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Ivan Herrera is only 25 years old, so very likely to just be entering his prime as a hitter. And he’s already very, very good.
Sometimes when a team is mediocre for several years in a row, as the Cardinals have obviously been, their best players get undervalued even by their own fan base. Here’s how well Herrera has hit over the past three seasons, compared to some well-known others.
OPS+ from 2023-2025
Mookie Betts 136
Kyle Schwarber 135
Cal Raleigh 133
Ivan Herrera 133
Rafael Devers 132
Jose Ramirez 132
Francisco Lindor 129
Pete Alonso 128Overall, Herrera ranks 19th in all of MLB over the 3-year span (min. 750 PA’s). For me, he’s a guy you offer a reasonable contract extension to, rather than someone you deal away — even if he’s only a DH and nothing but a DH. Because his major and minor league track records strongly imply that he’s gonna keep right on hitting like this for at least another half decade.
With his nagging leg injuries and sometimes ridiculous #2 lineup slot (he’s posted a sub-.800 OPS batting second in his career, and .900 hitting 5th/6th) Ivan The Terrific hasn’t gotten the RBI opportunities that his talent warrants. But he’s an outstanding hitter who just needs the chance to show it better. I really hope they keep him around.
“Heck, if we could get a pretty good outfielder who would be around for 4 or 5 years for Rainiel, the odds are good we would come out ahead.”
If by “pretty good outfielder,” you mean a 2-3 WAR guy, then no, I wouldn’t make that deal. Spending substantial money or prospect capital on a 2-3 WAR outfielder is exactly what the Birds did when they went after Fowler and Ozuna — the double debacle that veered the club toward the general mediocrity since 2015.
If on the other hand it’s a 3-4 WAR outfielder, then I almost certainly would do the deal. (But only if I was 99% sure that Rai-Rod couldn’t be successfully converted to the hot corner.)
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On an unrelated note, Chase Heath homered today. This means that over his most recent 14 games for Palm Beach, stretching back to last year, he’s hitting .370/.482/.696 with 5 homers in 46 AB’s and a stellar 9/8 BB/K ratio.
“Gurevitch started off slow but he has been playing much better lately.”
Definitely been playing better. It’s probably worth mentioning that one big reason might be the ballpark.
Gurevitch has played 30 pro ballgames, and 23 of them have been at the notorious Roger Dean Stadium. At Roger Dean, he’s been a disaster — and fanned 36 times against just 13 walks, to boot.
But in the seven games NOT at the hitter’s graveyard of R.D.S., Jack is batting .440/.563/.680 with 7 walks and 5 strikeouts. I don’t like drafting first basemen earlier than the 6th or 7th round of the draft, because they have to pretty much kill the ball to be above average regulars. (I’m still ticked off about the Cards drafting the 1st sacker from Tulane in the 2nd round when Pedroia and Pence were both available. Yeah, I know how to hold a grudge.) But I will say that Gurevitch might be much better than his Palm Beach numbers imply on the surface.
Thanks for all of the interesting responses, guys.
“P.S. Other teams might prefer Rainiel Rodriguez, who is now a consensus top 100 prospect in baseball.”
Calling Rodriguez a consensus top 100 prospect is like calling Meryl Streep a good actress. Factually true, but one heckuvan understatement.
Here’s his ranks, worst to best:
Baseball America 35th
MLB Pipeline 34th
Keith Law 29th
ZiPS computer model 26th
Fangraphs 25th
ESPN 19th
Baseball Prospectus 16th
OOPSY projection system 3rdLooks like consensus top 30. And the mean of the above rankings is 24th. Not too shabby.
Anyway, since there’s been so much speculation on this thread about the future of the catcher position in St. Louis, here’s my platonic ideal moving forward — assuming all of these guys keep performing well, and stay generally healthy. (That’ll never happen, of course. This is just the dream version.)
Herrera becomes full-time designated hitter (and emergency backup backstop) and signs an extension through age 31 or 32. Crooks and Bernal become a catching tandem long term, dividing plate appearances fairly equally. Rai-Rod switches to the hot corner, assuming he has average aptitude there. And the strapping Juan Rujano moves to the outfield — LF if he runs okay, RF if he doesn’t.
“Isn’t there a DSL catching prospect that put up very good numbers?”
You’re thinking of Juan Rujano, 27, who just turned 18 in December. Big backstop (6′ 3″ and 190) who posted a solid 120 OPS+ or so in the DSL last year. Bad news, he fanned 23% of the time, which is awfully high for that level of competition.
Good news, he seemed to be much, much better by the end of their brief season.
