2024 Team Previews: St. Louis Cardinals
Going through all 30 teams, looking back at 2023 and ahead to the 2024 season through a fantasy baseball lens.
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Cardinals Intro
Man it feels weird to be getting to the Cardinals this early on. I am writing these in inverse order of the standings, and this is only the sixth team I’m doing! The only team that could rival the disappointment of the 2023 Cardinals would be the Mets. This team was the favorite to win the NL Central, and they finished last! Think of all of the horrible teams you haven’t read about on these pages yet because the Cardinals did worse than them. Really crazy stuff.
But it didn’t take us long this off-season to learn that the Cardinals aren’t throwing up any white flags for 2024. They have Paul Goldschmidt under contract for one more year here, and Arenado is under contract through 2027. You don’t give out those types of contracts to start rebuilding this early on, and the NL Central certainly doesn’t have any kind of dynasty team present in it.
So while the Cardinals star players are on the back-end of their careers, they still have a competent core and just needed some rotation help. And they added rotation help, although it was a bit economical, to put it nicely. So far they have brought in Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, and Sonny Gray. Only Gray of that trio is an above-average starter, but Gibson and Lynn are still worthwhile big leaguers and solid upgrades from what this team rolled out in 2023.
The names to make 5+ starts for the Cardinals last year, along with their ERAs:
Mikolas (4.78)
Montgomery (3.42)
Flaherty (4.43)
Matz (3.86)
Wainwright (7.40)
Hudson (4.98)
Thompson (4.34)
Liberatore (5.26)
Woodford (6.23)
Rom (8.02)
It was a team 4.81 ERA, and that simply has to drastically improve if they are going to be competitive in 2024. It would also seem that they are more or less done shopping, or at least we can say we’re confident that they’re not going to be involved in the biggest remaining free agent names.
It’s certainly an interesting club to dig into, so let’s do it.
Hitters
I’m introducing the comps and rank-arounds in this post. I’ll provide similar players you would draft each guy around, mostly using the 5x5 roto value the projections give. I’ll make the full player rankings available sometime in January, probably even before they’re completed because I’m filling them out one-by-one as we go through this post series, which is not even halfway completed yet.
Nolan Arenado
Age: 32
Pos: 3B
The 100-RBI streak came to an end in 2023. Arenado had driven in at least 100 runs in every (non-2020) season since 2015. It was the second-worst OPS (.774) of his career, and his 26 homers were the lowest since 2014. The full line:
612 PA, 71 R, 26 HR, 93 RBI, 3 SB, .268/.317/.461, .774 OPS
That line made him just the #64 hitter in roto, and the #12 third baseman, a legitimate “down year” for Arenado who has been so steady over the last decade or so.
He did not benefit from the steals changes, and the home run rate did come down a bit.
The barrel rate has never been elite for Arenado, who gets his power numbers by being very good at pulling fly balls, but it come down almost a full point from last year to 7.3% while his strikeout rate came up five points from an elite 12% to a still very good 17%.
Those two things I just mentioned are significant and could be legitimate signs of aging (he will be 32 on Opening Day, but turns 33 in April), so it’s fair to project him with a higher K% and a lower Brl% and other stuff like that next season. But at the end of the day, we’re still looking at a pretty solid hitter:
I really like to just lean into the projection on guys like Arenado. We have so much data on them, so we can project them as accurately as we can with anyone. These boring/aging veterans are also guys that typically fall in drafts, so there’s value to be had. I haven’t been much of an Arenado guy in my playing days, but I think I’ll be all over him this year as that discount comes on strong.
The projection makes him the #5 most valuable roto third baseman, but he’s the #9 third baseman off the board in the average draft right now. So that’s a buy situation for sure.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Ryan McMahon, Elly De La Cruz
JA Projection: 648 PA, 89 R, 28 HR, 104 RBI, 4 SB, .274/.336/.478, .814 OPS
Paul Goldschmidt
Age: 36
Pos: 1B
The Cardinals are not a young team at their core, and Goldschmidt is really getting up there now. It wasn’t a disastrous year by any means for Goldy, but it was a big step down from that MVP 2022 season.
686 PA, .268/.363/.447, .810 OPS, 25 HR, 89 R, 80 RBI, 11 SB
So he didn’t hurt you anywhere, but came up short of elite everywhere as well. I’d happily take 169 R+RBI with a 25-10 line from my first basemen provided he’s not a guy I have to take in the top 60 picks, but it’s hard to say for sure that Goldschmidt can do that next year given the age.
Let’s not just outright forget that 2022 season. He posted a .979 OPS as a 34-35 year old, and that’s a very good sign even two years later.
He’s in decent position on all of the scatter plots, but there’s just nothing that pops off the page with him any more:
The name of the game for Goldschmidt now is “doesn’t hurt your team anywhere”, and that’s valuable - but the name value might keep him a bit higher on draft boards than is justified.
The one thing we should absolutely note is that his strikeout rate came up to 23.4%, which was the highest number he’s posted since 2018-2019 when he was around that same 24%. I don’t see any reason to project another 20-21% rate for him, so we’ll probably settle on 23-25%, and that takes away a good bit of production from him.
My overall view of the Cardinals is that we should probably be interested in them, because the bats could be a bit under-valued by a dud season that I doubt they repeat. But we’re dealing with a lot of age, and a general lack of huge upside with these first two names. Neither Arenado or Goldschmidt are guys I’m dying to get, but I’m also fine with letting the draft land them on my team if that’s how it’s going.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Christian Walker, Rhys Hoskins
JA Projection: 676 PA, 95 R, 24 HR, 83 RBI, 9 SB, .260/.351/.443, .794 OPS
Nolan Gorman
Age: 23
Pos: 2B
It was an up-and-down season for Gorman to say the least. He was looking like an MVP candidate early on, but things came back to earth and here’s how he finished:
464 PA, 59 R, 27 HR, 76 RBI, 7 SB, .236/.328/.478, 32% K%, 11% BB%
Overall this was a pretty good year - especially considering where he was drafted (which was not at all in a lot of leagues). But I can’t take my eyes off that 32% K%. That’s been a huge issue for him in his career so far, and I’ll be hesitant to draft someone with that big of a strikeout problem.
If we’re drafting a player with a strikeout problem, they’d probably hit a whole bunch of homers or steal a whole bunch of bases. And Gorman can meet the first criteria there.
He hits a bunch of balls in the air, and that’s what he’s been doing his whole career. Despite not seeing a ton of this guy, we pretty know who he is already because of his incredibly consistency in approach so far.
The percentiles:
We will review a good number of players like Gorman. There is no shortage of hitters around that can hit the long ball, but most of them strike out an absolute ton and don’t profile to have useful BABIP’s given their fly-ball heavy ways.
Gorman is draftable in deeper leagues, and you saw the age above. There is a chance that he improves a lot coming in 2024 and drops that strikeout rate to 28% or so. If he can be an everyday player with that kind of power and a strikeout rate under 28% or so, you’re looking at an easy 30+ homers and probably 100+ RBI, which would be a steal for where he’ll get drafted. And this comes with a decent walk rate (OBP leagues, but also it’s just encouraging overall that he’s seeing the ball) and non-zero steals.
It’s all about the ADP with every pick, but Gorman might be a guy I’m willing to reach a little bit on if I need a later-round power bat with upside - because he is certainly that, there’s no argument about that.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Brandon Drury, Thairo Estrada
JA Projection: 491 PA, 69 R, 28 HR, 74 RBI, 8 SB, .259/.344/.511, .855 OPS
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