The Process of the New Season

Spring training is over and the Cardinals have left Jupiter, had their stopover in Springfield, and now are in St. Louis, preparing to have yet another grand Opening Day in the Redbird tradition. It’s been a wrap-up not without controversy, but the roster is set and we know who will be riding out in the trucks brought to you by the local Ford dealer. So let’s talk about the last of spring and the promise of summer.

“Trust the process” became a catchphrase surrounding the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA in the 2010s. It went from motto with import to mocking scorn as the need for trust lasted longer than some wanted. It feels like this is going to be a phrase around the Cardinals for the next couple of years and we are getting a real taste of it right now.

When Chaim Bloom and Oli Marmol and their respective staffs set the Opening Day roster, one name was conspicuous by its absence. Even though Nelson Velazquez led the team in average, hits, and home runs in the spring, his ticket was punched for Memphis instead of the big city. Velazquez’s spring, plus the notable need for right handed power, would have seemed to easily have him on the 26-man roster. So why did the powers that be decide not to bring him north?

There’s been a lot of talk of “the path of least resistance” from fans conditioned to see that in every front office move. It’s probably true that, had Velazquez already been on the 40-man roster, he might have gotten a trip north. However, I don’t think that’s a guarantee, because I think Bloom thinks about these things differently than John Mozeliak did.

Remember that Bloom laid down a bit of a mission statement in his first press conference as President of Baseball Operations. “We are not where we need to be. We’re not where our fans expect us to be…..but to get where we want to go we can’t take short cuts and we won’t…. When we have to choose between short-term gratification and our bigger goal of contending consistently, we will choose the long term. We will make moves with that ultimate goal in mind because simply put that’s where this organization needs to be.”

I think that’s a key phrase to keep in mind as we “trust the process”. Would Velazquez help the Cardinals win a few more games in April? Maybe. However, there are a lot of reasons why that sort of move might foul up a longer-term strategy.

First off, we have spent a lot of time over the last two years especially talking about how a team can’t be beholden to spring training stats. It was a hot spring training that got the front office all fired up about Jordan Walker, setting off a chain of events that still hasn’t resolved itself positively. It was a hot spring that got the front office thinking that Victor Scott II would be a big upgrade over Michael Siani when Dylan Carlson went down, only to have to reverse course a few weeks later.

Spring training stats have to mean nothing. Yes, Velazquez had a great few weeks, but it was still just 42 at bats. That’s basically 10 days in the bigs. The poster boy for hot St. Louis starts, Bo Hart, went 23-50 in his first 10 games in the majors with six extra-base hits. As we know, that didn’t last long.

If Velazquez had a strong major league track record, maybe that would have tipped the scales. While it’s true that his 31 career home runs would rank highly in comparison to the rest of the roster, he didn’t play in the majors at all in 2025 and he struggled in 2024 with the Royals. This very well may be a new and improved Velazquez, but it almost feels like the same argument we were using with Joshua Baez. Let’s see how real it is before bringing him up to the majors.

I also wonder if they expect Lars Nootbaar back somewhat quickly. It would be a bit of a surprise, since Nootbaar didn’t play at all in the spring and just Tuesday started taking batting practice. Once he comes back, though, that could create a roster jam if Velazquez was here, especially if he was struggling. This allows the club to see Nathan Church and Thomas Saggese, knowing that they can go to Memphis if they are scuffling when the Noot is ready to be loose.

The short-term play is Velazquez to the majors. As you saw in my roster configurations, I expected him to come up and I don’t think it would have been a bad choice had they gone that way. However, the more I think about it, the more I think this fits into Bloom’s worldview.

Other than that, the roster was a bit anti-climatic. We still don’t know how JJ Wetherholt is getting on there, we just know he’s there. (If it’s not Nootbaar to the 60-day IL, which feels a little unlikely depending on the results of today’s BP) then it may be someone like Patron Pitcher Nick Raquet or Cesar Prieto. Both got into the game last night—Prieto was the starting shortstop—but that might have been more of a last hurrah than any sort of true sign they were sticking around. I will say that Ryan Fernandez still isn’t looking great, but he feels like a guy they probably still want to try to work with before waving the white flag.

