Is this homestand the last St. Louis will see of Paul Goldschmidt in a Cardinals uniform?

Paul Goldschmidt was honored before Tuesday night’s game as the St. Louis Cardinals’ nominee for the 2024 Roberto Clemente Award.

He received a nice plaque and a warm round of applause from the extremely sparse scattering of fans who had reached their seats 20 minutes before first pitch, posed for a photo, and disappeared into the dugout.

It was a moment that deserved more. Goldschmidt is arguably a player who deserves more. More recognition, more warmth from fans, more awareness that only a dwindling handful of games might remain in his home career as a Cardinal. But as the team winds down a middling season and Goldschmidt scrambles to finish with a middling stat line, this is all there is.

After six seasons in St. Louis, Goldschmidt is set to reach free agency this winter, and the path from there is uncertain.

“Everything I thought and better,” Goldschmidt said this week when asked if his time in St. Louis had lived up to his expectations. “Outside of us winning the championship, which was the goal, and unfortunately hasn’t happened. That’s probably the one disappointment, and it was the same disappointment I’ve had really every year that I’ve played.”

That is, ultimately, the likeliest source of the disconnect that seems to have short circuited the sort of warm departure that players in St. Louis might otherwise expect for one of the franchise’s biggest stars. A calamitous 2023 hasn’t been erased by 2024’s marginal improvements, and Goldschmidt’s individual struggles this season have been a source of frustrations for player and fans alike.

Those who win are remembered forever. Goldschmidt is one of only 14 men to win a Most Valuable Player award as a Cardinal, but he hasn’t won a postseason game – hasn’t won a postseason series – in five years, not since advancing to and being swept in the National League Championship Series in 2019.

Still, there’s no way to wrap up whatever story Goldschmidt has authored – perhaps is authoring – as a Cardinal.

Over the winter and heading into spring training, a contract extension to take him through the end of his career seemed like an inevitability. Coming off a lost season, though, both team and player opted to wait and see if improvements came and made sense of a continued relationship.

When the season began, Goldschmidt’s production cratered. As late as May 22, he was hitting just .211 with a .594 OPS. He looked like a hitter permanently caught in between, staring at fastballs down the middle and failing to check up on breaking balls spiraling out of the zone. He was shifted down in the lineup, hitting as low as seventh for a stretch of July and August.

That stretch was the first time he started a game as low as seventh in the order since 2012, his first full season in the big leagues. And perhaps most concerning, his struggles looked less like an outlier and more like a logical continuation of the production dip he endured in 2023. Time, after all, remains undefeated.

As quickly as things seemed to fade, though, they were found. In both August and September, Goldschmidt has posted a batting average of at least .270, an on base percentage of at least .330, and a slugging percentage of at least .470. Perhaps he now looks like an aging slugger, but crucially, he looks like a slugger. The bat has returned to a reasonable curve from a sharp precipice, and now the Cardinals are faced with a difficult decision heading into the winter.

Having never before reached the open market, Goldschmidt is eligible to receive a qualifying offer of $21.2 million on a one-year deal. If he were to accept, he would return to the Cardinals at that price tag. If he declined the offer and signed elsewhere, the Cardinals would receive draft pick compensation in return.

With next year’s financial roadmap not yet revealed by ownership, it’s unclear whether the Cardinals would make that gamble on Goldschmidt. If he did, it’s unknown whether he would accept – or whether the team would want him to do so.

Arizona first baseman Christian Walker is also set to reach free agency this winter, so an opportunity might exist for Goldschmidt to return to the team with which he began his career. Any number of teams in need of veteran leadership or with hitter-friendly ballparks would likely have an interest, especially if Goldschmidt intends to chase a championship. Hitter-friendly Houston, set to potentially lose third baseman Alex Bregman this winter, could certainly put Goldschmidt in a position to succeed.

He also could well return to St. Louis, whether as the team’s primary first baseman or in a platoon-based timeshare. That uncertainty underlies some of the awkwardness of this last homestand, along with dwindling crowds that haven’t yet been primed for a full goodbye tour.

When Goldschmidt left Arizona it was in an offseason trade, so he had no way of knowing that his last home game would be his last home game, and no reason to go out of his way to soak in any memories or make any emotional stops on his last spin through the ballpark.

Knowing now that the possibility exists that this will be his last week as a Cardinal at Busch Stadium, does he have any plans to go out of his way to seek out those experiences?

“I’m not a very emotional person, as y’all know,” he said, grinning ear to ear.

Maybe, this week, he doesn’t yet need to be.