yankees have like, just not enough urgency when they're in the middle of these ruts, if they have too much of a macro view of the season.”
  – Gary Phillips, [26:03]

• On Cardinals’ Staleness:
  “They kind of were like the sitcom that stayed a season too long.”
  – Meg Riley, [76:30]

• On Cardinals’ “New Core” Quest:
  “These are not your Matt Holiday, Chris Carpenter, Albert Pujols, Yadi Molina, Cardinals anymore. These are your Mason Wynn, J.J. Weatherholt, Liam Doyle, Cardinals. Who are you going to be?”
  – Derek Gould, [113:39]

---

Key Timestamps

• [00:00] – Banter on WBC, CoolToday Park, and spring mismatches
• [08:26] – Jerkson Profar PED suspension, Braves’ camp woes
• [20:07] – Yankees Preview: Gary Phillips joins
• [56:07] – Defining success for the 2026 Yankees
• [59:57] – Cardinals Preview: Derek Gould joins
• [74:22] – Attendance issues and Cardinals’ waning allure
• [79:43] – J.J. Weatherholt profile
• [88:38] – Gorman and Walker corner infield/outfield deep dive
• [92:05] – Lars Nutbar’s health odyssey, catching depth
• [101:31] – Prospects likely to force their way onto the roster
• [106:25] – Strikeout (and fun) urgency for the pitching staff
• [111:48] – Cardinals’ 2026 success, two-track answer
• [115:02] – Marmol, Molina, and the manager situation

---

Final Thoughts

Both storied franchises arrive at 2026 with fan bases seeking answers: the Yankees aiming to win the small stuff after returning most of a very strong core, and the Cardinals looking to define the next core and restore their brand’s energy among their Midwest faithful. The episode features a memorable mix of statistical rigor, historical context, and humor—classic Effectively Wild style.

---

Transcript

[Meg Riley]

Vroom, vroom. Here's your primer on beef, boys.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Baseball's end.

[Meg Riley]

Roger angel and Super Pretzels Williams, Astadillo and Mike Trout. Hypotheticals waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic eruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction.

Hello, and welcome to episode 2448 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Riley of fangraphs, and I'm joined by Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer. Ben, how are you?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I'm entertained by the concept of Team

USA facing just one team, which is. Which is the warmups for the wbc. It's like all the best players at baseball versus the Giants or whoever's left.

I guess it's.

It's quite a mismatch.

I mean, it could be worse, but I don't envy Adrian Hauser or whoever has to go up against modern murderers row here.

[Meg Riley]

No, I don't know that he enjoyed his first inning. Although, you know, it could have gone a lot worse because the first four Team USA hitters reached, I thought Adrian Hauser in for a long day, being sacrificed on the altar of patriotism. They've righted the ship. They're only down two runs, but it does. It does go wit Harper, Judge Schwarber, Bregman, Cal, Raleigh, Roman Anthony, Byron Buxton, Bryce Tang. That's some. That's hard. That's a rough. That's a rough bit of business to deal with.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, on Wednesday, Team USA will run into the Rockies, and that'll be the real test, I think, of whether they're ready to take on the best in the world. Can you conquer the Rockies?

Because the Rockies.

I haven't looked, so I shouldn't make any assumptions, but I'm guessing there aren't

that many Rockies who have been recruited for WBC service, at least not on Team usa maybe.

Yeah, I guess they're probably at fuller

strength than some other teams that are diminished by guys who have gone away to play in the wbc. But, yeah, when I saw that on

the schedule, I remember when the spring schedules were announced or the WBC schedules, and I saw Team USA versus Rockies,

it just seemed like some sort of cosmic joke. But who knows?

It's baseball. Baseball's weird. Maybe the Rockies will win.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, you know, it is. It is weird. And they won't have to deal with Skeens, you know, the Rockies, they won't have to deal with Paul Skeens in today.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And Team USA will have to tangle with former Team USA Ace Kyle Freeland, maybe.

[Meg Riley]

There you go, Ace.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Ace might be a bit strong, but

he, he did make previous rosters. He pitched in two games for the 2023 Team USA squad.

[Meg Riley]

Now it's Matthew Boyd's turn. I think this play by play will be really moving to people. A whole day later they'll be like, wow, you're painting a picture. I can see it all before me.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It is a fun phenomenon of the

spring schedule, though, just the super team versus whatever's left of one team. It seems like an unfair fight. We have a couple team previews for you today. We will be previewing the Yankees with Gary Phillips of the New York Daily

News and the Cardinals with Derek gould of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. I like when there's a little history between the two teams we're previewing.

And the last preview we did, I guess, was Guardians Cubs. And I didn't bring it up because I didn't want to trigger any memories for Cleveland fans. I'm sure that the memories were triggered whether I brought it up or not. But there was one World Series matchup between those two organizations. Yankees, Cardinals, though, Five World Series matchups. Lots of head to head Fall Classic

history, though not since 1964. And you know, I doubt that the Cardinals at least will hold up their end of the bargain for ending that drought this year. Don't think we're going to get the sixth Yankees Cardinals World Series matchup in 2026. But we will see.

I don't want to spoil anything. Stay tuned for the season previews to find out.

Now, we are recording this episode mere

hours after I posted the previous episode, but we have already received a couple corrections. I have to update a couple things in my just really high priority essential analysis of naming rights for spring training Ballparks versus MLB parks. So Patreon supporter Sydney pointed out that Goodyear Park. Yeah, yeah. Not a sponsorship. I, I should have known that I

[Meg Riley]

let you down here.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, you are the native. You're. You're the local.

But, but I, I did know. I mean, not native, you're not from there. But I'm not from there.

It's probably an important distinction to you in some respects, but it's your adapted home.

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So you're well aware of, of Goodyear being a city in the area.

Which, which I also knew.

But when I was just gazing at the list and looking for corporate sponsor names and then I saw good.

Oh yeah, Goodyear. And for good reason, I guess, because as Sidney noted, Goodyear park is named for the city Of Goodyear.

But the city of Goodyear was itself named for the tire company.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Goodyear used to own a lot of land there.

So I guess that's one way that

you can get the benefit of naming rights without having to pay for them is just get the entire town named after you have a company town or something, and then you get the exposure for free, basically. So that's what's happening there. So if you correct the analysis there, I guess it's just slightly less than half of the spring training parks and teams, instead of slightly more than half, have naming rights. But, yeah, that's a little life hack for you, I guess, if you want to skimp on the payments but get the benefits.

It's kind of like Wrigley Field, for instance.

Not a naming rights situation, but it's named after the Wrigley from Wrigley's gum. Wrigley. Right. And so you kind of get some

exposure for your brand if your name is the same as the brand. And I guess that lingers for more than a century.

So clever. And I guess, good at business, you know, make your dollars work for you.

[Meg Riley]

We're not good at business.

[Ben Lindbergh]

No, we're not good at the biz. Some people who end up with their names on ballparks maybe are.

Unless in certain spring training parks, they're not business folks at all.

They're just the local parks and rec director or something.

And one other important point here. So this was all prompted because I saw the name Cool Today park, which is where Atlanta plays its spring training games.

[Meg Riley]

Cool Today Park.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Cool Today Park. Cool Today Park. Look, we didn't think that it was

actually a mom and pop business because a mom and pop business probably isn't

going to have its name on a ballpark, even a spring training ballpark.

But we were kind of charmed. It just seemed a little lower budget than what you would see on a

big league park, however, and I guess that's still true. But William writes in to say, it

brings me no pleasure whatsoever to inform you that Cool Today is a part of the Wrench Group, a private equity home services platform company owned by Leonard Green and partners. Wrench Group raised more than a billion dollars in debt in late 2025. Unfortunately, it's a little bigger and less innocuous than a mom H Vac company. Though it is very a nice thought

that it could have been one.

This is 2026, William says I have

to Google local plumber name private equity before calling someone to snake my drains. Now.

Yeah. So Cool Today has already been milkshake ducked.

I guess on this podcast we were briefly charmed by the name of that brand, but perhaps we shouldn't have been.

[Meg Riley]

Hey, I'm still charmed by the name. It invites so many different like potential points of emphasis in the way you say it, but the Wrench Group.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's the Wrench Group.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, doesn't that sound pretend? Doesn't it sound a little bit pretend?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sounds like a spoof.

Yeah.

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

If you were making up a villainous private equity group in a movie is trying to take over your local hardware store, it would be pursued by the Wrench Group. The Wrench Group. Like that's, you know, that's like Netflix Christmas movie stuff. The Wrench Group.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yep. And speaking of the team that plays at Cool Today park, little bit of

news broke about them on Tuesday related to one Jerkson Profar who will probably

not be playing Major League Baseball this season.

[Meg Riley]

It sounds like, I mean, potentially ever again.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Per. Yeah, possibly. Yeah. I mean he has one more PD suspension to go until he achieves the

full Henry Mejia of being banned for life. But he is at least out for this season.

There is an appeal by the Players Association.

I don't know on what grounds, but they are appealing that decision. But obviously he was suspended for PDS last year. He was suspended for half the season. He came back.

He hit pretty well actually and was part of why the projections for Atlanta pretty rosy this season and why there

were hopes for a bounce back. And boy, the vibes have to be bad in Braves camp for multiple reasons really. I guess it's good that we haven't

done the preview for the Braves yet. Although maybe Braves fans would have enjoyed it more if we had started with them when. When hopes were high. But between that and injuries, significant injuries

for Hurston Waldrop and Spencer Schwellenbach.

And it's just, it's the script repeating itself thus far.

It's the same guys getting hurt, the same guys getting suspended. So bummer for the Braves and Jerkson, what are you doing? What are you thinking, my man?

[Meg Riley]

It's not great. And look, I, you know, obviously I don't have any special insider knowledge about the likelihood of him playing again, but it's like for them to come so close together, you're gonn need there, there's. There would need to be compelling evidence that like someone was really messing with supplements he was taking or something. And I do wonder, you know, the, the explanation that is often offered by, by guys who get A PED suspension is that, you know, I took a supplement. I didn't realize that there was a banned substance in it. And you know, we have sort of varying levels of credulity when presented with that excuse. I wonder if something like that might motivate, you know, on the part of the union. But it is interesting because generally when these things are. Are done, like, they don't, they don't really reach the appeal stage. Sort of a done and dusted sort of circumstance. So I'll be curious to hear more about that. But Jerk's like, come on, buddy. Come on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, it's pretty hard to figure how

this could happen because, yes, okay, sometimes

I can buy that it's an accident or at least the excuses that it's an accident.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

It's hard to trot out the same excuse though, because accident works only once really.

And it doesn't even really work once because even then it's, well, you should have been more careful and you should have checked to see if there was this or that and you shouldn't have used this substance.

And I know some countries, you know, it's, it's. You can't count on buying certain things that are available over the counter and

there can be contamination and everything. But. But there's guidance on that.

[Meg Riley]

Like the United States.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, maybe, but. But you know, you get guidance from your team or from the players association,

presumably, and it's, hey, here's what's safe to use, here's what's not worth risking,

and if you have run afoul of that once, let's say that you are

innocent that one time, then you'd expect

that that player would be extra careful next time. I'm taking no chances whatsoever. Yeah, so. And he's not the first to have double dipped here. It's interesting because Passon's piece at ESPN

mentioned that there have been fewer PD suspensions of big leaguers in recent years. There were just two last year, Profar and Jose Alvarado. And five in the past three years. There was Max Kepler, who was suspended in January. 2.

[Meg Riley]

I don't mean to laugh at you, Max, but I do mean the laugh at you is the thing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, you know, sometimes when someone who

struggles to hit for power is maybe they'd be the most likely candidate to try to improve their power. But yeah, it does kind of hit you a different way, I guess. But.

But Jerkson's trying to bring those numbers

up all by himself.

It's like no one is picking up

the slack for Everyone else not getting suspended.

And he's.

I mentioned Mejia, but they're not the

only guys to have this happen to

them twice or more in Mejia's case.

And it's really, it reminds me, as

everything does, of the Tobias Funke Arrested Development meme. Did it work for those people? No, it never does, but it might work for us.

Except that it's, it's worse in this case because those people was you.

You were the one it didn't work for.

