ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Cardinals had a rough weekend against Detroit, salvaged by a win in Sunday’s finale. The win snapped an eight-game losing streak for the Cardinals, Paul Goldschmidt hit three home runs, and Steven Matz had a solid start giving up only one run in five and one-third innings.
That is what Cardinals fans should be focusing on right now, but thanks to the news of the Cardinals moving Willson Contreras out of the catcher’s spot into the DH spot and occasionally the outfield, that’s what everyone is talking about instead. And with good reason.
The Cardinals signed Contreras, a longtime Chicago Cub and World Series winner, this offseason to become the heir apparent to catcher and future Hall of Famer Yadier Molina, who retired after the 2022 season.
Now, just over a month into the 2023 season, the Cardinals are an abysmal 11-24, in last place in the National Central, and somehow, this is all Willson Contreras’ fault?
On Monday’s edition of the Locked On Cardinals podcast, host JD Hafron discussed this news and his reaction, saying, “I thought there was a typo or a mistake when they mentioned the outfield.” He added, “I check the calendar. It can’t be an April Fools’ joke. April Fools’ Day was a long time ago. Is this real?”
Cardinals fans on social media were so confused by the initial reports that they were wondering if the tweets being sent out were from fake accounts because it didn’t seem possible. But it is possible, and it’s flummoxing baseball fans and baseball pundits.
The Cardinals signed Contreras to a five-year/$87.5M contract this offseason, and since May 2 the Cardinals have played six games, and Contreras has been the DH in all six of them. He did tweak his ankle during Friday night’s game against the Tigers, which may play into the decision to have him DH in the remaining two games of the series, but Contreras voiced his frustration with the Cardinals on Saturday:
Tres Barerra was called up on Saturday as the Cardinals’ third catcher and will split catching duties with Andrew Knizner. But the news of Contreras being used as an outfielder and designated hitter going forward is what’s really making people wonder what the Cardinals are doing. Because if his ankle is a problem, surely he wouldn’t be running around the outfield.
There’s no doubt the front office and ownership were not expecting the team to be this bad out of the gate, and maybe they think they should shake things up, but Contreras played most of his games in the outfield during the Cubs’ 2016 World Series season—he played left field 24 times in 64 games. He’s played in the outfield twice since 2019, once in 2019 and once in 2021.
Then after a bit of an uproar from the original report, which came out on Friday, President of Baseball Operations Jack Mozeliak told The Athletic this Sunday that Contreras would only be used in the outfield in an emergency situation.
There were also reports that Cardinals pitchers aren’t happy with Contreras's game-calling skills, with starter Jack Flaherty saying, “Two-strike hits, whatever that comes down to. Whatever the hell we're doing as a staff is pretty bad. Way too many two-strike hits today. It was like 2-1 hit, bad count, falling behind. Even if we fell behind, got back in the count, made pitches to get to two strikes, then had too many balls hit hard. That's frustrating, throughout our whole staff — throwing pitches that don't make sense."
But Manager Oliver Marmol wanted to clarify that they’re not blaming Contreras for the problems the pitching staff is having so far this season. He told reporters, “I want to be super clear on that. This is a guy (Contreras) that's putting in an amazing amount of work to be able to become more familiar with, one, our pitchers, but also how we do things."
The bottom line is early May seems too soon to take Willson Contreras’s job away, but when a team is as bad as the Cardinals are right now, there needs to be a scapegoat, and he, unfortunately, happens to be it.
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