2024 Team Review - St. Louis Cardinals
A look at the biggest standout players from the 2024 St. Louis Cardinals, and some speculation about what they'll be looking to do this offseason.
I am working my way through season reviews of all 30 teams. I have begun in the National League Central, covering the Brewers first. We are now onto the Cardinals, who finished second in this division. I’m focused on breakouts, busts, and an offseason preview for each team. I don’t get into a ton of detail. My goal is to get these done by December, and then we’ll be in good shape to run and adjust the 2025 projections and shift fully into 2025 draft prep mode.
There were no high expectations for the Cardinals in 2024. They made some competitive moves in the offseason to strengthen their rotation a bit, but they still came in without much to be excited about. They managed a winning record of 83-79 but were never seriously in playoff contention. It was another year of aging for their big two bats, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. Both of those names hit new lows, and there were very few young breakout performances. The Cardinals have committed to a shift in philosophy this offseason, so I think we’re looking at the beginning of a new generation in St. Louis.
2025 Unrestricted Free Agents
Paul Goldschmidt
Andrew Kittredge
Matt Carpenter
Breakouts
Masyn Winn
It’s a bleak situation here. The only breakout I’m spotting is Winn. He made the team out of camp and was a key figure in this lineup all season long. He finished with a .2266/.312/.416 line with 15 homers and 11 steals. He scored 85 runs. It was a useful fantasy season for a guy you could have added for free, but he’s well short of “have to have it” territory.
The most important thing to note is that this kid is 22 years old. There is a lot of development still to come. The Cardinals are likely viewing him as one of their cornerstones for the future. At the very least, he showed that he’s an MLB-caliber player.
He hit 11 of his 15 homers after July began. He slugged .414 on both sides of that June 30th cut-off date, so we can’t honestly say his power developed as the year went on. He was consistent all year. He made a bunch of contact (79% Contact%, 87% Z-Contact%) all year long. The bat speed is low, at least for right now. His 90th percentile EV ended at 103.3. That’s low, and it kept the xBA down to .250 and the xwOBA at .296.
Launch angle-wise, it’s all pretty solid.
GB%: 41%
LD%: 27%
FB%: 24%
It’s always hard to predict the future, and it’s extra hard when you’re dealing with a 22-year-old with just one year of MLB experience. I would say that Winn has the floor you’re looking for. There are a lot of 22-year-olds with big ceilings but very low floors. That’s not the case with this guy and his ability to put a bunch of balls in play and not pound everything into the ground like a lot of other young guys do.
He has 23rd percentile bat speed and 87th percentile sprint speed. There’s always bat speed upside for a guy this young, and the foot speed could result in an increasing steals total.
Winn was the lone bright spot offensively for the Cardinals. I still don’t love him for fantasy purposes next year with the lack of homers, but again - the development could be quick.
Busts
Paul Goldschmidt
I will be very brief here. Goldy is headed to free agency anyway, so the Cardinals are washing their hands of him. Everything got worse for the now 37-year-old.
A three-point increase in strikeout rate with a 1.3-point decrease in barrel rate. That was not hard to see coming. He’s still a guy who deserves a starting spot somewhere next year, but he’s out of the fantasy conversation in normal leagues.
Nolan Arenado
Arenado is under contract for three more seasons, so that makes this .388 SLG and .708 OPS tougher to stomach. His last four season homer totals:
34, 30, 26, 16
The K% stayed great at 14.5%, but he is losing power in a hurry. He’s never posted gaudy exit velo marks, so any loss in that was sure to zap the homer production in a hurry. His last four 90th-percentile EV marks:
101.5, 103.7, 102.7, 101.2
That 101.2 is around guys like Bryson Stott, Anthony Volpe, Marcus Semien, and Andres Gimenez. Arenado is no longer a 20-homer threat, and the RBI total has been collapsing along with it (especially because the bats around him are degrading as well). We don’t want Arenado in fantasy any longer.
Nolan Gorman
This guy is still 24, which makes his 2024 bust brutal for Cardinals fans. He slashed .203/.271/.400 in 402 PAs with a 37.6% K%, and that got him demoted for the final six weeks of the season.
The strikeout rate is nothing new, but it was up significantly from the last two years when he went 33% and 32%. The barrel rate stayed strong at 17%, but that doesn’t help much when you’re only putting a ball in play in 54% of your plate appearances. He does field well, and he does not run well. That makes him a pretty easy cut when he’s only slugging .400. He needs to add at least 100 points to that to make him worthy of a starting job. He’s another guy we can scratch off the list for fantasy next year. It’s still not too late for him in real life, but there’s way more downside than upside for our purposes.
Jordan Walker
He could not avoid the minor leagues this season, spending May through August in AAA and hitting just .263/.326/.427 down there. In the Majors:
178 PA, .201/.253/.366, .619 OPS, 28% K%, 5 HR
The exit velocity is fine. That is the one thing he doesn’t have a problem with.