If you were actually cheating and you were intentionally taking something and you thought

you could get away with it and then you got caught, you would think you, you would say, oh, well, I put my hand on the stove and it was hot and I got an ouchie.

And I will learn from that and not do that again. And yet there are repeat offenders.

So in addition to Mejia and, well, multiple Mejias, I guess there was JC Mejia also. He was the last one to be suspended for a full season. But of course, Robinson Cano, Francis Martis, Marlon Bird.

So it happens.

And Profar signed a three year deal with Atlanta and already, I guess half of that is wiped away because half of last season, all of this season, presumably.

And then are you even gonna bother to bring him back for the final year when he hasn't played for a year?

[Gary Phillips]

Really?

[Ben Lindbergh]

I mean, I guess you're still on

the hook so you might see what he has left. Not counting on him.

Cause you can't even count on him. Not to test positive a third time, I guess.

But because he did hit when he returned last year, I guess you give him a chance because you're paying him anyway.

Or maybe you're not paying him because he'll get suspended and then you won't

have to pay him.

So yeah, it's pretty perplexing and it's unfortunate because I enjoyed Profar's breakout and yes, it was one. Except now obviously forever tainted and forever suspect.

And this is probably what he'll be remembered for. More so than top prospect who struggled and then eventually seemingly made good. Until this happened. And now this is the story.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, we're gonna find out that the Braves ownership is like, we lose next season does matter. We gotta get out of the profile deal. No, I doubt that that would be suffice. Sufficient motivation. But yeah, it's just a shame because, you know, it does make it very hard to look at that one very strong season and think that we weren't just being bamboozled. And obviously it's hard to know and anything is as many that year, but it does make you think it might all be counterfeit. You know, Can I share two quick thoughts from Team USA action? Because obviously we've. We've done previews, and I was focused on that, but I had it on my second monitor while we were chatting with folks. And I have to say the following two things. The first is, Aaron Judge is enormous and Bryce Eldridge is enormous. So everyone's got to get used to how big a man that is, because. Good God. Good God, Ben. Oh, they're. ESPN is just going to only talk to the Team USA guys. They're not going to talk to a single giant. They did have Posey in the booth,

[Ben Lindbergh]

but they could talk to Logan Webb and check out both box.

[Meg Riley]

I wonder where he's sitting today. You know, like, where's Logan? Where is he? And then my second thought, and I. I have to. I have to say this. In the interest of fairness, in the interest of journalistic integrity, in the interest of not bumming Phillies fans out too much, I just want you to know that right now, the looks I've got. God, Bryce Eldridge is enormous. He's the biggest man alive, Ben. He's just the biggest man there's never been. He's huge. I've seen him play in person before. This shouldn't be so surprising to me, but good God. And some of it is that as. As we are chatting, we are in the top of the fifth inning. Bryce Tarang is on first base, which is why I've had occasion to once again grapple with the enormity of Bryce Eldridge.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I wonder if it's that he is closer because he's in the infield.

He is contrasted with someone who's. It's like the old Judge Altuve photos, right? Whereas there's no one to provide the

perspective for Judge, because they're listed at the same height.

They're both listed at 6, 7. And actually, Judge, if you believe the listed weights, has about £40 on price Eldridge.

[Meg Riley]

So I think that Bryce Eldridge is just a skosh taller than Judge. I think he's. I think that he's a skosh taller than him. Just. Yeah, even a Scotchman.

[Ben Lindbergh]

They're both big boys.

[Meg Riley]

They're a big boy.

[Ben Lindbergh]

By the way, you linked me to that clip of Kershaw warming up, and you're right, it does look like he's been cultivating mass, maybe.

[Meg Riley]

What a lovely way of putting that. What a nice way.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I stole that from. It's always sunny, but yes, that's a nice.

[Meg Riley]

I missed that line. And it's sunny. And what a nice way of putting that. He's just, you know, he's retired.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, he's into retirement.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. And he's.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Except that he might end up pitching supremely important innings in a, you know, important tournament.

[Meg Riley]

We're living a. We're living a strange life in the USA these days. But my second thought, and again, I'm offering this because, you know, I feel like I've spent a lot of the offseason given the Phillies, a bit of the business and one Philly in particular. And you can't tell these things, really. You never know. But I'm just saying, Bryce Harper at this moment looks like a man who is drinking completely normal milk. You know, we had concerns about him and how. How sort of gaunt he may be looked. He just, he just hit the. Hit a nice little RBI single there. It's a nice little RBA single he just hit. But anyway, he looks like a man who is. He's never even heard of raw milk. He's never even heard of the weird red light sleeping bag. He's. He's a man who sleeps in normal sheets and drinks normal milk. And we know that neither of those things are true. But I just want to offer to Phillies fans some comfort that, you know, he's looked so gaunt in the face at times in the off season and you put him in spikes and a Team USA uniform, he looks like a normal guy. He looks like a normal Bryce.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Good.

I'm happy to hear it. All right.

Well, now that we've established that Aaron Judge is large, which will not come as news to Yankees fans, we will

take a quick break and we'll be

back with Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News to talk about big

Aaron Judge and, and other Yankees, followed by Derek Gould on the Cardinals.

[Meg Riley]

Effective mor sauvage. Effective on sage.

[Ben Lindbergh]

All right, let's talk about the New York Yankees.

And we have once again called upon Gary Phillips, who covers the Yankees for

the New York Daily News. Welcome back, Gary.

[Gary Phillips]

Thank you guys for having me on. I'm looking forward to talking about the team and the season ahead.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So the Yankees didn't really make Daily

News this off season, which probably made things challenging for you.

And that seems to be the most

common complaint among fans, that the Yankees have brought back the same roster, essentially.

And Brian Cashman quibbled with that a few weeks ago.

I think this was before he brought back Paul Goldschmidt and added even more fuel to that Fire.

But that's been the refrain that this

is the same team.

And it's understandable because although they resigned

several free agents, they didn't sign a new free agent agent to a major league contract. They did pick up a few players via trade, most notably Ryan Weather. So, two part question.

Do you think it's an accurate assessment

that the Yankees have essentially brought back

the same team and then two, is

that a bad thing?

Because it, it presupposes that a team

that, what led the league in run differential and, and won 94 games that it would be bad to bring that, that club back.

[Gary Phillips]

I do think it is a fairly accurate assessment. Brian Cashman, when he disputed that assessment a couple weeks ago, this was at the end of January, was trying to count trade acquisitions at last year's trade deadline as part of this off season's roster building. I, I don't think Yankee fans want to hear about players who were acquired in July and August when, when it's the end of January and spring training's right around the corner. So I didn't see what favors it did him or the Yankees to be arguing the semantics of that. Right. Like now, is it a bad thing? I don't necessarily think so. I know fans want shiny new toys and new players and the way that last season was a disappointment for them, but the Yankees had baseball's best offense last year. They tied the American League, you know, high for wins. They didn't win the division. Right. Like, they didn't take down the Blue Jays during the regular season or the postseason, but they also kind of played like boneheads for two months, which, which has become an annual tradition and its own separate issue. Right. But like, this is a good roster that they had in place. I have questions about the bullpen and whether, you know, what, what happens if some of their starters get hurt. But I think on paper, this is a good team. I know the Yankees have also been arguing that, hey, we're getting Garrett Cole back. Like, we didn't have him last year. So that's a pretty significant addition is, you know, a generous way to put it or, or a favorable way to their thinking to put it right. But, like, getting a good Garrett Colbeck would be a pretty huge deal. The way I looked at it was Ryan Weathers and Angel Chibichi. Like, those were the biggest external additions of their offseason. And those are two players that I think going into spring training, you look at them as projects. After watching Weathers up close a little bit, like, I don't think he's so much in that project category anymore. It's more a matter of like, just can he stay healthy? But like, he looked nasty last week when he made his spring debut. That's a nice addition to the rotation if he's living up to his potential and he's available and then obviously, yeah, getting Garrett Cole back, back, and you know, he's Garrett Cole or close to Garrett Cole, like, that's huge. So I, I didn't understand the arguing of the semantics. I do understand why the Yankees like the roster that they have in place.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So you alluded to them playing like

boneheads, which is, I guess, sort of how they ended the 2024 season, albeit in the World Series.

But some of the same fans who

were complaining about the lack of turnover,

probably the turnover that they would have

liked, well, some of them would have liked probably a new gm, so you can hope for that. I'm not holding my breath personally, nor do I think it's necessarily imperative that the Yankees make that change. But also it's a common request among Yankees fans that there be a new manager. And unsurprisingly to me, they did not comply with that request either.

But that is one of the perennial

knocks on Boone, that this team just has flaws.

I was going to say fundamental flaws,

but it's more like fundamentals flaws. Right. And maybe that's because of the composition of the team and the roster and the players and some guys on certain rosters who have been defensively limited, let's say, et cetera. But it does seem like the Yankees make a lot of unforced errors, that they make a lot of mental mistakes that they do not always execute.

And this has been a common refrain

for years at this point. And at some point that probably does reflect on the manager.

So what's the thinking on how they're

trying to address that? Of course, every team in spring training talks about how it's going to be so fundamentally sound this season. Right. Same refrain.

But is there any prospect for change?

And what do you think is at the root of that issue?

[Gary Phillips]

I wish I could tell you the answer to that question because I've written about it now every year that I've been on the beat, even when I had previous jobs not covering the team on a day to day basis. I mean, the players have changed, the roster has changed, the coaching staff has changed, yet the summer swoon always persists. I, I wish I could tell you why it happened. If it was a fix X. And you know, all of a sudden the summer Swoon goes away. Like they brought in, you know, a couple new coaches this year, including Dan Fiorito. He's going to be at first base and, you know, he's gonna work on defense with guys, he's going to work on base running with guys. Does that fix anything? I don't know. There's been coaching changes in the past and it hasn't. Right. I think from being a near daily observer, I do wonder sometimes if the Yankees have like, just not enough urgency when they're in the middle of these ruts, if they have too much of a macro view of the season. Right. Like, hey, we're just going to go get them tomorrow and pick ourselves up. Whereas I watched a lot of Blue Jays games this past season and it seemed like there was a lot of urgency, a lot of we're going to beat your brains in every single day and we're going to play on fire and then we're going to go do it again tomorrow. I don't know if I always sense that type of mentality from the team. It is something that I'm keeping an eye on this year to see if it changes, especially if a couple days or a week long rut comes along and. And all of a sudden it looks like another swoon is about to hit this team. Like, do they act differently? Do they take more of a micro approach to things? That's my best guess as an observer, as somebody who's seen this now year after year, as somebody who's been around the team through these ruts, but I don't have a definitive answer as to why they happen.

[Meg Riley]

And it seems like some of this might be solved by shifting of personnel, some of which will involve the guys you sort of made reference to who are acquired at the deadline. I want to talk about the infield and sort of how it's aligned right now with presumably Jose Caballero at shortstop and then how it might be aligned further into the season if we get the return of Anthony Volpe. So talk to us about how they're sort of configuring that group right now.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, don't sleep on Ryan McMahon, shortstop.

[Meg Riley]

I wouldn't dream of it, Ben, but the thing of it is, somebody's got to play third base, you know, it's true.

[Gary Phillips]

Well, talk about a guy who plays with his hair on fire. I think, yeah, Caballero fits that description perfectly. I also think he might need to set the world on fire in order for him to hang on to the shortstop job once Anthony Volpe comes back I mean, the way the Yankees have talked about those two players, they feel, despite evidence to the contrary, that that Anthony Volpe is part of the solution and somebody that they've wanted to support and give chances to every step of the way. And meanwhile, every time Caballero comes up in conversation, you hear Aaron Boone talk about the immense value he brings off the bench and how he sees him as a 10th man and there's value in playing him at all these different positions or using him as a pinch runner to steal bases and this and that. And that came up a week or two ago down in spring training. And it just made me think like, okay, what does this guy have to do for the job to not just be handed back to Volpe? Once Volpe is recovered from his shoulder surgery, like, does caballero have to hit.340 and suddenly become somewhat of a power hitter? And you know, right. Like he's got. He's got a.340 average and five home runs through the first month of the season and then he can to keep the job. Or is this just Volpes when he comes back? I think, I think the way the Yankees have talked about these players, Volpe for three years now, Caballero going back to last summer, would indicate that unless something extraordinary happens on Caballero's end, I think Volpe is going to get a chance to be the shortstop again.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And I'm almost hesitant to wade into the subject of Anthony Volpe. It's just so fraught in the fan base.

