Tip of the cap to shortstop Masyn Winn, who pushed through significant pain and discomfort in his right knee to give the Cardinals all that he could for as long as he could.
The torn meniscus won, and Winn ended his season with only 13 games to go on the schedule. Enough was enough. The Cardinals placed Winn on the Injured List on Sept. 13 and the move was obviously the right call.
Winn was struggling to maintain his quickness and movement. The injury was reducing Winn’s range in the field and his power at the plate.
Some notes and observations on Winn’s season …
A) He leads the Cardinals with 3.5 Wins Above Replacement, the FanGraphs version. At the end of the season, that 3.5 WAR will hold up as No. 1 among Cardinal position players.
B) Winn finished 2025 ranked first among major-league shortstops in Outs Above Average (22), Fielding Run Value (+17), the FranGraphs defensive composite, fielding percentage (.994), double plays turned.
C) Winn made only three errors in 1,107 and ⅔ innings. Two were throwing errors, and one was a fielding error.
D) Winn’s glistening .994 fielding percentage was the best in the season by an innings-qualified Cardinals shortstop – and that goes back to 1900.
E) I don’t see why Winn would finish anything less than first for the 2025 National League gold glove balloting at shortstop. As these things go, Winn’s season total for innings (1,107.2) is a little light. But Colorado shortstop Troy Tulowitzki won the NL gold with fewer innings (1,065) in 2010. And Ozzie Smith won it as a Cardinal with 1,065 and ⅓ innings at short in 1984. Winn’s total is close to the 1,156 and ⅓ innings played ay short by Ozzie when winning the gold in 1992.
F) If Winn wins the gold glove this year, he will become the fourth Cardinal shortstop to receive the honor following Dal Maxvill in 1968, Ozzie Smith (for 11 consecutive seasons (1982-92) and Edgar Renteria for two consecutive seasons (2002-03.)
G) Winn’s offense weakened in 2025. Per wRC+, Winn was 4 percent above league average offensively in 2024, and he dropped to 7 percent below average this season. Which isn’t awful. And Winn’s all-around play is the key here. On the day he was placed on the IL, Winn had as much WAR (3.5) as shortstop Mookie Betts, and more WAR than shortstops Dansby Swanson, CJ Abrams, Jacob Wilson, Trevor Story and Xander Bogaerts (among many others.) And Winn’s WAR was a tick below that of Elly De La Cruz and Bo Bichette.
H) Since Bill DeWitt Jr. and associates purchased the franchise before the 1996 season, here are the team’s top five leaders in career WAR as a Cardinal:
Edgar Renteria, 12.3
Paul DeJong, 9.4
Jhonny Peralta, 6.8
Masyn Winn, 6.4
David Eckstein, 5.0
Winn should be second on that list by the end of the 2026 season.
I) Back to Winn’s offense: I don’t think there’s any question that his production was dragged because of his knee injury – which worsened as the season went on.
J) In the first four months of the 2025, Winn was 2 percent above league average offensively per wRC+, and batted .270 with a .325 OBP, .389 slug and .714 OPS.
K) But in his last 1 and ½ months, Winn performed 43 percent below average offensively (per wRC+), hit .198, had a .265 OBP, .271 slug, and .546 OPS. And in 2024,
L) The knee problem gradually deflated Winn’s slugging capability in 2025. After slugging .416 last season, Winn plummeted 53 points to a .363 slug this year.
M) The best part of Winn’s offense this season? With runners in scoring position he batted .324 with a .358 OBOP and a strong .450 slug. The team’s only better all-around hitter than Winn in RISP was Ivan Herrera. Winn had 11 doubles and 41 RBIs with RISP.
(Related note: you know what surprises me? Victor Scott II’s performance when hitting with runners in scoring position this season. I hadn’t realized it, but going into the final 11 games of the season, when Scott comes to the plate with RISP, he’s carrying a .282 average, .382 OBP, .429 slug and an impressive .811 OPS.)
N) What does Winn have to work on offensively in 2026? It starts by being more competitive against breaking pitches. Winn did OK against fastballs, and was good against the offspeed stuff. But against those spinning breaking balls, Winn batted .199 with a .284 slug and a whiff-swing rate of 24.5 percent.
O) One detriment that Winn must overcome is slow bat speed … if he can. In 2025 Winn was in the bottom 32 percent of MLB hitters with an average swing speed of 71.1 miles per hour. The slow bat keeps Winn’s hard-hit rate down.
P) Winn doesn’t turn 24 years old until March 22 when the Cardinals are busy at work in 2026 spring training. Gift idea: a long-term contract extension.
AS OTHERS SEE THE CARDINALS
1. Ken Rosenthal, writing in The Athletic:
– On trading Brendan Donovan: “Donovan was the Cardinals’ lone All-Star this season, but with only two years of club control remaining, he looms as a prime trade candidate. As good an example as Donovan is for the Cardinals’ younger players, Donovan might depart as a free agent by the time the team is good again.”
– On the direction of the team: “One of the Cardinals’ problems the past two years is that they’ve gone only halfway in rebuilding efforts. And it hasn’t worked.”
– On potential building blocks: “The Cardinals need to field a team next season, and can’t simply trade everyone. Alec Burleson and Iván Herrera are two hitters they can build around. Shortstop Masyn Winn, a leading Gold Glove candidate with offensive upside, will undergo meniscus surgery in October, but is expected to be ready for spring training and is another keeper.”
– The future of other Cardinals: “First baseman Willson Contreras has said he does not want to waive his no-trade clause. Outfielder Lars Nootbaar could be expendable if the Cardinals commit to Victor Scott II and/or Nathan Church. Jimmy Crooks heads the team’s deep list of catching prospects, and top prospect JJ Wetherholt should fit somewhere in the team’s infield.”
Lastly, Rosenthal offered an assessment of incoming president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom.
“Cardinals fans can take comfort in this much: While Chaim Bloom’s four years in Boston were turbulent, the team’s incoming head of baseball operations helped set up the Red Sox for their current success,” Rosenthal wrote. “Under Bloom, the Red Sox drafted Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, two of the four players they traded for Garrett Crochet and their latest pitching callup, Connelly Early. Bloom also drafted the pitching prospect the Red Sox traded for Carlos Narváez, and acquired Wilyer Abreu from the Astros in a trade for Christian Vázquez.”
2. Perspective from St. Louisan Bradford Doolittle, the excellent baseball writer/analyst for ESPN:
“Nothing about St. Louis baseball has made much sense for about a year,” Doolittle wrote. “If the Cardinals had truly reset, that at least would have been a clear direction. As it stands, it's still completely unclear why the Cardinals didn't just try to build the best possible roster they could for the 2025 season. After this finally ends, the baton will pass to Chaim Bloom and perhaps he can paint a more coherent portrait. Let the Ray-ification of the Redbirds begin.”
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
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.