Introduction
As part of my 6 days in Jupiter, I collected lots of observations and I’ve given to breaking them down and passing them along in manageable (ie. readable) chunks. I passed along some nuggets in game recaps if they were short and relevant to pre-, in- or post-game happenings. Two weeks ago, I published an article that summarizes what I saw on the back fields in more or less a stream of consciousness format. I wrote on shorts on Urias and the ABS last week. This article and one later today are the end
of this series. Spoiler Alert: I think I saved the best for last. Good thing, since camp will be closed soon.
Short Topic of the Day
No, I’m not going to fret about the slow start the overall offense has encountered in Jupiter. Lots of variables that won’t be present a month from now complicate any analysis one might attempt on what is already small sample size. Several guys, Herrera first and foremost, are coming off surgery and may take all spring or more to get their timing down. Also, it is Roger Dean Stadium. Like in the last 10 years, only 1 team has hit over .250 in spring at this place and that was the power-laden 2022 team. It is hard to hit here. Although, I will observe that the shortening of the fences and the newly constructed buildings in right-center at least appear to have changed the dynamics, particularly how balls carry to left. I anticipate a shift in park factors coming.
I’ve seen a lot of commenters speculating about the line-up construction, centering on who should lead-off. From what I could discern in camp, it looks like the shape of the line-up may well start like this:
Against right-handers – Wetherholt (1), Herrera (2), Burleson (3)…
Against left-handers – Winn (1), Burleson (2), Herrera (3)…
I’m curious to how JJW adjusts to left-handers. If he isn’t super-splitty, I could see him batting 2nd and pushing Burly to clean-up.
If Gorman hits enough to play, it seems like he projects to the clean-up spot or fifth in the order. After that, it looks kind of grim. What can we expect offensively from Walker in right or Scott in center?
Who is in left is a big question mark until Nootbaar gets healthy, but odds are it will be a defense heavy platoon, although Velazquez is a wild card here. Can Church hit enough to carry this load, in R-L platoon? Or might they just roll Velazquez out there more regularly and rotate Church in defensively later in games? I’d suspect more of the latter, although if Church (or anyone for that matter) gets rolling offensively, they will play a lot.
I do wonder if Crooks can hit enough to get a larger share of time behind the plate than anticipated. I suspect that once the Herrera situation clarifies, we may see a mid-season transition of Crooks to MLB.
It seems most reasonable to expect that the offense is going to come up short in the power department. OBP and BsR would seem to be keys to creating and sustaining some offensive momentum. I didn’t see Torres breaking camp with the team (he was returned to MiLB last week), but I suspect at some point they are going to bring his OBP up to MLB and see if it plays.
One item I’ve heard from many is the general perception that most of the loud offense in Spring Training emanated from players not anticipated to break camp with the team (Crooks, Baez, Davis, Gazdar, Rodriguez to name a few who struck balls well). This may be applicable to more than the offense, but I’d say one thing we learned this spring is that the Cardinals upper-minors’ players are better than other teams upper-minors’ players. That is consistent with recent system ratings. Hope is on the horizon.
Overall, I’m preparing for a pretty rough ride offensively, at least at the outset. While I think we all can see that the offense that will break camp is likely to struggle mightily with consistently scoring runs, I have some hope that it will improve as the year progresses.
The way I look at it is … If guys like Gorman and Walker improve, then the offense will float with their improvement. If they do not improve, then they are likely to run out of runway and get moved aside. Each has a player waiting in the wings (Saggese and Baez), who would get a shot and hopefully offer another pathway to offensive improvement. I also suspect that once they determine a pathway for Herrera and get him on board, then Crooks may re-appear to offer an additional offensive boost. Last, Nootbaar should roll in sometime (I’m guessing late May, early June), offering another boost. None of the boosts individually should be dramatic, but 4 incremental improvements could begin to add up to something a fair bit better overall.
Consider this as a potential mid-July line-up…I think you could imagine 8 of those guys being 95 wRC+ or better. That would be an average offense. With their pitching, that might be enough.
2B – Wetherholt
DH – Herrera
LF – Nootbaar
1B – Burleson
RF – Baez
3B – Gorman (or Urias or Saggese)
SS – Winn
C – Crooks
CF – Scott II
Some people might wonder why they just don’t start out this way. Except that isn’t a realistic option. Reality is, Herrera and Nootbaar still need to get fully healthy and full-go. Baez and Crooks could use more time at Memphis (prudently so, IMO). And management needs more time to fully determine if some of the other alternatives might actually produce even greater than average outcomes.