But the Yankees are not unique in this respect, but they have taken some

flack for the way that they have handled players health at times. The Anthony Rizzo concussion saga maybe being

the most infamous example.

And Volpe played hurt for most of last season. He had a partially torn labrum in his non throwing shoulder, which he aggravated in May, and then that ended up requiring surgery after the season.

And he played through it. Now when we did our Reds preview,

we talked about Ellie De La Cruz and how he was playing hurt down the stretch and was that wise?

And well, if you have a superstar like him, maybe a compromised Ellie is the best you can hope for. But is a compromised Volpe the best

they could have helped for?

Would it have been better in retrospect to shut him down or get this taken care of rather than have him play through it? And given that he did play through it, how do you think it affected

him and then how should that affect what people are expecting of him now with the shoulder repaired?

[Gary Phillips]

I think prior to the Caballero trade, the Yankees didn't really have a better alternative. Like it was Oswald Peraza, who frankly isn't a major league player. Certainly not a major league player on a team with championship aspirations. I know he's a good defender, but he's not a good hitter. He also wasn't even that good defensively last season when playing third a lot for the Yankees. So pre Caballero trade? No, not really. They didn't have a better alternative after the Caballero trade. I really struggled to understand the insistence of Volpe getting as much playing time as he did. That only increases right, when you find out just how messed up the shoulder was and that even when they went in there for surgery the damage was worse than initial tests had suggested. So I don't quite understand why they did it other than they, they have this belief in the player that doesn't match up with public perception whether it impacted him or not last year. You know, the Yankees have been split on that. Volpe and Aaron Boone have said no, the shoulder wasn't a detriment to Volpe. Brian Cashman said, like, yeah, it probably was. I think there's probably a little bit of truth to both perspectives, right? Like, I know Volpe's metrics at the plate were a lot better prior to the injury than they were after it. At the same time, when he's in the field, like, it's not his throwing arm, his shoulder is not preventing him from charging balls and sitting there flat footed on grounders. So I think it's a little hard to say. I think he still has problems with his plate discipline and his swing decisions. I think the, a lot of the defensive issues last year were not, not necessarily related to the shoulder. Like again, the footwork was a big problem for him. So it's tough to say. I kind of see where like both camps within the Yankees organization are coming from.

[Meg Riley]

Well, if there's a lot of potential uncertainty on the infield, the outfield seems pretty solid, at least if everybody stays healthy. Obviously judge and right. Bellinger returned and left. I'm curious about Trent Grisham, probably the least interesting of those three guys, but let's start with him just because I'm curious a bit about the sequencing here. He accepted the qualifying offer. Was that something of a surprise to the Yankees? Were they hoping he would do that? Because he did seem like the kind of guy where his market is potentially going to be affected a lot by the presence of that qualifying offer. So talk to us about sort of how that Evolved for them.

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah, I think the Yankees made the qualifying offer because they were interested in having Trent Grisham back. Like, I know there's been some fans who have thought like, oh, they only did this because they wanted the draft pick compensation and they were banking on Grisham going elsewhere. It's like, no, the Yankees didn't make a $22 million gamble on what essentially amounts like a fourth or fifth round pick. Like, that's not what they were doing. Like, they, they, by getting Grisham back, they did provide themselves coverage in the outfield in the event that Cody Bellinger signed elsewhere. Right. Like, they locked in a center fielder early on in the off season. I think maybe they were a little surprised that Grisham accepted the offer, opposed to testing the open market. But like you said, that qualifying offer is going to limit what he's able to get from other teams. So they, they like Trent Grisham. They believe that the metrics he displayed last season are sustainable and therefore his production is sustainable. He believes that some of the mental approaches that he made this past season and even over the course of the last few years really are something that's going to help him and benefit him going forward. They're also counting on his defense bouncing back. Last year was his best season at the plate in the majors. It was also his worst season defensively. Yeah, he was dealing with a little bit of a hamstring and some other nagging injuries throughout the season. So they're banking on and have and do have reason to believe that it wasn't a fluke for Grisham last year. And if it ends up being that it was, then it's $22 million and you're the Yankees and you can move on. You have two young outfielders who can assume larger roles either later this season or next season or whenever it may be.

[Ben Lindbergh]

And now with Randall Gritchic in the

fold, Ahmed Rosario around, in addition to Grisham and Judge and Bellinger and Stanton, it just doesn't seem as if there's currently a role on the roster for Jason Dominguez.

So tell us a little bit about

how they have handled him.

I've been kind of perplexed by his

apparent struggles in left field as a

guy who seemed to come up as a competent center fielder. And now that he's facing the prospect of not being able to get regular

playing time again, is he a trade candidate? Do they still believe in him long term?

[Gary Phillips]

I think they do believe in him long term. That doesn't mean he can't be traded. It doesn't mean he won't come up in trade talks if the Yankees want to pursue help for other parts of their roster. But yeah, the, the defense is a real issue. Like he is still a work in progress in left field. That that's remained the case this spring. Just, you know, watching him in passing and seeing, you know, seeing what I've observed down there in Tampa when I was down there, like it's still an issue. The fact that he still isn't much of a threat from the right side of the plate is an issue when it comes to impacting that bench. Right. Grisham and Bellinger, they're both left handed hitters. So the Yankees would like a righty in that mix from their, you know, fourth outfielder or platoon guy, whatever you want to call him. That's not going to be Dominguez. And Brian Cashman recently conceded that everyday reps are going to be in his best interest. Well, he's not going to get those at the major league level right now unless there's an injury to one of the starting outfielders or Giancarlo Stanton. So that means back to aaa and that's not necessarily a terrible thing for either side.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right.

[Gary Phillips]

Like I just mentioned, two pretty significant areas where Dominguez needs to improve his game. He's going to have a chance to do that every day with everyday reps at aaa that just wouldn't come in the majors.

[Meg Riley]

Right now it feels a little silly to do a Yankees preview and not talk about Aaron Judge. But what do you say about Aaron Judge at this point?

[Gary Phillips]

He's pretty good.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah. What is there left for. For Judge to conquer? Is he sweating over the fact that he only posted a 204 WRC last season as opposed to goes to the 220 he managed. What a washed. Absolutely washed.

[Ben Lindbergh]

How's his elbow? How's that?

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah, the, the elbow. The elbow seems fine. He threw for most of the off season. He actually prepared at a quicker rate in anticipation of the wbc. So for right now the elbow seems good. It's certainly something to continue keeping an eye on. Right. Like we know things can get re aggravated or you know, resurface later on in time, but right now it seems good. He seems to be throwing strong just from what I saw in first couple games and during camp and him playing catch and all that. One thing he did say he was asked early in spring training, hey, you come to camp every year always looking to work on certain things. What's left for you to work on or try to get better at. He talked about some guys that you wouldn't expect across the league stealing 30, 40 bases and you know, he wants to improve his base running and be more of a base stealer. I don't know if that was like an illusion to Juan Soto, who had, you know, an unexpected amount of stolen bases this past season or what. But that said, I don't really see the Yankees letting Judge have the opportunity for 30 something stolen bases like that would be.

[Meg Riley]

Every Yankees fan listening to this preview just broke out into a sweat. The idea of him going that much.

[Gary Phillips]

I'd be very surprised if the Yankees were giving him the green light that often. Maybe, maybe he just wants to be able to beat jazz Chisholm Jr. In, in jazz's made up stat that he created last year where he, he wanted to combine stolen bases and home runs in an effort to say like, oh, I was, I was better at this than Judge. A little friendly competition they have. But yeah, I, I would be pretty stunned if we're seeing judge swipe 30 basis.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I know Jazz is aspiring for 5050 this year, so we'll see how that goes. Speaking of Giants with bum elbows, let's just talk about John Carl Stanton for a second. I don't know that any other player combines just appearing so physically imposing with an underlying fragility the way that John Carlos Stanton has. And the latest he says is that he can't open a bottle, he can't open a bag of chips, a bag of anything because of his ongoing tennis elbow issues. And this is concerning to read about.

This was plaguing him last year too, of course.

And somehow when he was on the field, he hit 24 dingers in fewer than 300 plate appearances. So does this issue affect him at the plate? It sounds as if he is not really holding out any hope of a remedy here.

[Gary Phillips]

I know those quotes were recently put out there. There's nothing new as the time of this recording of regarding John Carlos Stanton's elbows. He's actually supposed to play in his first spring training game today, so obviously things with him can change in a hurry. That game doesn't seem like it'll be televised or broadcasted in any way. So I guess stay tuned for Twitter to make sure he comes out of it okay. But like nothing's changed with his elbows even going back to, you know, this was something that bothered him in throughout the 2024 season and throughout that crazy run that he had in the playoffs. It's something that he has Said time and time again is going to require maintenance and there's going to be some pain and no guarantee of surgery necessarily fixing things certainly in a timely manner when he wants to be out there playing and helping the Yankees and be a force in their lineup. You know, his right handed bat is extremely important to their balance because they're so left handed. So nothing's really changed with him. Like that could change in a hurry. Right. The elbows could become too unbearable. Another lower body injury could pop up. You mentioned the fragility like that. That is something Stanton has had to deal with throughout his career. But as far as the elbows go, like I have been asked him early in spring training, like did they hinder your off season training program at all? And he said no. So at the time of recording, nothing's new on that front.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, now that we've talked about those

two Giants, let's cross off a third and discuss Spencer Jones, who has already wowed people with tape measure spring training shots. How does he fit into this crowded outfield picture, if at all? And what does he have to prove at AAA to get the call?

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah, I mean you alluded to it, but he fits in essentially the same way that Dominguez does. He's going to start the season in all likelihood, barring any injuries to anybody else at aaa. He needs to show that he can make more contact and more contact in the strike zone and not strike out so much. You know, he's once again fiddled with his mechanics at the plate and his stance. He's kind of got this Shoei Ohtani esque toe tap going on especially. It's yielded good results. Right. But like we've seen good results from Spencer Jones in previous spring trainings. We've seen good results from Spencer Jones in actual minor league games this past season. But the strikeout rates and the lack of in zone contact like those rates and those numbers are still way too high to say like, yeah, this guy belongs in the big leagues right now or yeah, this guy is going to be a really good major league hitter. I know there's a lot of people thinking he could be, you know, early Texas Rangers era Joey Gallo, who was a really valuable player. Right. But Jones is about to be 25. Gallo was already having his best seasons in the majors by Jones's age. So yeah, I think the jury is still out on him. He's a really good defender. He's capable of playing all three outfield positions. Maybe that even helps him jump Dominguez on the depth chart if there's an injury and the Yankees need to call up an outfielder because Dominguez only plays left field or is only trusted in left field at this point. But he, he also is a guy that still has some things to work on.

[Meg Riley]

Well, let's, let's finish off the outfield. Tell us what about Cody Bellinger was so singular as to occupy so much of Brian Cashman's time. Because there was, was there was a sense, I think, among Yankees fans, like, can't you do multiple things at once? Can you do, can you do Bellinger? But also. And he, he did. He traded for Ryan Weathers. But talk to us about the fit there. What about his time in New York made him such an obvious target for, for them? And what do you expect from him this year?

[Gary Phillips]

I think one of the things Cody Bellinger had going for him was that he was not Kyle Tucker and commanding the salary that Kyle Tucker wanted. So I think there was something there. I think there was something to the Yankees seeing that Cody Bellinger was comfortable in New York last season, that he enjoyed the market, he enjoyed the print stripes. He seemed to fit in well with the clubhouse and the coaches and all that. They also really liked his flexibility and the idea that maybe down the road we can move him around or put him in other positions if we need to. They like, liked that he was able to tailor his approach to different situations at the plate. I know there's some metrics that would suggest like, okay, maybe his bat is not going to age well. But I think something that Bellinger did last season very conscientiously and very well was he knew when to be a power hitter or a contact hitter, a slap hitter, a patient hitter, aggressive. Like, he did a really good job of that in the middle of that order. And I think all of those factors, including, you know, him not being at the very, very tippy top of the outfield market, like, those were all very appealing things to the Yankees.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, we've talked about three troublesome elbows thus far.