Started 3-29 with just 3 walks and 9 whiffs. Thereafter, he mashed .333/.466/.516 with an acceptable 16/25 BB/K. Strong arm and big exit velocities for a teenager.You certainly may get your wish, Albert.
Crooks & Bernal are definitely producing right now in Triple-A, and I for one do not consider them blocked at all by Pages or Pozo. (Herrera is a whole other matter. I wanted the Panamanian behind the plate so badly, for some time. But with Ivan’s three leg injuries in the past 12 months, caution suggests that idea should be completely abandoned, to keep the 25-year-old in the lineup every day.)
As for our minor leaguers, the projection systems admire Jimmy and Leo quite a lot. Specifically, the ZiPS forecast has Bernal as the #6 catching prospect in the sport, and Crooks at #9. (ZiPS has seven catchers among their top 40 overall prospects, by the way.) Clay Davenport’s computer modeling has an almost identical ranking, with Bernal the #5 backstop and Crooks #9. Excellent, right? Your potential MLB catching tandem from 2027-2031 or longer, right?
Well, the thing of it is, there’s this teenager named Rainiel Rodriguez. ZiPS lists Rai-Rod as the #3 catching prospect, behind only Carter Jensen and Alfredo Duno. Clay Davenport likes him even more. Davenport rates Rodriguez as the #1, with Duno second and Jensen actually one slot below our own Leonardo Bernal. And if you don’t go in for computer modeling, the guys at MLB Pipeline put Rainiel Rodriguez at #2 among all catchers.
If they all show average, boring, typical progress (and decent health), it should be an embarrassment of backstop riches for the organization over the next decade or so. I’m not talking Yogi Berra & Elston Howard, mind you. Just some good-to-very good options at catcher, year after year.
“Should Cards do the same with either JJ or Walker? Thoughts?”
Do the same with JJ Walker? Dy-no-mite! Really, though, not if the contract pays 80-90 cents on the stardom dollar.
These types of massive deals are only mutually beneficial when each side assumes a reasonable amount of risk. The recent signings I’ve seen were nearly all stupid from the club standpoint. The team in each case (other than the Cooper Pratt deal) was taking on darn near all of the risk.
Why do I care how much the uberwealthy Cardinal owners shell out? Because they work within a budget (a morbidly greedy budget at this point) and if they overpay for someone, it obviously limits their ability to invest elsewhere. Foolishly throw away 12 million bucks on Dustin May, and that’s money that can’t be used to improve the team in some other way. Thanks, Chaim!
“Crooks with another HR and 3 RBI hitting .375, Blaze Jordan with 2 more hits up to .467, Bryan Torres hitting .400 so far, Prieto also off to a good start at .452. Also, Bernal hitting .310.
Good start from Dobbins 5 1/3, 1 earned, 5 hits and 7 K’s.”
Thanks for the updates, Ghost. (Dobbins’ “earned” run only came about as an eventual byproduct of a strikeout/wild pitch. If not for the wild pitch, a run never scores against him — so it’s certainly not earned, in spirit.)
Yhoiker Fajardo with a nice debut for Peoria. Across 4.2 innings and 71 pitches, he permitted 5 hits, 1 run, no walks, and fanned 4. No homers, of course. Hasn’t allowed a homer to the last 330 batters, something like that. Our pitching prospect with the best chance to eventually be a #1/2 starter, in my estimation. Him or Jurry.
“Ollie has Romero and O’Brien plus an ok Graceffo. Everyone else has been bad….Dump Bruihl for Naughton possibly.”
You said a mouthful, there, JNevel.
Justin Bruihl as an MLB reliever: 4.87 ERA in 97 games
Packy Naughton as MLB reliever: 2.55 ERA across 35 innings
Packy Naughton as MLB starter: 8.51 ERA in 8 startsKyle Leahy as an MLB reliever last year: 3.18 ERA over 85 innings
Step one, swap Bruihl for Naughton. Step two, return Leahy to the bullpen where he flourished last year, and call up one of the boringly mediocre #4/5 starter Red Sox acquisitions to take his place in the rotation. Send Svanson down and release Stanek, since he should’ve never been acquired in the first place (last good season, 2022).
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This is all pretty straightforward, and it takes a comedy combo like Marmol & Bloom to foul it up as profoundly as they have. Not that Svanson specifically was a foul-up, of course. He obviously was excellent last year and thus earned his spot in the pen, to start the season.
“I’m not in favor of Cijntje continuing to throw both right- and left-handed. Maybe at the lower levels it might be okay to try it, but not when you get close to the big leagues.”
Agreed, 27, absolutely.
