What was expected?

Not to go all avantgarde and high-minded right off the top, I suppose the answer to that question depends who you ask.

Fans have been clamoring for impactful change to take place in the Cardinals organization for several years now, as it’s now been several years since St. Louis claimed their familiar place atop the NL Central standings. In fact, they finished worse in 2023 than the lowly Pirates but clearly, the team’s top brass felt differently and they showed it by making just three noteworthy moves in the offseason;

1. Signed RHP Kyle Gibson to a one-year contract
2. Signed RHP Lance Lynn to a one-year contract
3. Acquired RHPs Nick Robertson and Victor Santos from Boston in exchange for OF Tyler O’Neill

So, one All-Star level outfielder gone; two fifth-starter types and a pair of middle relievers added. Not the most inspiring set of transactions!

Perhaps management felt they were closer to contending and needed just a couple glue pieces to put it together. Maybe ownership realized the core was aging and that spending more to temporarily plug the hole wasn’t worthwhile. Whatever the reasoning, the team seemed to be outwardly hoping that those small changes could lead to contention in the hunt for a Wild Card berth.

How did it go?

Better, but still disappointing.

Based off the uninspiring offseason moves, FanGraphs had the Cardinals projected for a record of 76-86, which would have been a five win jump from the year prior.

Instead, St. Louis summoned some of their old magic and eventually found themselves with a record of 83-79, putting them six games back of sneaking into the postseason – albeit with a run differential of -47. Despite the bounceback record, it still feels like 2024 was still a disappointment on the whole as any step in the right direction felt like it was undone by two going the opposite way.

The ascension of Masyn Winn helped shore up the middle infield, after starting second baseman Nolan Gorman was unceremoniously dumped back to Triple-A after launching 27 home runs last year.

The aging curve for Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado continued its steep descent, particularly at the plate – though Arenado did still rack up 3.1 fWAR on the strength of his Gold Glove caliber defense at the hot corner.

Brendan Donovan fully claimed multi-position mantle this year from Tommy Edman, tallying 3.2 fWAR of his own and forming a reasonable middle-infield tandem with Winn after Gorman’s demotion, solidifying the current makeup of infielders.

But the outfield saw more flux than usual, even after trading away O’Neill (who, it should be mentioned, hit 31 homers with a .847 OPS for Boston). Victor Scott II was expected to provide an infusion of youth and speed but he hit just .085 with two seals in his first 20 games, which lead to a demotion back to Triple-A. He would make his return to the Majors later in the season but didn’t perform much better, with a .189 average and just four more steals the rest of the way. Michael Siani ended up taking the reigns in centerfield in his stead, though it was his glove that kept him there (.228 average) more than anything else.

Even Jordan Walker came crashing back to earth and continued the trend of former top prospects getting sent back to the minors for additional seasoning, as his .201/.253/.366 slashline was a far cry from the .276/.342/.445 line he put forth as a 21-year-old in 2023.

It was a frustrating season to watch as an outsider so I can only imagine how actual Cardinals fans feel!

Fantasy Stud?

Anecdotally, I have to imagine that very few teams can consider their closer to be “fantasy stud” but for the Cardinals, Ryan Helsley was far-and-away their best and most reliable player throughout the season, racking up the fifth-most fWAR (2.3) on the team despite pitching a reliever’s workload.

Consistency was Helsley’s calling card throughout the season, never allowing more than four earned runs in a calendar month, en route to a sparkling 2.04 ERA on the year. His performance was particularly strong to end the season, pitching to a 1.48 ERA in the second half while allowing batters to hit just .209 against him.

The Cardinals’ overall mediocrity as a team also kept the game scores close, helping Helsley to a league-leading 49 saves, as the righty saw the most save opportunities of any major league reliever (53). Leading the league in any (positive) category seems like the definition of a stud, so Helsley takes home these honors!

Fantasy Dud?

With all due respect to the fantasy managers who selected either Nolan Arenado or Paul Goldschmidt with an early-round pick and had to suffer through their season-long struggles, there was one player whose disastrous performance earned him a demotion to Triple-A after seemingly solidifying their place on the roster last year – and that’s second baseman Nolan Gorman.

Gorman’s been known for two main attributes in his time in the majors so far – he absolutely smokes the ball (career Barrel%: 16.0) and he strikes out far too much (career K%: 34.1). In his first two years, he was able to find the tenuous balance between keeping his strikeouts in check while still swinging for the fences, homering 41 times over 208 games while striking out at about a 32% rate. While his average those two seasons (.226 and .236) were certainly category drags, his wRC+ marks of 105 and 118 in 2022 and 2023 showed that he was making quality contact and walking enough to offset some of his whiffs.

In those seasons, Gorman hovered around the fifth percentile of all major leaguers in K% and Whiff%; a bad number, surely, but still playable. In 2024, however, the bottom dropped out completely and Gorman found himself languishing in a place no hitter wants to be – the first percentile.

This positioning amongst the dregs of the league didn’t come as some sort of tradeoff for additional power at the cost of contact either. While Gorman’s Barrel% this season stayed almost perfectly in line with his career averages, he saw his hard-hit percentage drop from 48.5% last year to 38.4% this season.

Mix in very poor defense at the keystone position into the player profile and suddenly you have an athlete who desperately needed some time to reset at Triple-A. While the season was most definitely a step back when it comes to his growth, rarely is the path of a major leaguer a linear one – there will always be ups and downs. It remains to be seen whether his time at Triple-A will act as a springboard come 2025, but Gorman also underperformed his xStats by significant margins in some cases, so positive regression is likely just around the corner.

Fantasy Surprise?

There are two potential candidates for this award, both putting forth their best season as a pro in 2024. Top prospect Masyn Winn got a taste of the big leagues last year at just 21-years-old and, understandably, struggled with his first exposure to MLB pitchers, hitting a paltry .172/.230/.238 with a .066 ISO across his first 37 games. For a very young shortstop, known particularly for his arm-strength and defense, that was still enough to convince the Cardinals to hand him a starting role despite his age, with the hope that he would take the exact step up that he did end up taking. Now 150 starts deeper into his career, the Red Birds are now seemingly cemented at the position for the foreseeable future after Winn put forth a line of .267/.314/.416 while adding 15 home runs and 11 steals.

But while Winn came into 2024 with a certain level of expectation, having been ranked as a top-25 prospect at certain publications, Alec Burleson carried no such pedigree and ended up making just as much fantasy impact – if not more.

Across 152 games, Burleson hit 21 home runs and stole nine bases across 150 games while hitting .269/.314/.420 – good for a wRC+ six percent above league average. This, after being 16-percent below average combined between his first two seasons. His underlying stats suggest that while he lacks superstar upside, the performance this year was legitimate and it placed him 101st in Yahoo rankings, first among Cardinals hitters. Not bad for a hitter ranked outside the top-250 in the preseason.

Player Breakdowns:

Hitters

Alec Burleson – OF

Speaking of Burleson, let’s dive a little deeper into his surprising performance in 2024.

As mentioned above, the metrics under the hood point to Burleson being more of a “good, not great” type. The numbers that are tied to what I consider “pure hitting” are quite strong;

Meanwhile, his power outputs sit right around league-average;

We’re still learning about the exact ways to interpret Statcast’s bat speed metric but the current understanding seems to be that there is a correlation between bat speed and overall power output. This has led a lot of hitters (and certain teams) to work on offseason training programs that increase bat speed in order to improve their overall line – similar to what DriveLine has been for pitchers. I’m obviously no head of Player Development but it seems such a training regiment might be the ticket to fully unlocking Burleson in the future.

Masyn Winn – SS

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