One of judges and both of Stanton's. Let's talk about three more elbows. We'll just get all the elbows out of the way.

Garrett Cole, Carlos Rodan, Clark Schmidt, Tell

us about their timelines and outlooks.

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah, so Rodin is theoretically the first one expected back. The Yankees are hoping that that could happen before the end of April, maybe early May. He basically is hoping to get in some spring training games by the end of camp that would then put him on track to start the season on a rehab assignment or maybe one or two outings at extended spring training, something like that. They've always, since the surgery was announced, kind of have talked about it as a precautionary thing and not something to worry about. So far it seems like his timeline lines up with that and the way he's progressing lines up with that. Garrett Cole, meanwhile, like he's looked really good in spring training so far. Obviously we're talking about bullpens and live batting practice sessions and you know, throwing 20 ish 30 pitches at a time and, and you know, not, not dipping into his entire arsenal, but he's out there already throwing in 95 almost, you know, 97 miles an hour in some cases. He looks clean, he looks crisp. The Yankees are hoping he could be back late May, early June. That's kind of the earlier, you know, end of the spectrum as far as the Tommy John timeline goes. But I could just tell you he's looked really good thus far. And then Schmidt is a guy who is, is, you know, several months behind them. Right. Like he's hoping to be a second half post all star type of option for them. Whether that is in the rotation, whether that's in their bullpen, like I think that's all way too far out in the future to determine. But right now he's essentially just playing catch and, and going through rehab and recovery day to day. I talked to him a little bit about things he's changed with his routine, things he hopes to change with his arsenal that he hopes are going to help keep him healthy moving forward. You know, he's a guy who's dealt with injuries in the past as well, including another Tommy John surgery. But yeah, he's way off, more in the distance.

[Meg Riley]

All right, I'm going to see if I can get it right on the first go because it's spring training for all of us. I think that Cam Schlitler was, haha, I did it. Crushed. It was a revelation for a lot of people last year, the way that he came in and sort of commanded the mound immediately. Immediately. Very impressive. He also only threw 73 innings. So what are your expectations for him this year? Where does he slot into this rotation? And you know, are there any things that he took away from that initial run of 14 games that he is trying to tweak or alter for his sophomore campaign?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Might he throw some breaking balls this year?

[Meg Riley]

Yes.

[Gary Phillips]

So, you know, I talked to Cam over the off season and he initially said, said he wanted to add a splitter or a change up to his arsenal when he got to camp I followed up with him, you know, asked him, hey, how those pitches going? And he said that in actuality he and the team decided like, no, we're going to fix the orientation of my existing pitches, particularly the fastball and the curveball. So he's hoping to get a little more spin, a little more ride on those pitches, hoping that, that he can improve and refine what he has before he starts adding additional weapons and working on some additional things. He did work on a splitter a little bit last season in spring training and kind of found that the, you know, his wrist pronation just wasn't lining up right and it wasn't working out too great. So I, I would expect if he ever does add another pitch it's going to be that changeup. But right now that doesn't seem to be a priority for him. The priority right now for him is getting into game action and facing live hitters. He had a little back slash lat issue early on in camp that the Yankees don't think is going to stop him from being ready for the season opening rotation. But he's a little behind right now and even if he is ready for the start of the year is probably not going to be fully built up. That was something that Aaron Boone mentioned the other day.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, the Yankees have been distinguished by good bullpens for much of their recent run but last year was an exception.

They were a bottom 10 pen by Fangraphs War.

They do project to be a top 10 pen again this year. It's a bit of a different look. It's some of those mid season pickups

you mentioned and some of their late inning guys from last year are now Mets. So take us through this slightly rebuilt bullpen.

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah, so you've got David Bednar as the closer right there at the top. After that you're looking at to I would say pretty nasty but pretty erratic setup men in Fernando Cruz and Camilo Duvall. You have Tim Hill in there as your lefty specialist and you know a guy who's giving you that funky junk ball look and after that you got a bunch of question marks. You know you have two swing men in Ryan Yarbrough and Paul Blackburn who barring any injuries, any more injuries to the rotation are, are going to be in the bullpen. And then after that you've got Jake Bird who made a nightmarish first impression last year with the Yankees, but is somebody that they believe in. They're very high on Brent hedrick. There's Rule 5 draft pick Kate Winquest they traded for. I mentioned before Angel Chibichi got him from the Rockies. Gary De Los Santos is another guy who had some success in a limited capacity last year for them. So. So basically a lot of flyers and projects and lottery tickets that the Yankees are hoping one or two of these guys pan out and that they can hit on them as they construct what is another pretty cheap bullpen. I wrote recently, like the Yankees haven't spent big on a free agent reliever since 2019, which is kind of hard to believe considering the amount of of money they spend overall. Brian Cashman basically said it just hasn't panned out that way. It's not any sort of policy that the team has that that might be something that, you know, a streak that they have to snap next offseason when Bednar hits free agency. But yeah, for, for the time being they're going with another pretty cheap bullpen and counting on their pitching department to find some diamonds in the rough.

[Meg Riley]

Well, that anticipates my next question, which is, you know, in the event that there is underperformance from this group or just injury because that happens with pitchers, who are the guys who are sort of floating around the high miners who you expect might be, you know, the first ones they call up.

[Gary Phillips]

I mean Carlos Legrand, his stuff looks like it would be incredible coming out of the bullpen. It looks like it's incredible period. And I think the Yankees want to give him a chance to remain his starter long term like every step of the way. That said, if we get to the summer and the bullpen isn't doing all that well or somebody gets hurt, are you just going to let 103 miles per hour sit there at AAA and not impact the big league roster? Like I would be pretty shocked if that were the case now. Now that said him, Elmer Rodriguez, you know, maybe they're first in line if there's an injury to the rotation and they leapfrog Yarborough or Blackburn. But I think if we're just talking about the bullpen here, like yeah, Carlos Legrande's stuff would work pretty nicely in a, in a short burst.

[Ben Lindbergh]

You wrote last month about how the

Yankees are talking a big game about being aggressive with challenges and so far they are walking the walk and I guess when those challenges are lead to overturns then sometimes actually getting walks.

So they have challenged 20 times as

we record on Tuesday afternoon and they're second in the majors. The Guardians are at 21 and there's really quite a range because. Cause The Marwin's down at the bottom.

They played the same number of games as the Yankees and they've challenged three times.

So whether this will be reflective of

the rates in the regular season, I don't know.

But it certainly does seem as if the Yankees are making this a priority.

I'm somewhat disappointed to learn via a recent Mike Petriello piece that we can't necessarily expect Aaron Judge to be even better because of the challenges. There's been some thinking that guys at the height extremes would benefit from this because of their non standard strike zones and at least checking the aaa, Mike found that there seems to be some

truth to that for shorter players, the

Altuve of the world, but not necessarily for the Giants, the Spencer Joneses and judges when it comes to the challenge success rate. But take us a little bit through this philosophy and do you think that what we've seen so far this spring

is a reflection of what we will see all season?

[Gary Phillips]

I don't think it'll necessarily be as frequent as we see in the regular season. You know what the Yankees are doing now in spring training is, is kind of letting their players experiment. Right. Like, and they're experimenting in the same sense. They want to see who's really good at this, who has a great understanding of the strike zone, who is going to do it objectively versus getting caught, caught up in an emotional decision because they don't like a call. Right. Or, or they're upset with themselves in a big situation. So I think it will evolve. I think it will become a little more strategic. Aaron Boone even said recently, like what they're doing now won't necessarily be the same as what they do in May, won't necessarily be the same as what they do in October. Right. Like I think for all these teams it's going to be an evolving thing, a learning process that they're going to determine X, Y and Z on our roster is really, really good at this. And A, B and C, we don't trust them at all. Like don't. You're not allowed to touch your head.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Head.

[Gary Phillips]

We'll see. With that said, I do expect the Yankees to be pretty accurate and pretty successful with this. Like they're, they've always been a team that controls the strike zone really well and works pitchers really well. This goes all the way back to savages in the box. Right. Like that's what that was all about was like we're, we know what the strike zone looks like and we're really good at controlling it. So they, they still believe that. They still stress that when it comes to their offensive philosophy. So as far as at least their hitters challenging pitches and using ABs, I would expect them to be pretty accurate with it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, we always close by asking what

would constitute success for this team in the upcoming season. And I know in Yankees land, everyone affiliated with the team is supposed to say World Series or bust.

Maybe they've been a bit less dogmatic about that lately. Given that they haven't won since 2009, maybe it becomes more difficult to maintain that line. But realistically speaking, not that Yankees fans

are always realistic with their expectations, but how should fans assess whether this season is a success?

[Gary Phillips]

I mean, as somebody who covers the team, I can't say anything other than them winning a World Series. Right. Like that is what fans have been conditioned to expect, even if the organization itself has, you know, taken its foot a little bit off the gas in some ways in that regard. But that said, I do think the Yankees are a team that is capable of doing that. I think they are a team that is capable of winning the American League East. I think they're a team that's capable of having the best record in the American League. I think they need some things to break in their favor for that to happen. I think they need, need to get a better than expected performance from their bullpen. I think they need to make sure certain guys in their lineup don't regress while others take, you know, other younger hitters take steps forward. And I think they really need that rotation to stay healthy. Like on paper, it's a really good starting group. They have way more than five starters. But in addition to Cole, Rodin and Schmidt starting the season on the illustrious, you've also got Freed, Schlitler, Will Warren. They're all coming off of career high workloads. Louise Heel and Ryan Weathers, we know, have notable injury histories. So there are some question marks in this group, but that doesn't mean they can't achieve whatever Yankee fan is hoping for.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, Yankees fans will hope that the sewage overflow at Steinbrenner Fields at the start of the Grapefruit League season was not a bad omen.

[Gary Phillips]

And that actually happened in 2023 and when they did it at the end of spring training and ended up being my, my opening anecdote when I wrote, when I wrote the season's obituary when, when they didn't make the playoffs. So maybe, maybe I can recycle that one.

[Ben Lindbergh]

If things go wrong this year, file that one away. But fans will hope that you don't

get to use it.

In fact, maybe you can use it either way.

Maybe you can just call back to

the inauspicious beginning and how it actually wasn't portentous. Either way, there will be Daily News

from here on out. And extra, extra. You can read all about it at the New York Daily News from Gary Phillips. Thank you again, Gary.

[Gary Phillips]

Thanks for having me on.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, I guess the positive spin on some of the Yankees issues with fundamentals

that we just discussed might be that

you don't sweat the small stuff when

the big guys are taken care of. The big guys like Aaron Judge.

Though I guess you might regret not

sweating the small stuff when it contributes

to a spectacular loss in a World

Series elimination game in which that big guy drops a fly ball.

Then the small stuff becomes big. But at least you got there, I guess. Anyway, let's take a quick break and we'll be back to talk about a team that has historically been known for

excelling at the small stuff, but has had problems with the big issues of late. Derek Gould will join us to talk

about when the Cardinals will be an entertaining team. All right, we're back. We're ready to talk about the St. Louis cardinal.

And we have brought on a great guest, Derek Gould, who is the lead baseball writer for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He also podcasts about the Cardinals for the best podcast in baseball.

Welcome back, Derek. Hello.

[Meg Riley]

Hello. I'm thrilled to be back. Thank you for the invitation. This is, this is great. We call it the second best podcast in baseball, mind because of you guys. But they just lop off the second for marketing.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, well, I can't speak for the fan base. It has not been the best, best

team in baseball of late.

And not by coincidence, some of those best fans have stayed away. We will discuss that, I'm sure, but

the most recent piece that you have

published as we speak here on Tuesday

afternoon, the headline starts with who is

on the Cardinals opening day roster?

And you know what, that's probably a question that a lot of people are

asking themselves these days, especially if they didn't pay close attention over the off

season because it's going to look a

little different this year.

So that's some service journalism from you.

We just did the Yankees preview and we talked about the lack of turnover and how fans are upset about that.

But count your blessings because sometimes turnover means that your team got worse.