Professionally, JC has been atrocious throwing southpaw style, walking 20 of 63 batters and whiffing only nine. All told, the OPS is over 1.100 against him as a lefty, so (small sample size or not) there’s zero indication that switch-pitching is a valid option going forward. In short, he’s a “switch-pitcher” like Larry Walker was a “switch-hitter.”Which brings me to the good part: Jurrangelo was excellent against lefty batters the other night when throwing right-handed. They were just 1-for-11 (groundball single), no walks, three strikeouts swinging, and only one flyball out. Strikeouts, grounders, no walks: sounds good to me!
Hopefully this micro-sample reflects real improvement, as JC when throwing righty last season permitted lefty bats to slug an unacceptable .473 in 156 PA’s. If the young man can stay healthy and just be mediocre versus lefty hitters, he’ll be at least a #3 starter, since in righty/righty matchups he’s allowed a meager sub-.500 OPS as a pro.
“Walker gave his team a chance in this one but a middle RP’er was nowhere to be found.”
I know where he is, a real good one. In the rotation, pitching tomorrow.
Per Fangraphs, Paul DeJong generated a bit over $50MM in value for the Birds from 2018-2023, and was paid $22.5MM by the DeWitts. So as profoundly disappointing as his career turned out, it’s still not a hand-wringing type of contract that the Cardinals signed him to.
Anyway, as everyone here probably knows, Paulie never had anything remotely resembling the strikezone command that Wetherholt has exhibited. DeJong in AA had a poor 44/156 BB/K ratio. In AAA, it was barely better, at 36/117. (As a cautionary tale, DeJong would be a pretty good fit for Gorman or Walker, however.)
Wetherholt’s plate discipline meanwhile has been strong all along. An 82/82 BB/K in college, and 88/88 in the minors. Nice consistency, huh?
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Personally, I’d prefer to see someone like Winn or Herrera get a lengthy contract before JJ. Masyn & Ivan are just 24 and 25, respectively, and have in my opinion already established themselves as above average big leaguers. I think that JJ is going to be real good. Those guys ARE real good.
Let’s think about this in concrete terms for a minute.
Suppose Wetherholt is a star, every year, beginning now. I’m not talking about a Pujolsian superstar, mind you. Just a perennial 4-WAR guy, and always healthy. Call him a Hall-Of-Very-Good kinda guy. How much dough would he get if the Birds went year-to-year?
For the first three years he’d make just a couple million bucks in total, of course, since the MLB compensation system is slanted against pre-arbitration talent. Then for his first year in arbitration, he’d get roughly 40% of his free agent market value — and in his 2nd arby season, 60%, and for his third and final arbitration season, approximately 80% of full value. This 40-60-80 estimate of arbitration payouts is pretty well time-tested, I believe.
Now, I’d say a 4-WAR guy would be worth perhaps $25MM on the open market. But let’s be generous (and allow something for inflation) and go with $30MM.
So based on this formula, JJ would receive 40% of $30MM in his first arby season ($12MM), then $18MM, then $24MM. In other words, if he’s a star — beginning right now, which is expecting a heckuvalot for any rookie — every season and never gets hurt, he’ll make 12 + 18 + 24 + a couple million pre-arb, for a grand total of just under 60 million for his 6 pre-free agency seasons. I would say that this extreme immediate production combined with six years of extreme good health, is a *highly* unlikely outcome. Probably 95th-99th percentile.
So. So if I’m offering Wetherholt a long-term contract, it’d be something like six years for $40MM guaranteed, with 2 or 3 club options after that, at $20MM each.
“Well the attendance problem is on the owner in my opinion.”
Agreed, absolutely. The fans will support the club in *almost* any circumstance. For instance, even though the Birds finished dead last in 2023, and the owners retained the failed manager, the fans still bought tickets for 2024. Very nearly 3,000,000 tickets, in fact.
But now the owners are not even trying to win. Not now, not next year, and not the year after that. (Unless they replace Marmol before the end of his contract, of course.) Ownership has betrayed a public trust with their fans, gutting not just player payroll, but player talent also. The team motto should be “Choose to lose!”
Apparently all those online Cardinal fans at VEB (and a handful here) who’ve been demanding a “rebuild” since about 2017, well, those folks won’t actually support the rebuild by going out and buying tickets. And maybe they shouldn’t. I know the DeWitts will never get another dollar from me, full stop.
What a debut for McGreevy!
As for the StL manager….well, here’s a side-by-side comparison:
JoJo Romero 2025 2.07 ERA in 61 innings. Stanek 5.30 in 56 innings.
In 2024 it was Romero 3.36 across 59 IP versus Stanek 4.88 in 55 innings.The last time the 34-year-old Stanek was good enough to be a major league closer was four years ago. Which, coincidentally is the last time Romero was NOT good enough for that particular responsibility. The manager was apparently bewitched by Stanek’s five good innings in Spring Training.