We’ve talked about the bullpen before, but it feels like it is going to be very static this year. It feels like we’ll see a lot more multi-inning outings, which will help keep pitchers from going too often. We saw Chris Roycroft get four outs on Sunday, for instance. Reliever usage should be something that is interesting to watch. Maybe not as much in the early going, when every week has an off day, but as the season progresses knowing that there’s not much option for roster church could make for some decisions that fans will have fun debating. After the spring they had I’m very interested to see if George Soriano and Matthew Pushard can keep it up when the bell rings.

Dayn Perry’s got a great writeup of the roster, so you should check that out (and subscribe if you haven’t already). We’ve got one more day of waiting and then it all kicks off tomorrow.

Many of you might be too young to remember when the first pitch of every MLB season was in Cincinnati, honoring the city’s legacy of having the first professional team. Even when they went to a game-before-Opening-Day in 1994, the Reds were at home in Riverfront Stadium, taking on Ray Lankford and the Cardinals.

Now, tradition hardly matters to the folks making out the schedule. If it were me, the crown jewels of the sport—the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, Dodgers—along with the Reds would always open their season at home. I know there are reasons that teams might not want to do that, but it feels right to have the season start in places that have a deep history.

Nobody does Opening Day better than St. Louis, though Cincinnati does give it a good run. The Clydesdales, the red jacket legends, the packed stadium—it’s going to be electric, I’m sure. I’ve never been to an Opening Day (and honestly can’t imagine I’d ever get to one) but even just watching it on TV it’s a treat.

This year, the 2006 team that won the World Series will be honored by having David Eckstein throw out a first pitch to Gary Bennett, while the 1996 team that went to the NLCS, got a 3-1 lead, then suddenly were replaced by space aliens will be represented by Brian Jordan (helping keep him the public mind while he’s in that Hall of Fame voting) pitching to Tom Pagnozzi.

It’s different, of course, with those upper-tier Hall of Famers gone. While the list of Cardinals legends that will be there is remarkable, they don’t have quite the cache of Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Lou Brock. Ozzie Smith is still there, adding that flair, and we’ll be seeing Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina in the future (Yadi will be there tomorrow, though not with a jacket yet), but it’s different. Those losses still reverberate a bit.

I have taken off work before to watch the game, though I’m not sure I’ll be doing that this year. For those that are going, I hope it’s a wonderful day and you get a Redbird winner out of the deal!

So I have a significant problem. I was looking at my Kindle after I bought yet more books and realized I had close to 50 books on there that were either unread or in stages of being read. That’s not counting the physical books on my arm table that need to be gone through as well. The Star Wars book club is doing Darth Plagueis this month, so that’s got to get a re-read. My friend Jim Yeager has written two books on Arkansas baseball and I’ve read the first while the second has been started for a while as I dip in and out of it. Great books, I just haven’t dedicated the time to finishing the newest one.

And what did I have my wife bring home tonight from her job at the local bookstore? Project Hail Mary. I’ve heard too many people talking about the book and the movie and I figured I should find out for myself. So either I’ll start on it and won’t be able to put it down or it will be one that I keep meaning to start and will still be sitting here a year later.

Tax season is thinking about winding down, at least I hope it is. There are still returns to be done but we can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Only 22 more days!

Had a fun time talking to the Cardinals Off Day guys last week on Musial and I look forward to their pre-season show, which I guess will be dropping today. Might already be out by time you read this, which means you need to go hunt it out. Looking forward to being on Talking About Birds (recording tonight, dropping tomorrow) and returning the favor on Musial Friday night. There was no Gateway this past weekend and we may have complications recording this weekend, but we’ll see what we can do.