Cardinals face tough roster decisions as the injured return. Who will be the odd men out?

About halfway through spring training, St. Louis Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak was asked about signing veterans to contribute off the team’s bench and whether the additions of Matt Carpenter and Brandon Crawford could potentially squeeze Alec Burleson out of a roster spot.

Mozeliak, at the time, called the query “kind of a ridiculous question,” and his point was well taken. Nothing happening in baseball today guarantees tomorrow, and through injury or performance-based attrition, those problems tend to solve themselves.

Four months later, Burleson has arguably been the team’s most consistent offensive performer and has cemented himself in the top third of the lineup. He’s done that with Carpenter and Crawford coming around and providing the bench contributions roughly that were expected.

Willson Contreras, Tommy Edman and Lars Nootbaar have missed long stretches due to injury; opportunities have arisen for others.

Now, though, things are again coming to a head.

Contreras has already returned from a broken arm, Nootbaar could return from an oblique strain by the weekend, and Edman is on track to be in the lineup perhaps coming out of the All-Star break. Their contributions will be welcomed; their roster spots are harder to discern.

In their absence, Pedro Pagés and Michael Siani, in particular, have seized openings and run with them to the best of their abilities.

Iván Herrera’s back strain was timed almost day-perfect to Contreras’s return, delaying difficult decisions. There has been at least one position player ticketed for the everyday roster on the injured list for every day this season, providing Siani with an opening that has not been pressured. Those pressures, though, are coming, and this is how the Cardinals are apt to handle them.

Pagés

The boxscores tell the story of how the Cardinals have evolved their view of the backup catcher slot throughout the season.

Herrera started hot with the bat and adequate behind the plate, and that was sufficient to deflect many of the concerns around his play. As Contreras’s absence wore on, though, it became impossible to ignore areas in which opponents were taking advantage of the Cardinals.

Herrera has thrown out only three of 44 attempted base stealers against him this season. Rule changes to improve the odds of successful steals have been felt throughout the game, but a caught stealing percentage of 7% is a mere fraction of the league average, which is 22%. Extra bases mean extra runs, and they became too much for the Cardinals to tolerate.

Pagés has made just 20 starts at catcher and Herrera 39, but Pagés is running at a 21% caught stealing rate and opponents have attempted only 19 steals against him. He grades out as a superior defender in every category, and crucially, pitchers ranging from the most veteran to the freshest rookies have raved about his handling and framing skills.

Crucially, it’s easy to see the team’s preference in what they do as well as what they say; in the last 10 games before Contreras returned when Herrera and Pagés were the healthy catching duo, Pagés caught eight.

Herrera provides value as a righty bat from the bench, which the Cardinals have largely lacked outside of extremely intermittent opportunities provided to José Fermín. While he does still have one minor league option year, it seems likely that he will return as more of an offensive weapon who will be spotted for important hitting spots.

Siani

Siani entered play Wednesday leading all of MLB in fielding run value with 11 runs saved, one ahead of Washington’s Jacob Young and Marcus Semien in Texas. His 12 outs above average trail Semien by one and are tied with Young and Kansas City’s Bobby Witt, Jr. He’s stolen nine bases and leads the majors with nine sacrifice bunts. His batting average has stabilized in the .220s.

He is just on the precipice of being good enough at the plate, and he has been so outrageously good defensively that, for the Cardinals, it has been more than worth the tradeoff.

Nootbaar’s looming return will seemingly have the effect of shifting Burleson to becoming the mostly everyday designated hitter, bleeding away some at bats from Carpenter. Nootbaar’s roster spot, though, does carry some complications. Herrera may not return until the break; if so, Fermín is fungible, and the Cardinals can carry on.

Herrera will eventually return, though, and so will Edman, advertised throughout the winter as the team’s starting centerfielder.

Siani has unquestionably seized that role in Edman’s absence, and it’s hard to make a good faith argument that he should cede it, given concerns over how Edman will perform at the plate following an extended wrist surgery rehab.

Edman, though, is a natural infielder with a Gold Glove at second base, and Nolan Gorman’s struggles have passed through concern and landed at alarm. Tuesday’s grand slam in Pittsburgh might prove to be a turning point for the notoriously streaky slugger, and it’s possible he rides the roller coaster back to the top of the heap in July.

If his struggles continue, though, and Edman needs a spot, he has a complement of minor league options that might force the Cardinals into a difficult position. So too does Dylan Carlson, languishing on the end of the bench after a brutal bad luck injury to wrap up his spring.

Carlson’s .515 OPS and seemingly total power outage would make him vulnerable to a lost spot as well, though as ever, what’s true today could be irrelevant tomorrow.

One player who won’t be losing time or a spot? Siani. He’s caught way too many balls to be caught up in that fall.