At least in the short term, though, there is a plan and maybe this will pay off in the long run. So take us through this off Season exodus. All the departures. Miles Michaelis left via free agency, but then a quartet of veteran Cardinals departed via trade. Sonny Gray, Wilson Contreras, both to Boston, Nolan Arenado to the Diamondbacks, Brendan Donovan, two Meg's Mariners.

So what was the plan embarking on this off season?

Was it everything must go? And they executed that, and did they have any ideas about, here's what we want to get back for these guys?

[Meg Riley]

I think it. I think it's that, but almost like more nuanced to after that, right? Like it was an everything must go. Slim down the payroll, move to a younger model, rethink, rework, replenish the roster. Heavy focus on player development. But I think there was some of this, like, some must go and some must bring great return, right? So this is the second winter in a row that they approached the players with no trade clauses. Sonny Gray, Wilson Contreras and Nolan Arenado were the chief among them. Miles Michaels also had a no trade clause, but they went to the three guys who were more recently all stars and said, hey, do you want to go? And we'll work to trade you. And this was in John Moselect last winter. Nolan Arenado said, I would like to go win somewhere. But my list, his list was very narrow and he had some at several points was like, why can't we, you know, why can't I just stay at Cardinal? Just I wanted to be a Cardinal. Maybe they can win. Wouldn't it be great if the Cardinals were actually the Cardinals? Like, I want it to be and let's do that. So then fast forward to this winner. And it was more of like, okay, look, you know, gotta find a place for Arnada. Arnado agreed and widened his list. Does Sonny want out? Sonny said, I'm at a point in his career where he wanted to go win. And could the Cardinals make that work and also could they move fast to do so? That was also part of it with Wilson. It was a little less sure that he definitely wanted out, but he was open to it if he found a place in a city that was to his liking, his family's liking, all that stuff. Haim was able to put all that together. And that brings us to then Brendan Donovan and Meg's Mariners, which is a way different conversation than these other three, right? This was a salary that they were fine to have. This is a player who they like having around. This is a player who they could find a spot for in the lineup and not block JJ Weatherholt. It all worked out, but they Also recognized this was a player in demand and maybe in among the most demand of any player this offset season. And so how could they maximize his return and would it be this winter? Would it be at the trade deadline? Certainly wouldn't be next winter. So that's what they set out to do was how to get the most return possible for him because his window of control is different than their window of contention. And that was the big thing. So the goals of the off season were basically to, as you said, three must go, one must get a whole lot in return and overall accumulate as much pitching talent as possible. Those were the three kind of biggest themes and biggest priorities of winter.

I wanted to ask you about their own understanding of their window of contention because.

Great question.

I think one of the things that's striking about the deals that they did this off season, you're right that obviously they're, there's, there's a ton of pitching here. A lot of the pitching is, is big league ready or near big league ready. And some of the position players are a little more speculative and perhaps a bit further away. But this isn't the return of a franchise that I would say, oh, they think they're five years from contending. Like this group. Seems like some of them are going to be on the big league roster this year and others might not be far away. So as they're thinking through this, this rebuild or reset, it's dramatic in terms of, you know, the profile of the guys they've moved and sort of the, the number of trades they've done. But when do they think they're going to be ready next?

See, it's really, it's a really compelling point that you make because part of the goal was to fill in the gap or the donut hole of their, of their minor league system, which was pitching that was ready to contribute. And they have done that. What they recognize that they have position players who they want to see if they're ready to contribute and a few other who rose to prominence like a Joshua Baez this past year who put themselves on the map to contribute. So that balance, if they had set out to script it, they probably couldn't have done it as well as they did where the acquisition of position players was sort of in line with where they needed it and the acquisition of pitchers was closer to the majors because that's where they were going to need it. As far as what that does to goose their contention, they want it to fast forward it. Whether you talk to the owners or Han Bloom or Oliver Marmal with his, the manager with his new extension. I mean they, they don't want a five year plan. They don't think that that's like really something they can get away with. In St. Louis, ticket sales were down dramatically. They have to launch a new TV program. You know, they have the real estate development and ballpark village around there. They need to reinvigorate this fan base. And oh by the way, there's the lockout looming. So they have to do it while also maybe emerging from labor chill. Right. So they recognize that they cannot or at least the way they talk is they don't want to have a slow play. Ownership has said they would like to get back into the top third of spending on the payroll and they want to time it when it's adding and augmenting a core of homegrown players. So they are setting out this like almost blueprint for give us a year two understanding a lockout is coming, may lose some games, who knows. But give two so that this core of players and pitchers who are all in that say three to six year range of control and about to be joined by JJ Weatherholt, who's 0 to 6 that two years out. Then they get the big additions where the power is needed, where the spending's needed and that's when they go and win again. They don't want a long, long term situation here and that's, that's evident both in actions and in comments. I mean, I think if you look at their actions, right, they've cleared the way. Brendan Donovan was part of this for, for Weatherholt to be their starting everyday second baseman, you know, what good does that do for them if he's there in 2026? We lose games in 2027 and then the Cardinals come back in 2028 and they're not ready to contend and he's about ready to make a lot of money or get an extension.

[Ben Lindbergh]

The Cardinals hired bloom after the 2023

season as an advisor to then pobo John Moselak. And then they announced a year after that, so heading into the 2024-25 off season that he would succeed Moselock. And they then signed Bloom to a five year deal.

It's not unheard of, I suppose, but it's unusual for their not just to

be an heir apparent, but a named

heir and successor who's just waiting in the wings for a year or more.

So how did Bloom use that time before he officially took the reins to prepare to hit the ground running and how did he and Mosilak juggle the decision making knowing that Bloom would be the one who would have to reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of any decisions made by Mozlak?

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, yeah. One of the things that they did do and I will see if this other team, if other teams follow, but it's exactly as you said. By naming an Aaron, what they gave Bloom was a task. Go improve the player development, go work on the minor league system. You get 12 months to do it, and then that's the basis upon which you build your team. You get to pour the foundation for 12 months, expand staff improvements, improve tech, change the thinking, Bring us, you know, like the ownership said, bring us up to date on development, on pitching, on scouting, on how we think about things internally. That was his charge. And so, you know, Bloom had 12 months to basically build the beginnings of his team that then his contract didn't start until he became pobo. It was a really fascinating approach, but in his descriptions and others descriptions is it allowed him to really focus on constructing the player development and the infrastructure that they needed to pull off the model that he would then run. And it meant that he didn't also have to do the pobo job at the same time, didn't have to go with the daily transition actions, didn't have to pick through the waivers to go through the injuries. He could spend 12 months really with a staff of his choosing and a larger staff at that, and also get to know the people who he would be then working with or choose to work with. It was really fascinating and how they worked, the responsibilities. Moselock had final call, that was very clear. He said as much and would say as much as often. Bloom also said that the decision while he is president of baseball operations is his ownership echoed that. However, where Mozalek and Bloom found places to work together was in deals and decisions that Bloom would ultimately inherit. So Bloom's input was there all over on trades, on, on who they sought, what they wanted to get. Because Mosalec was making choices especially like, particularly on trades, right, like going out to try to get the pitching that would then fit into the model or fit the requirements or fit the preferences of what Blum was building. It didn't make much sense for Moselek to go out and get what he thought was the best pitching prospect in a deal if that pitching prospect didn't also have the trip traits that Bloom was prioritizing below. So they would work in concert on that. And you could see Bloom's input in everywhere from the draft. And when I say Bloom, let me be clear. I mean, like Bloom's group, right, the folks that he brought in, you could see that in the draft. You could see that in the trades that they made before Moselock stepped aside. You can see that in waiver claims. You could see it in a lot of different ways. And what that also allowed, and this is like really inside baseball, but hey, that's what we do, right? Is it allowed for this collaborative culture that Haim Bloom wanted to create the first day he was in the seat? It allowed that to take place before then, particularly at the draft where, you know, Randy Flores has governed and run and been at the helm, helm for several drafts. Now going Back to before 2017, he's run the drafts for the Cardinals and he was going to run this draft too. But he was taking in input from Haim's pitching development group, player development. What do they think they could do with guys? What did they want to prioritize in pitchers? What were they looking for and stuff? What's a modern pitcher look like? How do we look at these data? What kind of data can we get? Let's bring in the analytics group. Let's have them talk some more. Hey, let's go back to them. Bloom wanted to create a lot more of instead of a funnel of information, like a mousetrap of information, if we think of like a mousetrap is in like a big interstate where everybody's kind of moving in directions to get to a destination. He wanted more of a free flow of information going back to places, more input from more places. You know, less of a scout just filing a report like pro scouts were doing, and more going back to them and saying, okay, how do we do this? Bringing player development in? And we started to see that kind of decision making tree come into play that then in the first month of Bloom's leadership, he really expanded, adding departments, adding directors, adding levels of scouts that had previously not been in place for the Cardinals.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, I'm sure that Cardinals fans will happy to hear all this because it

does make it sound like there's a direction at least. And the organization is seemed somewhat aimless lately.

And we talked about the exodus from the roster.

I alluded to the exodus from ballparks by fans.

So this past season, the Cardinals had

the biggest decline in year over year attendance per game, almost 8,000. That's a pretty big number. And that was their second consecutive season that they had the biggest decline in that metric.

And also the season before that, they were one of Four teams to lose

per game attendance that year. That was the year of the new rules, when attendance was up generally.

So that's three years in a row that there's been a big decline.

Kind of hard to do that. I guess it speaks to how strong the foundation was before that, that they had that far to fall and they

could have the biggest losses a couple seasons in a row.

Now the Cardinals have, I guess, led a fairly charmed life in this century, or any century for that matter, in the grand scheme of things. And probably other fan bases are looking at the Cardinals from the past couple of years and thinking you were what,

two games under.500 over the past two seasons? You know, cry me a river, right?

And the season before that was 71 wins. That was. That was the nadir. That was the disaster that was bottoming out for other teams. They're looking up at that number.

So was it just that a fan base that was accustomed to a perennially

contending team was suddenly confronted with the prospect of an at best fringe contender? Or was it not just the record, but the boring composition of the team?

Because we decided at the end of

last season that the Cardinals were the team that we had talked about least in 2025. That was not scientific, but that was our sense. Not just mediocre in terms of their record, but just not a lot of exciting stories, really. Ouch.

[Meg Riley]

Man out.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I know. I mean, so many exciting.

[Meg Riley]

Not like from the.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, okay, yes, but well written.

Well, yes, but yes, you did the best you could with the material you were given, but the Cardinals were not giving you much to work with. So. So was it a combination of both? Was it more one or the other

just, hey, we're not that good or not only are we not that good, but we're not that entertaining.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, they were. They kind of were like the sitcom that stayed a season too long, right?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, they kind of had that feel. I think it's all of what you described. I, you know, I've for a few years here asked and wondered and written and. And really tried to discuss with fans, like, why does this team not capture your imagination anymore? Is it because it's not good enough? Is it because it doesn't have Yadi or Molina? Is it because it doesn't have Albert Pool? I mean, you think about the. The peaks of 2022. Right, right. With the Chase for 700, the farewell tour, all that stuff. You know, is it because that era closed with such a resounding thud? You mentioned in 2023, losing season, first year after Yadir Molina's retirement. But also you go Back to the October 2022, when a blown save against the Phillies leads to just disaster in that round of the playoffs, and they're out. I mean, they had all this energy, all this enthusiasm, all this magic, really, you know, with Albert Pujols second half, the 700th home run at Dodger Stadium, the celebration and everything like that. And that season ends with Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols taking their final at bats, both of them getting singles, no one else helping, no other contribution. Just this fitting kind of, you know, fizzle of an end when there wasn't production elsewhere other than those two. And then they say farewell. So I don't know if, like, I think it was just all of those things, and then we'd be remiss not to say that, like, look, the entertainment dollars shrank for people and costs went up. So I think that is also a factor. I mean, people were not traveling. The Cardinal success is drawing from beyond the boundaries of St. Louis. They just, they don't have the population within either the city or even the county to sustain the kind of attendance numbers that they had for so long. But they also didn't need it because they were such a regional draw. Their history is so huge. And so, you know, driven by the fact that people will drive from other states to attend Cardinal games because they listened, or now their grandparents listened to Cardinal games on the radio, Camel X had that strong of a reach. And so they are very much a regional team. And when you see a decline in spending on entertainment and a decline on travel, which we've seen. Right. And we'll see how we've seen some shift and improvement in that, obviously, economically. But the Cardinals are going to take, take a, a really strong hit with that. And then when you couple that with a team that wasn't playing well or wasn't playing exciting and also didn't have the past stars or the personality, all these things come together for a serious decline. And it caught no one by surprise. I mean, the Cardinals were prepared for it. They said as much and they did as much with more giveaways and more reduced tickets than they. They saw what was coming, and they realized that there, there just might be some Cardinal fatigue.

