Happy Friday to you, and I hope you have a long and restful and pleasant Labor Day weekend.
The Cardinals had a newsy Friday, making multiple moves that did not involve top hitting prospect JJ Wetherholt or top pitching prospect Quinn Mathews.
I’m good with that for now. I want to see Wetherholt continue to grow his blossoming power, and it would be beneficial for Mathews to hone his command to lower his walk rate. Just a little more polish.
So lets get to the actual moves and news instead of fixating on a wish list headed by Wetherholt and Mathews.
The Cardinals got busy …
1. The Redbirds promoted catching prospect Jimmy Crooks to the big club. And all I have to say is this: let the competition begin. It will be an entertaining show. I will elaborate more on this later in the piece, but for now let’s go with the basic takeaway: the Cardinals are headed for a donnybrook of a competition for the starting-catcher job in 2026, 2027 and perhaps 2028.
The candidates are Pedro Pages, Jimmy Crooks, Leonardo Bernal, and Rainiel Rodriguez. Crooks is here now, Bernal is next in line after that, and at some point Rodriguez will be pushing his way into contention after that. But the kid is only 18, and he’s smashing home runs into the landscape across the Florida State League.
Crooks gets the first shot at making a positive impression to enhance his internal value within the organization. Crooks, who bats from the left side, is having a blazing August. Going into the weekend, Crooks was hitting .337 with a .404 OBP and .518 slug this month for a .922 OPS. He leads Triple A Memphis with 72 RBIs this season.
2. The Cards promoted left-handed hitting infielder Cesar Prieto to the big club. A native of Cuba, Prieto was acquired from Baltimore when the Cards offloaded pending free-agent starting pitcher Jack Flaherty at the 2023 trade deadline. Prieto isn’t viewed as a strong defensive player, but he’s capable of handling second base, shortstop or third base. He bats left. He has a batting line of .295 /.359/.448 at Triple A Memphis this season.
Prieto is an excellent contact hitter but he’s added power, and that has reinflated his value after dropping off the Cards Top 30 prospect list last offseason. Keith Law of The Athletic has Prieto at No. 15 on STL’s top 30.
In his last 12 games, Prieto has a .370 average with a .453 OBP and .522 slugging percentage. I don’t know if he’s here to stay for the remainder of the ‘25 season … but it’s good to see this 26-year-old get a big-league look.
I think this move tells us a little something else: Chaim Bloom, Rob Cerfolio and Larry Day will have their own way of evaluating talent. And I’m told that the Bloom administration will put more of a value on hitters that have strong high-contact tendencies.
3. The two moves occurred after injury-related developments. The Cardinals had room for the rookies after placing Alec Burleson (wrist) and catcher Yohel Pozo (concussion) on the injured list.
4. Burleson’s absence is unfortunate news for a limited St. Louis offense that has scored the fewest runs in the majors over the team’s last 50 games.
After a slow start to the season, Burleson has been one of the National League’s best left-handed hitters since May 5. In 91 games he ranks second in batting average (.295), eighth in slugging (.491), ninth in OPS (.837) and 11th in RBIs (.52), and 12th in home runs (15.) Over that time Burly is No. 7 among left-handed NL bats with a wRC+ that’s 33 percent above league average offensively.
Burleson’s performance against lefty pitching has improved significantly over the last three months; since the start of June he’s batting .301 and slugging .470 against them.
5. Pozo has been a nice surprise for the Cardinals, giving them a strong presence off the bench. This season Pozo has a .353 average and .980 OPS as a pinch-hitter, and when he comes off the bench and enters the game as a substitute in any capacity, Pozo has batted .400 with a 1.025 OPS.
That said, Pozo hasn’t produced as a starting catcher. When he’s used as the starter he’s batted .211 with a .596 OPS, and since the All-Star break his batting average has deteriorated to .133 with a .404 OPS. But Pozo has been a terrific role player. When he makes it back from the concussion – and he shouldn’t rush that – it’s unclear what the Cardinals will do.
6. Can Jimmy Crooks do enough after his promotion to convince the front office and Marmol to keep him in the majors for the remainder of the regular season? We can’t answer that now. But it would also be utterly foolish to summon Crooks to the majors and not play him as a frequent starter behind the plate. And he’s not – repeat, not – a problem defensively. He’s the opposite of that.
7. A note on starting catcher Pedro Pages: with the Cards offense in such a dreadful state, Pages has done an exceptional job at the plate. As a hitter. Yes, it’s true. In fact, Pages is STL’s best hitter this month, and it isn’t a matter of him standing out just because everybody stinks. That’s not the case at all.
Consider: Among the 10 Cardinals who have at least 40 plate appearances this month, here’s where Pages ranks in important categories offensively:
— wRC+: first at 72 percent above league average offensively in August. That’s well ahead of Willson Contreras, who is 26 percent above league average.
— Batting average: first at .340.