“Forced to choose, the DeWitts would rather not lose money on a team that does not appear to be capable of winning. What they are most trying to do is reload from within to become competitive again. So they are winning fewer games now and losing less money now while reinvesting to try to win more later.” (Emphases mine)
Per CNBC, the Cards in 2024 had revenues of $398MM, which ranked 12th in the sport. Then in 2025, the team CB Tax 40-man player payroll was just under $154MM. Seems like an awful lot of potential profit space, between revenues and player payroll, doesn’t it?
In 2025, the Birds made another $376MM in revenue. And we all know what’s happened to player payroll this offseason. So it’s very, very hard to imagine that the Cardinal owners have lost any money, at any point. There is a profound philosophical difference between owners trying to avoid *losing* money, and owners trying to maximize already robust profits. I say the above figures assert persuasively that the DeWitts are currently doing the latter — but I’m open to arguments to the contrary.
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“I don’t doubt Bill ‘wants to win’, but it will be on his terms before he ‘re-invests’ in the player budget.”
“I think they take ’26 and ’27 to figure out all the internal options they have + really get the farm producing again and then in ’28 they will look at what they have and will be willing to add to their core roster via trades / free agents to put a team on the field that has an actual shot to get to the WS.”
These statements touch upon the critical question: When if ever will player payroll become commensurate with revenues again under this ownership group? I don’t have a Post-Dispatch subscription so I may have missed it, but has Chaim Bloom or a DeWitt or anyone else at any point given so much as a strong hint, re a gameplan/timeline/payroll forecast going forward?
Refresher: From 1996 to 2022, the Cards’ revenues were typically around 10th in the sport, and player payroll fluctuated between 8th and 14th. For that 27-year period they had the 4th-most wins in MLB, trailing only the Dodgers, Braves, and Damn Yankees. The team won a lot of games and the owners made a lot of money. Good deal for everyone.
Pitching splits for JC in 2025, his only professional season:
Righty versus righty bats: .166/.224/.256 (241 plate appearances)
Righty versus lefty bats: .252/.372/.473 (156 PA’s)Internet obscenity laws prohibit the posting of his numbers pitching left-handed. But look at the righty/righty line! That folks is a paltry .480 OPS allowed, and I invite any industrious researcher to locate a right-handed starting pitching prospect in any organization who held righty batters to a lower OPS in 2025.
So what we have here is a guy who could be truly excellent IF he can meaningfully improve against lefty batters. (Let’s say, knock 100-120 points of OPS off that number.) It’s a big if, sure. But he’s already so darn dominant against righties, that even if his splits continue in exactly the same way as 2025 going forward, I think he’s still a very plausible #4 starter or wipeout reliever if deployed properly.
I’d rather have Sloan, certainly, but that was never going to happen. But all in all, I agree with those who put the total return at roughly a grade B. To be blunt, Ledbetter is nothing. And Peete is a long, long longshot — but intriguing, anyway. But JC in my opinion has a higher upside than anyone anywhere has given him credit for, and the two draft picks are quite valuable, especially to a franchise that has excelled at draft & development for the past 30 years.
I did NOT want to trade Donovan. I did NOT want any version whatsoever of a “rebuild,” or whatever it’s being called this week. I don’t trust Bloom, ownership, Marmol, or his staff to lead this team going forward.
But it was a fair deal, for two inexpensive years of Brendan Donovan.
The Dodger philosophy it should be noted has obviously shifted some, just in the past few years. Per Cot’s Contract’s, LA was just 4th in MLB in 2023 when it came to the Competitive Balance Tax numbers for their 40-man roster. The number then was $268 million.
For 2025 they were highest, at a whopping $417 million. I believe that was roughly $70 million above anyone else. (And recall, they only had the majors’ 5th-best record in 2025.)
Yeah, if you rank three prospects in your top 30, including one in the top 10, you cannot then rank the farm system #11. The math won’t work.
If we look at KLaw’s top 100 list of individual prospects — and actually tally up the estimated career WAR numbers for each prospect slot — it’s clear that any one of four franchises could reasonably be considered number one farm system: Detroit, LA, Milwaukee, and Seattle. Then there’s a modest dropoff to the Pirates, then another to the Redbirds, who are pretty decisively ahead of the remainder of teams.
I’m sure that when KLaw ranked individual players, he was incredibly meticulous. But I’m almost equally sure that when he ranked farm systems, he went by feel rather than math.
To show what I mean, let’s just make a quick side-by-side comparison between his #6 organization, Washington, and his #11 Cardinals.