Well, let's talk about a guy who might inspire someone to get in the car and drive a little bit to go see him.

We've met one of my colleagues and their columns. No, I'm.

Of course.

All right, all right.

But another guy we've mentioned JJ Weatherhole by name. Tell Cardinals fans a couple of things here. What are they getting in him when he makes the majors? When might he make the majors and where will he play when he does?

I can answer the final two questions there rather easily. Opening day second baseman. That seems that that is where all of this is headed. It would be a surprise if he is not their opening day second basement. Something would have happened in the closing weeks of spring training or in a complete pivot in organizational philosophy that just would. Well, Heimblum would have to explain. It would be very different. But they have set him up, set J.J. weatherholt up to be their Opening Day second baseman. There's a lot of excitement about him and he's done nothing but go out in these early days of spring, earn it. He stands out. He's a. What are fans getting? He is a. I mean he's just a very polished, confident in control hitter with a surprising amount of pop from the left side. Defensively, he has strides to make to be more consistent, to turn his athleticism into success at the higher speeds of games that he's about to experience. But he'll get there because he's got, he just appears to have all the kind of right skill sets and athleticism to pull that off, especially at second base. He's a good fit there. Offensively, he's just, he's a really gifted player when it comes to being, you know, we would describe him as a complete hitter. I don't know like what we think of that now. Like he's going to, he's going to have a good ops. You know, he's going to be a player who's going to a well balanced ops. He's going to bring both on base percentage and doubles to it. And those doubles are some day in his career going to become home runs. He's a really strong offensive player.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Two of the other reasons to get excited about the future of the Cardinals

who were on last year's big league roster were Mason Winn, maybe the most valuable Cardinal, certainly most valuable position player who's still just 23.

Victor Scott II, who is 25. Those two guys were among the top 15, top 14, even most valuable defenders in baseball, according to Statcast.

However, they were both below average hitters,

which you can live with at premium positions, especially if, like Wynn, you're only a little bit below average, whereas Scott was significantly below. So gloves alone can propel those guys

to being valuable players, but if they could hit a bit, then they could be Great players. So what's the outlook for offensive improvement for that duo?

[Meg Riley]

Before answering that, can I ask you guys a quick question?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Sure.

[Meg Riley]

Okay. And it's right in line with that. I'd love your opinion on this. Okay, so you're totally right. Like, they give enough, you know, glove, Right. Where they can play, they can contribute. They get. They. They contribute in a lot of ways. And their defense is elite at positions where elite defense matter.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Base runner, too.

[Meg Riley]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Base stealer. Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

All right, so here's my question. Is that enough to contend, or is that just enough to be okay? Like, is. Can a. Can a team contend with. Just glove up the middle.

How good is J.J. weatherhole?

Right.

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

That's a lot to compensate.

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I mean, if you have boppers on the corners, it's runs or runs.

[Meg Riley]

Right.

[Ben Lindbergh]

So, no.

[Meg Riley]

And the Cardinals were, what, only 18% below average in right field and 22% below average in left field? So they're totally okay in that regard.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't. Despite those two highlights, I guess overall, they were a pretty good defensive team,

but it was mostly those two guys.

[Meg Riley]

It was mostly those two guys.

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

And run production wasn't there from the corners at all. Okay. So that. That's. That's sort of like where we're at with the Cardinals. And I think you asked a really good question about it, because the 2026 Cardinals, I almost have to, like, adjust my lens. That's the best way I can do it. You know, for so long, talking about the Cardinals, it's about through the lens of October. How did you get there? How good are you going to be when you get there? And now you're asking me about, like, well, do they need to have average offense in two positions that they needed to have above average offense to get to October? And so I almost have to, like, dial back this notion of what are the Cardinals. Right. In both of those cases, Wynn was dealing with a torn meniscus, playing through a real painful knee. He posted, as they say, and was really lacking on some of the explosive speed that he needs to be part of his offensive game. Right. And it's gotta be, you know, whether that's steals or whether that's infield hits or, you know, however he's going to accumulate 90ft at a time. He was slowed by pain in his knee, so there's more offense to be had there, and he knows it. Victor Scott has a lot of folks within the Cardinals excited about what he's about to do and where that stems from is this commitment. He's had these conversations that they've had and he brings it up and he calls it his brand of baseball, you know, and how he has to be exceptional at that. And I will give you an example of it. In the second inning of his first game of spring training, he dropped a sacrifice bunt. It's great fruit league play.00 game. And this is when hitters are like supposed to get their timing and they or track pitches. I can't tell you how many veterans I just watched take pitches. And here's Victor Scott going okay in a regular season game, I'm told I don't know what run is going to win this game. This might be that run. I can do this. And he did it and it was just, it was just a sacrifice bunt. But his speed, some of those are going to turn into, you know, hits, right? And we've seen him do that too. And so he is kind of cultivating this, this game where he's gonna. He's gonna really look at his. What he provides through on base percentage and this notion of productive outs and not making outs. Take walks, use his speed, find ways because a walk can be a double with his ability to steal second. And. And I think that they see a real. A real level that he can get to. And it goes back to like a question I asked three years ago. I guess it was. He was a non roster player. He very impressive, like just a lot of athleticism but it was the way he was playing the game was very impressive. And I was asking like what kind of on base percentage does he need to have just. Just to be an everyday player and is that the same on base percentage as all of a sudden he's like a star because of his speed and his willingness to steal and what he can do defensively, which is a style of play. That week brings us back to the fans. That might energize fans, that might invigorate fans. It might bring them back to the ballpark. It certainly could be a throwback for Cardinal fans to have that style of play. And so I think both of those players, they trend towards being above average. Not power above average, but above average and not making outs and then taking bases. Whether it be by base running in Mason's case or base stealing in Victor's case, where you're going to see above average offensive players, they're just going to get there in different ways.

You mentioned some of the deficits that they've experienced in the corners and maybe we can talk about two of the guys who have struggled here, slightly different trajectories because Nolan Gorman has had a good big league season, and then things have sort of trended downward since 2023. And I think Jordan Walker could, could best be described maybe as having had failure to launch, at least in the way that prospect evaluators, and certainly the Cardinals, I'm sure, were hoping. So talk to us about those two guys. Do you think that Gorman may be having more consistent time at third with some of the trades that they've made will be beneficial to him? What's the state of Jordan Walker's defense? Is there any hope there for improvement? Where do those guys sit and how likely do you think it is that each of them is a part of the next good Cardinals team?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Also a failure to launch in terms of getting the ball off the ground.

[Meg Riley]

There has been that, too. Yeah. It hasn't been an easy time for him.

I thought that was the double meaning.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Was that the joke? Did I do the Simpsons? That was the joke, yeah. I don't know.

[Meg Riley]

It can, it can be helpful to explain these things.

No, I appreciated it. All right, so, yeah, Nolan Gorman at third more time there should be better. He's moving around better. They wanted him to come in a little bit more, moving better with more mobility. He, he, he struggled with range last year. They're like, hey, get your body ready to play third base, not just your footwork and your arm. You know, get, get your body to be more mobile there. You know, don't lose strength because that's still what you are as a hitter. But think about, instead of in the middle of the season being asked or thrown into third base, prepare for it and really work on your mobility there. And he has, he's, he's improved there. I think, you know, Jordan Walker defensively made the strides last year that they would love for him to make offensively this year. You know, he improved really a good bit. Defensively, he did have a ways to go, but he got more aggressive, he got more assertive, he got more comfortable. He's come into spring this year stronger and also leaner. He's carrying less weight than he went out to, to play right field last year. And he, like, he's moving around better and they feel like that, that athleticism, that was a real hallmark of, you know, even him and his size, that, that's there and that will help. He has the arm for right field. He had this throw the other day that was very impressive, you know, and he's, he's always Kind of had that arm. It was about accessing it with his other players play. And he's. He's moving better. Is. I don't know if he's going to go out there and win a Gold Glove, but he's going to go out there and not be a liability. Where, you know, a few years ago, you look at the Cardinals and they had some. They had such rough and rugged defense in the outfield that, like, these misplays became doubles for other teams. And that just. That was such a burden on the pitching staff. It's been such an emphasis this spring that they feel they're going to struggle to score runs, but their pitching might be better than people anticipate. And so they're like, protect it. And they're like telling the position players this. You know, protect it. Like, do not make this more difficult on the quality of pitching that they're going to get. Don't. Don't make the innings longer on these guys. This is our strength. You know, be careful of the pitching. And I think. I think Jordan can handle that defensively out there in right field, given the kind of learning curve that he's been on. I didn't ever expect to say this, but now it's about that offense catching up. This is such a huge year for your final question for both of them, like, for both Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker. And I don't know if the team has put it this bluntly. Well, Han Bloom has been pretty clear about the significance of this year for Nolan Gorman and for the importance of this year for Jordan Walker. And, you know, again, like, it hasn't probably been directly said, but it probably could be that if they want to be a part of this core, it's now or not. Like, it's. It's either going to happen this year with the Cardinals or they're going to be looking for it to try to happen elsewhere. Player.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I guess you could even lump Lars Nutbar in with them. Yeah, he's a. He's a few years older, obviously, but a few years ago, it. It was looking like, oh, he's a good player already, and perhaps poised on the precipice of stardom. And people were predicting great things and then stagnation or perhaps backsliding since then, injuries, physical limitation.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, he had a really, you know, coming. I just actually was looking at the. This today, this, you know, last World Baseball Classic. He was the rising star, right? Just so prominent. And I mean, he. He got all of Japan doing his pepper mill celebration, which was incredible. You know, he comes out of that with advertising deals and sponsorships and stuff like that. And you know, this year he's watching from Florida as he rehabs from surgeries on both of his feet. And you know, he's just had such a difficult time and it seems odd to say this, and that's kind of why I was looking at it today was, you know, he had a career high for games played and all that stuff last year. And the baseball savant, the stat cast numbers really, and he's a stat cast darling, they just haven't quite manifested and it's. Sometimes it can be confusing. Like why hasn't that happened there for a while? It's because he just never really had a run of anything more than 50 games. And the one time he did, he was an all star. Like he, he was remarkable when he played 50 plus games in a row. And then since then, it's just he's had such a run of injuries that he had, he believes is related to this reason why he had surgery. You know, he had such pain and irritation and inflammation in his feet. It was really changing his running gait. It was changing how he played the position. He said there were times where I made it difficult to difficult to go up the stairs. And he was kind of dismissive of it as just part of what it means to play baseball every day. They hope this surgery and the advancements made in the surgery are going to help him, he says in his quality of life. He already feels it like in the weight room when he's working out or going upstairs again, going down them. He says he already feels the difference. He has yet to run at full speed. But that brings me to the thing that the Cardinals really believe he's yet to play at full speed and if so not and hasn't for years. So they think, and this is, I mean they got a lot of overtures, there was interest in him for trades, but they felt like, gosh, it would be difficult to watch him thrive and shine for another team after going through this with him. So why not see if it can happen happen for the Cardinals.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Cardinals have a lot of catchers on,

on the active roster, on the 40 man in the organization, just in general. And I always root for the offense first catcher. I think this is a product of

my upbringing, watching Jorge Posada being conditioned to think, wow, it's a huge advantage if you can have a big bat behind the plate. Of course, later I learned how much he was hurting them defensively and suddenly I was thinking, Jose Molina is more

valuable than Jorge Posada. Actually, the other Molina, supposedly the lesser Molina. So I don't know if this surplus of catchers is an attempt to recreate Yadi or Molina in the aggregate or what. But. But I root for Ivan Herrera just because I can construct an argument with some creative accounting that he has been the best hitting catcher in baseball over

the past couple years. Eat your heart out, Cal. Rally. If I set the minimum low enough

at 250 plate appearances or even 270,

[Meg Riley]

Meg, you're gonna let that stand? I mean, I can rally it.