The problem is the strikeout rate and the launch angle profile. His GB% was high again at 50%, and you can see the lack of consistency there in the histogram. I don’t know much about the physics of swinging a baseball bat, but it seems that there’s something that needs work on the swing path. Beats me, but it’s been all pretty bad for Walker so far in his Major League career.
He is also just 22 years old, so we have a ways to go before the Cardinals wave the white flag on him. I think the Cardinals are probably heading for a rebuild next year. That would make it logical to give Walker a Major League job and just see what they have before making a bigger decision after next season. The early signs are bad, though, with his 104 wRC+ and .321 wOBA in 168 career games (72 wRC+ and .268 wOBA this year).
Victor Scott II
It was exciting for about five minutes at the beginning of the season when Scott suddenly had the opening-day centerfield job after an injury to Noobaar. But boy, was he awful at the plate in that first stint:
65 PA, .085/.138/.136, 0 HR, 23% K%
After that, he spent most of the year in AAA:
362 PA, .210/.294/.303, .597 OPS, 6 HR, 30 SB
He was better but still bad in his final 90 MLB PAs after getting called back up in August:
.264/.278/.384, 2 HR, 30% K%, 4% BB%
The guy can run and play defense with the best of them (99th percentile sprint speed), but he has a lot of work to do to get his bat to the point where he can hit enough to keep a job. The silver lining is that his exit velocity profile isn’t as bad as you might think. His 90th percentile EV is bad (mph), but actually a bit better than teammate Nolan Arenado, and it’s probably enough to make it work, given his other skills. His swing speed is in the bottom fifth of the league. This stuff is all bad, but it’s not a death sentence for a 23-year-old.
Scott still has the steals ability to be a very useful fantasy player in the future, but I’d call it a long shot that the OBP ends up high enough to matter in 2025.
The Rest
I didn’t notice a single pitcher above. That’s because pretty much everything went as expected there.
Sonny Gray was the big acquisition for them. His season wasn’t quite what the Cardinals were hoping for, but it’s not a disaster signing by any stretch of the imagination. He got them 28 starts and pitched well despite a bloated 3.84 ERA (his SIERA was much better at 3.01). He will be their ace and probably their best player next year.
After that, it was always ugly. Giving 62 starts to Miles Mikolas and Kyle Gibson is something an organization on the decline does. To their credit, they stayed healthy and ate up the innings that the Cardinals wanted them to - but the combined 4.80 ERA isn’t helping a team win many games.
Minor Leagues
I was banging the Thomas Saggese drum last offseason when talking about minor leaguers that could make an impact mid-season. He wasn’t all that great this year with a .253/.313/.438 line in the minors, homering 20 times, and stealing nine bags. He did get to dip his toes in the MLB waters, hitting .204/.250/.305 in 52 PAs with one homer. He doesn’t seem like a high-upside prospect for now.
Jimmy Crooks seems like the replacement for Willson Contreras in the coming years. He had a nice season in the Texas League, hitting .321/.410/.498 with 11 homers in 371 PAs.
Tink Hence is the top pitching prospect in the organization, and they desperately need help there. He threw just 80 innings in 20 starts but was awesome in that time with a 2.82 ERA, a 1.07 WHIP, and a sick 34% K% with an 8% BB%.
Quinn Matthews is the guy to watch for next year. He made 26 starts and posted a 2.76 ERA on an elite 26.8% K-BB%. That’s a 35% K% and an 8.6% BB%.
Offseason Preview
I imagine it will be a bit of a salary dump offseason for the Cardinals. They had the 12th-highest payroll in baseball in 2024 and missed the playoffs. And it wasn’t one of those bad-luck seasons where you’re in good shape at the beginning and fall to injuries or bad luck. This was never a very competitive roster. That’s the downside of spending big on veterans like Goldschmidt and Arenado. Between those two along with Mikolas, Matz, and Gibson - they spent $92 million. That’s a lot of money for five players who combined for a WAR under 8.
I’m not trying to be overly critical of Cardinals management here. This is just the downside of spending on veterans, as I said earlier. You’ll have some great years, as the Cardinals have, but eventually, you’ll hit the wall here and have to do something about all the money that isn’t returning much.
So that’s what I envision the Cardinals do. I think they’ll take it easy, save some money, see what they have with this young core in 2025 - and go from there. I think things will get worse here before they get better.
They have two club options on Kyle Gibson ($12 million) and Lance Lynn ($11 million). Neither guy seems worth that money, but you do reach a point where you need to buy innings. The Cardinals might find themselves there, but I doubt both of those guys return. I could see them picking up that Gibson option and letting Lynn walk, but I could also see them declining both and just finding cheaper innings in someone else.
Free agent signings predictions:
Michael Wacha
Jose Quintana