He ranks Washington’s best prospect 53rd, and the Redbird’s best is Wetherholt at #7.
Washington’s second-best is ranked 76th, and St. Louis’ number two is Doyle at 26th.
Finally, the Nationals’ 3rd-best is rated #94. And per KLaw, Rainiel Rodriguez is 29th.
(Conveniently for the purposes of this exercise, each organization has just three in KLaw’s top 100.)If we add them all up, assuming each of those prospects have been evaluated perfectly, that’d be roughly 12 career WAR, 8 WAR, and 6 WAR for the Washington trio. And approximately 55 career WAR, 25 WAR, and 20 WAR for the Cardinal threesome.
So, based solely on KLaw’s own top 100 rankings, that’s 100 WAR to 26 WAR in favor of St. Louis. And of course there is absolutely no way that non-top 100 depth could ever come remotely close to making up such a profound gap as 74 WAR.
KLaw can say that the Cards have the 11th-best system, but his own individual rankings say they clearly have the 6th-most talent, when taking just top 100 type prospects.
“Dobbins could end up being a good get. I don’t expect greatness but I’m hopeful for consistency.”
Yeah, I prefer Dobbins to Fitts. And Fajardo to Clarke, who just injured himself opening Christmas presents. In fact, the longer I look at Yhoiker, the more intriguing he becomes. Best teen twirler for the Birds in a decade. (Flaherty at 19 was developmentally about where Fajardo was this year at 18. Both excelled in Low-A, but Jack had more durability, Fajardo more raw velocity.)
I disliked the Sonny Gray trade, but Bloom gets a robust B+ for the Contreras deal.
2022 Arizona goes 74-88
2023 Arizona wins the N.L. pennant
2024 Toronto finishes last in the A.L. East
2025 Toronto wins the A.L. pennantThese are extreme examples to be sure, but I think mediocre MLB teams are almost always closer to excellence than they appear; fans are easily benumbed by repeated losing and begin to believe the talent isn’t there. Anyway, after three straight years without October baseball, my patience has already run out.
Even with a poor manager, a poor pitching coach, and a poor hitting coach who cost the team 5-6 wins in 2025 all by himself, I feel the club can be a true talent 90-win team in 2027. Or with a legitimate, average manager/staff, it could happen immediately — because the vast majority of the hitters & pitchers are on the good side of the aging curve.
The Cards were 12th in revenues in 2024 at $398 million and are 12th in franchise valuation at $2.55 billion.
This situation is an emergency for the team, like a leak in the cement pond would be an emergency for the Clampetts.
Donovan is not a “super-sub.” He is an above average MLB regular whose defensive versatility also adds value beyond his simple WAR numbers, which are plenty good in and of themselves.
“Would anyone trade Brendan Donovan and Riley O’Brien to Seattle for two Top 100 prospects in Michael Arroyo (No. 63) and Jurrangelo Cijntje (No. 90), plus the Mariners’ Round B Comp Balance Pick?”
I absolutely would not make that trade. Because Donovan & O’Brien are in no way redundancies, and they cost almost no money. They are closer to necessities, if the Cardinals want to have a wildcard shot this year or next. And it is not clear at all, based on the StL front office behavior, what their intentions are in that regard.
I mean, I’ve heard it said again and again that they aren’t trying to win in 2026 — but then they spend twice as much on injury-riddled longshot Dustin May as they would have to pay Brendan Donovan in 2026. May is an overpaid, one-year, win-now acquisition. Hardly the mark of a “rebuild.”
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Just an aside: assuming the prospects have been ranked flawlessly, the 63rd-ranked minor leaguer will eventually put up a career WAR total of roughly 9 or 10, and the 90th prospect perhaps 6 career WAR. That’s simply not good enough, for a guy who’s halfway to a 20 WAR career and makes almost no money, plus a very good relief pitcher who makes nothing at all.
If I were dangling that Redbird pair as trade bait, I would insist on a top 25-35 type of prospect in return, kinda like when they traded for Tyler O’Neill.
“From a Seattle perspective, Brendan Donovan has a certain Adam Frazier vibe … a lefthand-hitting second baseman who can play the outfield.”
“In my view Donovan is far and away the better baseball player than Adam Frazier in every area of the game, but yeah, they both stand in from the left side.”
The two players are similar superficially, but the numbers back you up, Andujar. Per 162 games (according to Baseball-Reference) Donovan has been worth 3.7 WAR for his career and Frazier just 2.1. Frazier was better than that in his 20’s, but basically what it boils down to is Brendan’s typical season is roughly equivalent to Frazier’s very best couple of campaigns.