Make your, make your case, I guess.

I don't know, man.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I think.

I don't know.

Over the past two seasons, minimum 250 plate appearances as a catcher. Yvonne Herrera has the highest WRC plus

while behind the plate 1:50 to Cal's 1:43. If you.

[Meg Riley]

I'm sorry, this is the difference we're talking, talking about. You had to drop the special that low and you're talking seven points of WRC plus.

[Ben Lindbergh]

That's great.

[Meg Riley]

I never did.

[Gary Phillips]

This is.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, I'm. The fun facts lie and I'm lying right now, but he has been obviously

a good hitter overall. And even if I, if I don't do the. As a catcher and I just do anyone who had that many plate appearances as a catcher, he was the second best hitting catcher in baseball. Person who's capable of catching, let's say, instead of catcher.

But, but he did have a surgery

this off season with an eye towards being able to throw, which is advantageous for someone who aspires to catch. So it seems like he wants to.

Will he be able to and will

he be allowed to?

[Meg Riley]

Allowed to? Yes. Will he be able to. To be determined. And this is a longer term question than just Jupiter Florida. This is a, you know, this is something that, you know, I talked to Haim Bloom and also Ali Marmol about specifically, you know, asking if they felt they needed to leave here with a decision on Herrera. And this speaks to sort of Meg's questions about their timetable to contend. Right. They have time on their side for the first time in a long time. They've, they've tried to bend it to their will like last year with the, their reset and Runway and all the other words they threw at us. Now they're in full blown rebuild and everybody is like, okay, well you know, you got to build towards something. But there is an understanding of time and if Herrera can be a reliable catcher for 60 games of the season, that changes the Cardinals right I mean, it just does because then the idea would be you have somewhere else for a big bat to be in the lineup. But getting there is going to take more time than they have in spring because he also has to get healthy, get his arm going. They've worked with him on his throwing mechanics because they deteriorated due to the pain in his elbow and what he had addressed with the surgery, the loose bodies that were removed and everything like that. He just over time had altered his mechanics and that had a lot to do with why throws were tailing on him, why he had such difficulty throwing people out. So he's working on that and they're going to give him time to do that. He also just candidly needs time going over and preparing for games as a catcher, you know, improving in that regard. And they, there's a way for him to do that while on the job because, you know, he'll be likely one of three catchers that they go north with at the this point, but definitely one of two where he'll get to learn from Pejo Pajes and kind of watch how he prepares for a game, watch how he has quickly won over and continues to win over the confidence of the pitching staff and what that means and what he does behind the plate defensively and, you know, just the different things that Herrera could adopt from that. This is also the year that Yadir Molina is going to be more of a presence with the team, so there's a lot of interest in how that plays out. You know, a guest coached this last year a couple times, but now he's got a role and part of that role has already been working closely with catchers and Herrera is part of that. So we'll see how that goes. It's interesting that like, like his offense is real. Like he's, he's, he's a good hitter. We, we talk, talk sort of around the BP and everything like that, other reporters and everything like that. Like, like how many home runs is he going to hit, right? Like, is he that kind of hitter or is he just kind of like a, like a good hitter? It's going to be around that 20 home runs just every year. And he might not even be the catcher with the most offensive upside that the Cardinals have. That's the 19 year old Ronnell Rodriguez who is already like, I kid you not, the major league staff is like, well, how do we put him in the lineup here at spring games?

Like he, he's barely 19. For our listeners context.

Yeah, he's barely 19. And when he was 18. Nolan Arnado, not Nolan Arnotto, wasn't 18, but Renell Rodriguez was 18. And Nolan Arnotto came back from a rehab assignment. He. And he was like telling anybody, anybody, he's like, oh, I saw this kid, he can hit. You want to know who the best hitter is? It's this kid, first Grapefruit League at bat. He gets a start in one of the first games. I think it's the second game, that second game I talked about where actually you know what? It's exactly the situation that I talked about with Victor Scott. Ronnell Rodriguez first at bat. He rips like a 108 double down the line. Victor Scott comes up and goes, well, I'll put him at third bunt. And everyone's talking about the 108 and double from this 19 year old kid, but Victor Scott's playing the game. So it was quite a moment in Cardinal history that we can look back on clearly if it all works out.

There you go. I mean, you kind of anticipated my next question because Rodriguez is hardly their only sort of catching depth in the, in the high minors. They have Jimmy Crooks down there, Leonardo Bernal. I'm curious, sort of even beyond the catching position, who are the guys who are sort of floating around the high Miners, who you would answer anticipate Cardinals fans seeing at some point this summer, Whether it's because they forced the issue down there or because injury or underperformance at the big league level sort of forces the hand of the organization.

That's a good question. When you add those last little bits. I think Joshua Baez is on the way. I don't have like an eta, but his, he, he made, he took a leap this past year and he took a leap in a way that like almost, if you could put a recipe for how, how a position player, how a young prospect is going to make that jump from. All right, what's next? Is he struggling? Is he stalled all that stuff to. Oh, you might be something. It's him. I mean he showed speed, he showed better command of the strike zone and the power manifested. He had this, he had this plate appearance. Look, it's whatever seventh inning of a Grapefruit League game. It's not a sellout, sold out crowd. It's Marlins versus Cardinals. So I mean, we can forgive folks for not having a whole lot of enthusiasm at this moment in early March for this game. And yet the crowd was captivated by Baez's plate appearance the other day as he challenged back to back pitches and like on the abs, it was this moment of like, oh well this is how this abs is going to work. And I asked Alain Marmont afterwards, like I get it like competitively and even like in games how abs is going to change things. I said, but could abs be like a learning tool as well for like, can that be confirmation for him that he's in command of the strike zone? And Marmal said, this is why you make a huge deal about what he did. Like to him as a coach, as a manager, you go up to him and say like, this is what, this is what you did. You earned that walk. A walk of all things had everybody just like riveted. But because of what he's trying to do and the improvement that he's made as a prospect, you know, that walk shows command of a strike zone that is going to pay off in power because of the swing decisions he's going to make. And I think he's on the way. The prospect who's probably going to arrive and have like a really interesting impact is Louis Gastelum, right handed reliever who has just this sinister changeup that people can't figure out. You know, he may not get the run to make the opening day roster. It doesn't look like he's going to. He's going off to team Mexico for the WBC and he hasn't yet been in aaa, but I don't expect him to be there for very long. The major league staff and everybody around major league hitters, everybody is really, they think this pitch plays at the highest level, so why wait for it? I think he'll have an impact. And then like Bryson Motts, lefty, their pitcher of the year this past year in the organization, he's going to present them a dilemma at some point in time whether or not he's a lefty reliever for them now. And this isn't a March thing, this might be a May or June thing. Or is he a starter long term? And the Cardinals of our forefathers, meaning 18 months ago, would have made the decision on the now saying, trying to contend now, this guy can get lefties out now let's see what he does against Soto and Ohtani and bring them up. But the Cardinals are the present, are more future focused and may see if they can get that into a starter who can contribute tribute.

[Ben Lindbergh]

I think we can dispense with the pitchers much more quickly than we did with the position players because I have

a lot fewer questions about them. I guess the whole pitching staff is sort of a question mark.

And they project to produce the third fewest war better than only the Rockies and the Nationals, which is never really where you want to be.

It's sort of a. A nondescript. It's not far from where they were either.

[Meg Riley]

I'm trying to. No, no, no. I'm laughing because I'm trying to think of, like, what sentence would you want to be near the Nationals and the Rockies? Like, what would be like with, like, the craft beer scene? You're ranked by the Nationals.

I was going to, like.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Right.

[Meg Riley]

I was going to lean facilities, at least in the Rockies case.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, yeah.

But it's. It's a fairly nondescript staff from afar, I guess if you get far enough

away from anything, it's sort of nondescript. But the Cardinals in particular, and last season, they. Well, they were grouped right with those Rockies and the Nationals again. And this is not a place where you want to be with them, either. The lowest strikeout rates in baseball and. And this is where the Cardinals have lived lately. But it seems like this is not where Heim Plume wants them to continue to live.

So we started this by talking about how this whole off season was about

collecting, pitching, and the future.

So now it feels like kind of a holding pattern for pitching. So I guess my question is, who

on this staff right now might be part of that pitching picture beyond this year? And what's the timeline for raising that strikeout rate?

[Meg Riley]

The timeline for raising that strikeout rate is March 26th. Is that right? Yeah. This has been something that Marmol, his pitching coach, Dusty Blake, they've all been pushing and talking and seeking and making some decisions, roster decisions, usage decisions, all that stuff. They've really made it a priority when possible. They talk to the media and they talk to the pitchers. All over the last two years, you know, I watched one member of the Cardinals coaching staff sit down and, like, try to go through the traits of one of the pitchers pitches, like his arsenal. Right, right. And how do you adjust it just enough to get more strikeouts? And they were going through the spin. They were looking at all the data they had and lining it up with other pitches that do get strikeouts. And they're like, what can this guy do? Because right now he's just getting contact, which was the name of the game for the Cardinals for so long, for generation, really. And they're like, can we just dial this just differently and show this guy how to do it to get more swings and misses? They've made decisions with the bullpen based on Swings and misses. They've made decisions with the draft and late recent acquisitions with swings and misses. This is something that you said. What's the timeline for a higher strike route? I mean like they want it to be yesterday. Like I'm not even kidding and like Richard Fitz goes out there and he was very impressive in his Cardinals debut against the Mets. And you look at Matthew Libertor, he's made some adjustments, added a tick of velocity that if he can sustain it's really going to help him miss bats. They want to bring more horsepower, more strikeouts and they want to do so immediately. That isn't going to mean that like all of a sudden Michael McGreevey is a different pitcher. He's still going to be a guy who goes out there and throws sinkers and gets ground balls. But it does mean that Andre Polante is trying to, to be right because he has to miss bats and he's integrated and he's worked on this changeup that can do that. But it's also why they're looking at like Kyle Leahy as a starter because they think what he does with seven different pitches is going to play better, is they're going to be able to amplify him as a, as a starter in ways that they only first got a feel for as a reliever. And so this is like this is the clear and present area where if the Cardinals want to advance and advance quickly, they feel they can do that with the pitching just as you outlined. They just want to do this. They think that that's the first wave that they can get done and get done quickly. As far as this improvements go, the

most important question is which side will d' Angelo Sanja try to get strikeouts from? I'm actually asking that question. What have they laid out is their plan for him?

What so what you have watched him as a Mariners prospect. What, what's, what would you do? What's your opinion? What's your view of it?

I think that there's the what is likely to have the biggest beneficial impact for the team answer, which is that he should be a right handed starter. And then there's the most fun version which is that he's a right handed starter and, and then you do weird stuff with him out of the bullpen on what would be his throw day. But I imagine that they will probably just want him to throw righty right.

So in major league camp they had him throw games and live BP right handed. They did not stop him from throwing left hand. He did do that from the Bullpen or in bullpen sessions and everything like that. I think, you know, as you, as we talk, the minor league staff is putting together a more like, here's your season plan.

Yeah.

On how this looks at. Because he was one of the early players reassigned. And it was in part because, all right, he got big league camp, he got this exposure. This is what they did in big league camp. Let's talk about like a more, a more bigger plan because one of the things that the Cardinal, Cardinals don't, they want to be aware of, and they brought this up multiple times, is what does it mean to him to be a switch pitcher and as part of his identity. But also, and I had one of the coaches tell me this, but also his preparation and how he thinks about getting ready and how he stays healthy and how he's learning to pitch from both sides. Like if you just stop one of those, then you'll never know what it becomes. But also what do you do to the other side by stopping it? Because he's enjoyed this. This is a skill. And so they, they do want to take that into account. They don't want to end the left side because they feel the, the upside may be higher and closer. You know, as a right hand pitcher, one of the coaches here in development told me me, why not ask the question about can you get the left side equal to right to right? What are you missing on the left side to bring that up? And you know, that's at least a conversation that they want to have, which I think is interesting because again, it goes back to they got time and they do want to value the fact that he's interested in it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, we have come to our closing

question, which is what would constitute success for the Cardinals this season?

