2025 Team Previews - St. Louis Cardinals
As part of my 2025 team previews series, I go through all fantasy-relevant players on the St. Louis Cardinals ahead of the 2025 season.
Check out the intro and team links page here.
Intro
I have been at the top of the St. Louis Arch. My dad grew up in Lewistown, Montana, and then moved to Pittsburgh, where I was born. But some of his family is still there, so when I was like 12 years old or so we took a road trip from Pittsburgh to Montana and made a ton of cool stops along the way. Taking that little janky car up to the top of that Arch is definitely burned into my memory. I do remember being most excited to see Busch Stadium from the top.
All I ever wanted to do on vacations was to go see a baseball game, but I never got to. We would usually go to the Atlantic coast and see lighthouses and historical landmarks and stuff. That’s what my mom likes - lighthouses and American history. I can appreciate that a little bit more now, but I don’t think I’ll be repeating that vacation strat with my own kids.
St. Louis is cool, I guess. The Cardinals are in rough shape right now, however, and it’s shaping up to be a poor 2025 season. And that’s what you get when you’re not in LA or NY, and you go out and give big money to guys like Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. You get to have a good time for a few years, but then you get stuck paying them a ton of money for poor production. This is the hangover phase for the Cardinals, and as a Pirates loyalist (I’m loyal when it suits me), I’m here for it.
Roster
There have been Arenado rumors, but for now, he’s still on the team. He anchors a pretty poor lineup:
There are a few decent younger bats, but there are no studs here and at least a couple of guys that might not be true Major League players. The rotation is probably worse:
We have one good pitcher here and then four pitch-to-contact guys. They’re going to give up a lot of runs this year, methinks.
Let’s get into the player-by-player fantasy details!
Hitters
Willson Contreras
Age: 32
Pos: C/1B
With the departure of Paul Goldschmidt, Contreras will be moving to first base in 2025. That is a big development for his fantasy value. He will still have catcher eligibility on fantasy sites next year, and the move to first takes a lot of the physical burden away and gets him in the lineup every day. The question is: can the guy still hit? Here’s what he did in 2024:
358 PA, .262/.380/.468, .848 OPS, 26.8% K%, 15 HR
The answer would seem to be yes. He posted another high 11.2% Brl% and drew a ton of walks (12% BB%) to generate that high OBP. The bad news was the contact rate fell to 65%, leading to his highest strikeout rate since 2021 (he was at 22% in 2022-2023).
Contreras still hit the ball extremely hard when making contact and lifted it at a good rate.
The mid-season injury may held him back, but he should come into 2025 with full health and in a prominent spot in the lineup.
My main advice when drafting catchers is to find someone who will play a ton. There are only a handful of guys we think can play 150+ games, and Contreras is one of them this year with this position move. I’m in.
Rank
He will get 1B eligibility early in the season, but I don’t see any reason to draft him with that in mind. You want to use him in your catcher spot. He is easily my #1 catcher so far.
Projection
610 PA, 73 R, 23 HR, 78 RBI, 7 SB, .247/.357/.434, $10.32 roto value
Masyn Winn
Age: 23
Pos: SS
Winn busted into the league and had a very productive rookie year.
637 PA, .266/.312/.416, 15 HR, 85 R, 56 RBI, 11 SB
That’s a good supply of runs. Everything else is pretty mediocre for roto fantasy baseball, however, so we have to temper our expectations of him when viewing this through the fantasy lens.
There does not appear to be much raw power with the kid, at least not right now.
Brl%: 3.7%
EV90: 103.4
Max EV: 111.1
He posted 23rd-percentile bat speed and had trouble with the launch angles (40th-percentile sweet spot rate). It’s very possible both of those things improve in 2025, but that’s far from a sure thing.
We’re looking at Winn as a Steven Kwan type. I don’t think he has 20 homers, and I think 20 steals is unlikely. He does have 87th-percentile sprint speed, but he stole just 19 bags in the minors in 2023 and 11 last year. One thing to note is that he stole 43 in 2022. This used to be part of his game, but for whatever reason - he’s really eased off these last two seasons.
The Cardinals are not a lineup that is going to score a ton of runs. With that, I think the best-case scenario for Winn is something like 90 runs, 15 homers, 60 RBI, and 20 steals with a .270 batting average. That’s useful, but it’s not a huge impact on your fantasy roster.
My read is to be off of Winn and to opt for more HR/SB upside, but there’s a case to be made for him.
Rank
Projection
676 PA, 88 R, 15 HR, 63 RBI, 15 SB, .253/.308/.383, $7.02 roto value
Alec Burleson
Age: 26
Pos: 1B/OF
Burleson was looking like one of the big breakout bats of the 2024 season, but his performance down the stretch really mellowed out the stat line.
593 PA, .267/.313/.419, 21 HR, 9 SB, 71 R, 78 RBI
He had a .288/.320/.494 slash line at the All-Star Break, and then hit just .238/.302/.316 in the second half.
Skills-wise, he’s excellent at getting the ball in play. He struck out just 12.8% of the time and added only a 5.9% BB%. If we look at BIP% for hitters, he’s #3. This would be the percent of pitches seen put in play.
