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JUPITER, Fla. — When Cardinals hitters enter the batting cages closest to their spring training clubhouse, they pass by a plaque that memorializes one of the keepers of the club’s fundamentals identity, Dave Ricketts. At its base, the plaque has an image not of a slugger or any of the several MVPs to take swings in these cages but of a catcher, right there ready to receive a pitch.

It’s a tribute in bronze to a gold-plated tradition at the position that goes back generations, and to continue it all, the Cardinals are counting on this season is their youngest pair of catchers, when measured by major league experience, in nearly 90 years.

“That tradition and a lot of those pillars don’t change,” said major league coach Jamie Pogue, who works with catchers. “Even if it looks different on the field.”

“I really want to take advantage of the opportunity,” Ivan Herrera said.

As the Cardinals begin official workouts for pitchers and catchers Wednesday at their Roger Dean Stadium campus, Herrera and Pedro Pages are set to pick up the mask cast aside by Willson Contreras when he moved to catch popups at first base. Nowhere else on the roster is the Cardinals’ youth movement more apparent, more prominent — or more pivotal. With Herrera’s 68 starts at catcher in the majors and Pages’ 60, they have, combined, only five more than Contreras had on his own in 2018 for the Cubs and 14 fewer than Yadier Molina had for the Cardinals as recently as 2016.

This is the first time since Molina in 2005 that the Cardinals are poised to turn the starting job over to a catcher with 60 or fewer starts the previous year. And even that spring, Molina had a veteran backup in Einar Diaz.

Before his 81 starts as a rookie in 1997, Mike Difelice had two starts in the majors in ’96. His partner was Tom Lampkin, who’d yet to have a 50-start season in the majors but did have 119 total before becoming a Cardinal. To truly find a pair of Cardinals catchers who shared the role for a season with big league experience similar to Herrera and Pages, it takes a much deeper plunge into history. Past Ted Simmons, past Del Rice, past Walker Cooper, past World War II and into the New Deal, when 21-year-old rookie Mickey Owen and Butch Ogrodowski split most of the games in 1937. Ogrodowski had 59 games in the majors before ’37; Owen had none.

Just in the past 60 years, catcher has become such a fixture, such a symbol of excellence for the Cardinals that it produced a Hall of Famer (Simmons), a future Hall of Famer (Molina), a World Series and National League Championship Series MVP (Darrell Porter), and a golden era. From 1985 through 2022, the only season the Cardinals did not have a future or current Rawlings Gold Glove Award winner catch at least a game for them was 1999. For a club handbook used by coaches and players, one of those Gold Glove winners, Mike Matheny, authored a chapter on the 16 traits for a Cardinals catcher.

Herrera casually referenced one Tuesday as he discussed the importance of preparation because of the influence a catcher can have on the game and others, positive or negative.

“This the job, and if you’re not doing the right things, you’re putting everybody else’s job at risk,” Herrera said. “It is about others, too.”

Same as Molina said before him.

Same as Matheny said before him.

Same as the late coach Ricketts said to both of them.

“How we’re teaching it now, it’s different, and there is no way to get around that,” said Pogue, a former Cardinals catcher who was coached by Ricketts. “I’ve had to do a bunch of work on my own to learn that and talk to a lot of different people. But a lot of those pillars aren’t about how you catch the ball or how you block the ball. It’s more about how you show up to work, how you treat other people, how you make sure the pitcher is the most important person that day. Those things don’t change. How we are expected to lead.

“We’re the one player who is facing the opposite direction of everyone else on the field,” Pogue continued. “Everyone is looking to you. There is a responsibility there, and I don’t think that changes (with youth). And I know that is not something we’re going to shy away from.”

This offseason, Pogue hosted video conference calls with Pages, Herrera and top prospect and Texas League MVP Jimmy Crooks.

The conversation was often about leading a team, not framing pitches.

“You’ve got to be an example if you want to be a leader,” Herrera said Tuesday outside the team’s clubhouse. “How you do that is with your preparation. You have to be ready every day, and that comes from all of the things you do in the offseason.”

He speaks from experience.

Fresh off a strong season at the plate with a .301 average and an .800 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS), Herrera started this past winter focused on how to improve his arm and defense behind the plate. He initially committed to catch for Albert Pujols’ club in the Dominican Republic’s winter league, but Herrera pivoted instead to his first offseason spent training in the United States.

He went where pitchers often do to tap into more velocity — to Driveline. There, Herrera worked on his throwing mechanics and arm strength and health to give himself a better chance of patrolling the bases.

Herrera also adjusted his diet to a healthier menu for the workload ahead.

“I can’t tell you how hard I worked this year and how badly I want to take these opportunities,” he said. “I feel really confident about this year, man. I feel very confident this year is going to be a good one because I put in the work in every aspect of the game,” said Herrera, 24. “I think this is the camp that can dictate the future for me.”

The Cardinals are betting this camp asserts their future, too.

And that goes beyond the competition between Herrera and his gifted-glove complement Pages, 26, and rising talent Crooks, 23. Newly hired as part of the Cardinals’ expanded player development staff, Ethan Goforth is in his first spring as catching coordinator. He has already started coordinating catching programs and goals for all levels, bringing a cohesiveness to the position arguably not seen since Ricketts gathered catchers for dawn drills in the cages that now have his name.

One of the goals for Goforth and Pogue this spring is to develop a “drill library” that gives coaches at every level video for catching drills from both a coach perspective and player perspective. The idea is to give players and coaches things they can do — and things to look for at the position — when Goforth isn’t visiting.

That should be up and running by the end of spring.

Call it the smartphone version of Matheny’s catcher chapter.

As the Cardinals update their instruction for catchers and turn to youth at catcher, a strength Pogue mentioned is also different — it’s not a club counting on one catcher as it did for decades with Molina and others but two (or more) catchers growing stronger together. What they lack in experience, they can gain together.

“We talk a lot during games,” Herrera said of he and Pages. “We support each other. At the end of the day, we want to have a family in there. The team needs to feel like family. And when you feel like that you’re going to play better because we’ll help each other in any situation. That can be pitch calling. That can be, oh, I don’t feel right this way receiving. We have good communication.”

Herrera said he found out about Contreras’ move to first base the same way fans did — from news media. And his reaction was exactly what the Cardinals advertised.

“More opportunity for me,” Herrera said.

Well, technically, that was his response.

His reaction was to get back to work he was already doing.

“They’re both ready for the challenge,” Pogue said. “I don’t feel like either one of them is beating their chest and saying they’re the starting catcher. They’re open to help. They’re open to learning — which I think is a big part of it. I think that’s exciting.”