And we're into the part of the previews where the answers are typically not make the playoffs, win a playoff round, unless you're really an optimist. And that usually would have been the

answer for the Cardinals, but now what

exactly is the hope in terms of

maybe getting people to come back to the field and how they perform on

the field and just the long term

overhaul of the whole organization?

[Meg Riley]

Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, they used to be so easy, you know, National League pennant, man, that's the sign of success. Everything else is measured by that. You know, another hall of Famer on the field, a continuous run of, of that. So many things are different now with the Cardinals, it's difficult to know. The question you asked me is kind of the one that I'm eager to ask them as opening day approaches. And I will. It's like, how do you measure what does success look like? And don't give me the, you know, win the division stuff, right? Because clearly you're looking at a longer term conversation. You know, I think for the Cardinals, success has to exist on two tracks for them. They need to reinvigorate their fan base. They have to find some way to excite the fan base again. Is that a youth movement? Is that entertaining, exciting players? Is that rotation that has four guys coming out throwing 98 or I don't know. But something has to galvanize the fan base and maybe, maybe it's time for a little bit of a paradigm shift where it is actually an underdog team galvanizes this fan base used to winning. I think that would be a fascinating outcome and that would be a success if they can connect with their fans on that on the field. They have to leave this season with what they didn't have this past season. And you know, they set out in 2025 to say, we want to identify the players, the young players that can be counted on to be part of the next contender. And the lack of an answer was an answer, right? Like if, if you go out and say, we need to find these guys and at the end of the year you haven't, that is an answer. But they're running it back in some ways and they're going to widen the amount of opportunity and they've shed the pressure of expectations. They've just dropped it. They're like, hey guys, let's see how you do without the heaviness of the laundry. These are not your Matt Holiday, Chris Carpenter, Albert Pujols, Yaddy Molina, Cardinals anymore. These are your Mason Wynn, J.J. weatherholt, Liam Doyle, Cardinals. Who are you going to be? And so they've shed these expectations. They've said, it's yours, go do it. If they end this season wondering who their next core is, they have their answer. It's not here. And so success has to be that they've found it. Does that make sense?

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. And it's, it's interesting to me.

We, we have really barely mentioned Ali Marmal during this conversation. He did just sign a two year extension. Not super long term. And teams typically don't love to go into a season with a lame duck manager. Managers don't either. But not that long ago we would

talk about Marmal and you would hear

people talk about Marmell, about, well, Yadi or Molina's waiting in the wings and, oh, he's having clubhouse issues and PR wise things aren't going great.

And I don't know if it's just,

well, maybe you, you stick with a guy until you think you're ready to contend again. But it's not as if Yachty's managerial aspirations or coaching aspirations have changed. He's managing in the WBC right now. You mentioned he's going to be a presence around the team. But is it no longer the case that Molina is seen as someone who might take over that role or that Marmol has had issues in the clubhouse?

[Meg Riley]

Whoa, those are different questions. All right. Molina has not changed his interest in being a manager at some point. He has expressed previously an interest in managing. He has adjusted that to an interest in coaching. Marmol has consistently invited Mom, Mom, Momelina to be part of his coaching staff. This is something that Marmol first did when. I don't know if he first did, but he certainly formally did when Yadir came back for Adam Wainwright's, you know, celebration. Right. Molina came in, Marmol invited him into his office and talked to him then about joining the coaching staff. Like, can you be here for. We want you a part of this on the Daily. So Yadir has been more open to that. He wants to see his son. He, he tells us he wants to see his son through his senior year of high school and into the draft. That's this coming year or that's happening right now. He's draft eligible this summer and then he wants to look at what the options are. But he's not just like focused on, on managing. He said he's open to coaching too, and that in some ways that might actually be a better entry point for him. You know, demands and the times and all that stuff is something he's going to have to adjust to. Okay, so to the other part of. Is he seen as the manager in waiting, I guess is the way you kind of phrase that. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Or there was a time when there

were various flare ups, Tyler o' Neill or whatever it was, where it, it seemed like things weren't going great from a communication standpoint, which only inflamed Wilson Contreras. Right. Which was I guess, related to Molina in another way just because he wasn't Molina. Yeah.

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

So I think it. So the fan base clearly adores Molina for every reason that is obvious and for an additional reason because they've not been good since he left and what he meant to this Organization kind of comes. It's like, you know, like, absence brings clarity to what presence once was. Does that make sense? Like, that's what's happened here is everybody kind of knew how good Yadir Molina was at his role and for the Cardinals and everything while he was playing for them. But his absence has really brought into perspective how much he made happen and how good he was at influencing games, at just guiding on the field. Okay. So the fan base has dubbed him the manager in a way that ownership and the front office never had. And they've talked to him about being part of it. They want him around. They see that. But I think it's important that they've not said they've not looked at him that way. And we'll see how high. And Bloom, he's new. Maybe he has some different views on this, but they've all been really, especially ownership, resolutely, Mar Moll is the right guy for this, and Bloom had his. I mean, I think it's really interesting that, you know, Bloom had the right to move on. He did in a lot of ways. He could bring in his own people, he could bring in his own manager, or he could wait a year and bring in his own manager. He's in charge, and he has that authority. Ownership said, pull us out of this. Do what you need to do. And he decided that the guy he wanted to work with through this was Marmol. And you guys asked about that year, where. The gap year, I guess we could call it for him, where he was in charge of the minor league. He worked a lot with Marmol in helping to create that interaction that I talked about between the majors and minors. Right. Player development and big leagues, make sure that player development doesn't stop at the big league door. All that stuff. They really work close together, and they forged a relationship, and they have a lot of shared views about how this could go, and they both want to do that together. And I think that decision with ownership's backing reveals a lot about the view of their manager at this time and the view of this team and who it needs. And that brings us around to, like you mentioned, the Tyler o', Neill, the Wilson Contreras. The Wilson Contreras thing, that was a mess. They've talked about it. The messaging was off. The number of voices that were involved were off. It just wasn't. It lacked coordination. And the worst part about it is the guy who was trying to give them the most took the brunt of it. What Wilson Contreras, quick side Point. We, the baseball writers, gave him their. Every year we have a dinner in St. Louis, raise money for scholarships and an internship that we pay for and everything. And we give out awards. And if Paul Goldschmidt wins the MVP award, we get to give him the MVP award. But we also give out a Man of the Year Award. St. Louis baseball man of the Year award that year. Lousy year for the Cardinals. I mean, we could have given the Baseball man of the Year award to Max Scherzer because he's a local kid, and everyone would have gone, oh, yeah, cool. Or to Daryl Strawberry because he lives nearby, and people would be like, yeah, yeah, totally. We gave it to Wilson Contreras because of what he went through and how committed he remained, despite being buffeted by weird messaging, by criticism, by all that stuff. It was very impressive what he steered himself through and then still performed that season. I don't know how much that had to do with the manager piloting them out of that as much as piloting into that. Those are different things. The messaging was off. He could have been involved in that. He's talking, talked about it, that he should have been a little bit different at the forefront, but he certainly was important to bringing them out of it. The Tyler o' Neill thing, that was more of a manager stepping in to do what peers would not. And that wasn't so much a clubhouse issue with the manager. It was what the clubhouse wasn't willing to do for one of their own. And then the manager stepped in because it was a very. Those nuances are kind of missed in the headlines, and I don't blame anyone, but it's kind of things that we covered at ground level as it unfolded. But then it hits the big exclamation point and it goes out on social media and you never quite. The whole story never quite catches up to what was more sensational. It's the same kind of thing with, like, you know, the poll of players and Oliver Marmont, one of the players, was talking about, like, just picking the manager that was, like, had the team that was performing less than expectations. Well, no kidding. That's the Cardinals. Like, for three years, that's been the Cardinals. But look at the roster they had. I mean, how much did you expect? I mean, in a way, they were expected to live up to the brand without the brand name roster. When they were good on offense, they were thin on pitching. When they kind of beefed up the pitch to at least average, they were thin on offense. And it just never coincided. And the roster was Never really strong, and the minor league was not really ready to replenish it. And is that the manager or is the manager making the most of it? I think, you know that I don't have an answer for that. But I think that, like, these are the questions that ownership at least arrived at a decision saying, with what he was given, this is the guy who should get a chance to lead this. In the same way that they look at Mason win and go, this is the guy who should get a chance to define this. In the same way they go to JJ Wellerholt and go, this is a guy who deserves the playing time to show that he's going to be the next star, part of the next core. And I think they see their manager in that same way.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, nuanced perspectives from people on the scene. That's why we do these previews. And we couldn't have done it much

better than we did with Derek Gould. If anyone had the Cardinals in the pool of probably longest team preview in the series, congrats.

It just paid off. I think we probably just talked more about the Cardinals than we had in the previous calendar year, since last year's preview. But you know what? They're a more interesting team in transition,

I think, than they were when they were on the verge of some sort of transition.

[Meg Riley]

I mean, they sure hope so, man. Well, that interests. They want to move tickets, so, yeah, they need it.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah. Well, we will see and we will find out in part by following Derek Gould's coverage for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. You can also hear him on the

best podcast in baseball, and he is one of the best beat writers in baseball. And it's great to get your insight, given that you've been on this beat for 20 plus years. So you know of what you speak

and, and you're still at the.

The top of your game. So thank you very much, Derek.

Appreciate it.

[Meg Riley]

Thank you for those kind words. Yeah, thanks. Is. That's. That's not a way of saying that I'm old, right? It's. I'm in my prime time. Correct.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yes.

[Meg Riley]

I can't. I can't believe that Molina's kid is

[Ben Lindbergh]

draft eligible this year.

[Meg Riley]

That's the surest reminder.

My first week on the beat was his first week in the majors, I believe. Oh, nice.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah.

[Meg Riley]

How about that?

[Gary Phillips]

Yeah.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Well, I guess we'll find out whether

game calling and working with pitchers is hereditary or.

[Meg Riley]

I don't know, three brothers say it is.

[Ben Lindbergh]

Yeah, there's.

That there's good bloodlines here. Right.

[Meg Riley]

Thank you Derek. Thank you guys for having me. This has been a pleasure. Really enjoy talking to you.

[Ben Lindbergh]

We started this episode by bantering about Drix and Profar's PED suspension and how we haven't seen a lot of big

leaguers get popped for peds lately.

I guess no one told NL east outfielders because Johan Rojas of the Phillies, a first time offender, also reportedly tested positive. After we spoke earlier, it was reported that Profar tested positive for exogenous testosterone.

But hey, who isn't taking testosterone in RFK juniors? America, right? Can't do that if you're subject to a testing regimen though. I meant to mention earlier that I

had come across the statement that Profar put out last time he tested positive

and also the Braves statement which said that the team was surprised and extremely disappointed, but they said they fully support the program and are hopeful Jerkson will

learn from this experience and to invoke Arrested Development.

Again, this is where the narrator would come in and say he did not, though I guess he did learn to take a different supplement.

Or at least he tested positive last time, I think for a masking agent for an anabolic steroid.

So hey, maybe he switched up his stack. At least as Sam punned on Blue

sky performance enhancing drugs.

His suspension starts on Friday. He can still appeal it, but as

Passen pointed out, PD suspension hasn't been overturned via grievance in more than a decade. And as for Rojas, he is appealing his suspension as well. More fodder for our Phillies preview which will be next week.

Next time we will talk Mariners and Marlins.

Mariners, Marlins maddlestar Galactica.

You can support effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com effectivelywild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly

amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get

yourself access to some perks as have the following five listeners. Sean Malloy, Luke Scott Kogan, David Altman and Judith Boyce.

Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only only

monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized

email answers, personalized messages, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad free fangraphs memberships and so much more.

Check out all the [e-mail] effectivelywild.

If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site.

If not, you can contact us via

email, send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcastangraphts.com you can rate, review, and subscribe. Subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook [e-mail] group effectivelywild. You can find the effectively wild subreddit at r effectivelywild. You can check the show notes in the podcast, posted fan graphs, or the

episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today.

Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week.

Talk to you this then.

[Gary Phillips]

War.

[Meg Riley]

You might hear something you never heard.