Hitter BIP% Leaders, 2024
Luis Arraez 25.3%
Yainer Diaz 22.8%
Alec Burleson 22.6%
Nico Hoerner 22.4%
Alec Bohm 22.3%
Luis Garcia 22.0%
Jeremy Pena 22.0%
Jackson Merrill 20.9%
Alex Bregman 20.9%
Marcus Semien 20.8%
If you can post a high BABIP with that kind of stuff, it will lead to a bunch of hits and a good batting average. However, these types typically swing at a bunch of junk pitches (by virtue of their high overall swing rates), so they do tend to have lower BABIP. That’s what we saw with Burleson last year at .276. His xBA was .277, not far away from what he actually did.
The raw power comes up short (103 EV90, 6.5% Brl%), but he can probably still manage 15+ homers, given how many balls he’s getting into play.
Overall, I don’t see a ton of reason to draft Burleson. I think 2024 will prove to be pretty close to the ceiling.
Rank
Projection
495 PA, 66 R, 14 HR, 59 RBI, 7 SB, .268/.320/.423, $6.69 roto value
Nolan Arenado
Age: 33
Pos: 3B
We are seeing the years take their toll on Arenado. He hit just 16 homers last year and came up with 71 RBI. That’s a far cry from the 30-homer, 100-RBI groove he had for so much of his career. You can see the fall-off here:
The batting average stayed about where it’s been since leaving Coors Field, and he did lower the strikeout rate. The big concern is the loss of power. He’s never been a steals source, so he’s going to be tough to draft if we really think he’s just a 15-homer guy.
He has never been a guy putting on a show with exit velocity, but it fell the whole way down to a 101.5 EV90 last year.
He has long outperformed his barrel rate with a high pull rate, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re hitting the ball this softly. That barrel fell from 7.3% to 3.2% last year. That’s a total disaster.
The lack of impact on the baseball is clear. I don’t think it’s impossible that he get some of it back, but clearly we’re dealing with a much different version of Nolan Arenado right now.
With some regression back towards his mean, he’ll be of use in the fantasy game in that he’ll play a ton and be in the middle of a lineup (wherever it is). There is a path to a .265 batting average and 75 RBI.
He’s clearly a backup option at best at the third base position, and I don’t see myself drafting him this year.
Rank
Projection
645 PA, 77 R, 18 HR, 74 RBI, 4 SB, .262/.322/.406, $8.24 roto value
Brendan Donovan
Age: 28
Pos: 2B/OF
The Cardinals are not in good shape this year, as I’ve mentioned. Donovan isn’t much of a fantasy bat. He’s come up short of 20 HR+SB in three straight seasons, and he’s not a Luis Arraez type who might pop off for a .320 batting average to make up for some of that.
It’s an ugly profile. The one thing I can’t say is that he’s bad at anything because he’s not. Getting a .275 batting average in a full-time role does end up being useful for deeper fantasy leagues. That’s what we saw last year, and that’s what we see in this year’s projection.
I just don’t want to draft him on the principle of drafting for upside late in the draft. He goes around pick 250. That’s near the end of a standard league draft, so I’d rather be taking shots at breakout hitters and just working the waiver wire if they fail - you’ll always be able to find a Donovan-type on waivers in those leagues.
The places I would draft him would be the deep draft-and-holds. With 2B/OF eligibility and playing time locked in, he’s a valuable bench bat to have for emergencies.
Rank
Projection
600 PA, 69 R, 14 HR, 72 RBI, 6 SB, .268/.342/.405, $8.03 roto value
Lars Nootbaar
Age: 27
Pos: OF
Nootbaar had some hard luck in 2024. There was a large gap between actuals and expectations.
xwOBA: .355
wOBA: .331xSLG: .455
SLG: .417
There was also some time on the IL. His end-of-season line looks like this:
459 PA, .242/.345/.416, 14 HR, 7 SB, 20% K%, 13.5% BB%
Nootbaar is talented guy, and that’s had fantasy bro’s betting on a breakout season for awhile now. But it has not happened. He has registered zero 20-homer seasons while maxing out at 11 steals and a .265 batting average.
He just might be walking too much. He posted the lowest swing rate in the league last year (300 PA minimum).
That makes him a nice asset for OBP leagues and points leagues, especially since there should be some positive regression coming in 2025. For batting average leagues, it’s a tougher call.
I do think he has the potential to have a breakout power season. I could see a 25-homer season. The EV is there. The thing that would need to happen is a full year of health, along with at least a slight change in approach to be more aggressive. He could also benefit from lifting the ball a bit more (52% GB% last year).
Assuming he stays healthy, I think the worst thing you can get is something like 17 homers, a dozen steals, and a .250 batting average with non-awful run and RBI production.
I can get behind taking Nootbaar. I do still want to be betting on these skills with a depressed ADP (272 as I write this).
Rank
Projection
520 PA, 62 R, 18 HR, 63 RBI, 10 SB, .253/.353/.431, $7.52 roto value
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