— On-base percentage: first at .400
— Slugging percentage: first at .580
— OPS: first at .980
— In addition, Pages is third in homers (3) and tied for second with 12 RBIs.
TAKING A CLOSER LOOK AT THE THREE YOUNG CATCHERS
With Cooks (age 24) coming up, it’s a good time to get caught up on the Cardinals’ impressive collection of young catching talent. Pages isn’t old; he’s just 25. But we’ve seen him a lot over the last two seasons, and Cardinals fans are less familiar with the catchers who are at various stages in the process that leads them to St. Louis.
The top three are Crooks, Leonardo Bernal, and Rainiel Rodriguez.
Until his promotion, Crooks had spent the season in Memphis. Last season, Crooks was voted MVP of the Double A Texas League.
Bernal, 21, is the starting catcher for Double A Springfield. Through Thursday he had a .259 average, .338 on-base percentage, and a .425 slug with 19 doubles, 13 homers and 64 RBIs.
Rodriquez, a brawny lad of 18, needed some time to adjust to the pitching in the Class A Florida State League … but … boom! In his last 13 games Rodriquez has a .308 average, average, .429 OBP, .692 slugging percentage, and 1.121 OPS. In his last 52 at-bats he’s clubbed six homers, two doubles and knocked home 19 runs.
Pitchers seem to be a little rattled by Rodriguez; in his last 13 games they’ve put him on base with 11 combined walks and hit-by-pitches. Based on the video I’ve watched, the maturing Rodriguez is completely unfazed by the attempts to pitch him inside. I think he likes it!
The independent prospectors generally rate all three highly – though ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel didn’t put Crooks on his updated Top 10 prospects list of Cardinals. He did, however, put Bernal and Rodriguez on there.
Here’s a look at how each catcher has been rated in the recent rankings of STL’s best prospects:
Baseball America: Rodriguez No. 3, Bernal No. 11, and Crooks No. 12.
FanGraphs: Rodriguez No. 3, Crooks No. 4, Bernal No. 6
MLB Pipeline: Bernal No. 3, Rodriguez No. 4, Crooks No. 6.
Baseball Prospectus (preseason): Crooks No. 4, Bernal No. 7, Rodriguez No. 9.
Before I go, I thought it would be fun to share some observations of each catching prospect from the FanGraphs perspective:
FanGraphs on Rainiel Rodriguez: “Blended with the rumble of thunder along the storm-freckled east coast of Florida have been the concussive sounds of Rainiel Rodriguez hitting a baseball. The dynamic Dominican catcher stomped onto the shores of the FCL this year and, for the second straight season, made hitting look so easy that the Cardinals were forced to promote him to Low-A Palm Beach after just a month of play.
“In addition to just being a very talented baseball player, Rodriguez is also heady, poised, and competitive. He carries himself like an older lad who belongs in the mid-minors with other adults, and one can foresee him growing into the sort of person who leads your clubhouse. Teenage catching prospect caveats apply here but, man, this is an exciting player who looks like a future impact regular.”
FanGraphs on Jimmy Crooks: “Eric (Longenhagen) referred to Crooks’ pitch blocking as a ‘flesh wall’ in his preseason writeup, a description that can only be expanded upon, not improved … Crooks plays out wide, unlocking the full width of his massive torso. He’s got a big body that he knows how to use. He throws out of a longer arm action, with the accuracy and power that comes from setting his leg base more than canceling out the sacrifice in release speed.
“These superlative defensive tools have driven a starting catcher projection despite more average skills on the offensive side, though they’ve been buried beneath consistently above-average results with the bat.
“A shortlist contender for the best defensive catcher in the minors can’t be moved off a starter trajectory by one poor half-season of offense in Triple-A, but 2025 has been a preview of some of Crooks’ limitations.”
(Note: Crooks has raised his offensive performance in the second half of this season.)
FanGraphs on Leonardo Bernal: “The stocky, switch-hitting Panamanian backstop doesn’t turn 22 until next February and his chase rate, in-zone whiffs, 90th-percentile exit velocity and hard-hit rates are all around the big league average or a little better against Double-A pitching. That buttresses the enthusiasm Bernal’s flirtation with a .900 OPS at Springfield would already be generating as someone who is a safe bet to stick at catcher.
“Listed at six-feet and 245 pounds with tree trunks for legs, Bernal is strong as an ox, but his poor performance in his few looks against premium velocity impugn his bat speed. Hitting enough to be a primary option at catcher looks like a more reasonable goal than being a middle-of-the-order presence.”
I am finished typing.
Please pardon my typos.
Thank you for reading and enjoy your weekend!
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him weekdays on the “Gashouse Gang” or “Redbird Rush Hour” on KMOX, and Bernie does a weekly “Seeing Red” podcast on the Cardinals with his longtime pal Will Leitch. Bernie joins Katie Woo on the “Cardinal Territory” video-podcast each week, and you can catch a weekly “reunion” segment here at STL Sports with Bernie’s appearance on the Randy Karraker Show every Friday morning at 10:30 am.