ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ”

The humor admittedly is dark, but it fits. You see, the more Cardinals left-hander Zack Thompson’s words from Winter Warm-Up rattle around in the brain, the more a Monty Python scene comes to mind.

It’s as if Cardinals fans, eager to latch onto the next up-and-coming prospect with high upside, have hoisted Thompson over their shoulder ready to . Meanwhile, Thompson protests meekly, “I’m not dead.”

Thompson, now at the ripe old age of 27, acknowledged that he has quickly become the last of class. Members of his cohort, prospects who were making their way through the Cardinals’ farm system at the same time as Thompson, have either made their mark or have flipped the page and moved on to other organizations.

Thompson was the 19th player picked in the that included Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman, Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., Nationals shortstop CJ Abrams, Blue Jays pitcher Alek Mahoah, Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll and (20th pick), and Thompson knows there’s likely not a lot of sand remaining on his hourglass with the Cardinals.

“My wave has kind of come and gone,” Thompson said in a matter-of-fact manner. “We’ve got guys like Quinn (Mathews), (Michael) McGreevy, Gordon (Graceffo), Sem (Robberse), Tekoah (Roby), Tink (Hence). All these guys are coming, and they’re all nasty. So it’s going to be exciting to see those guys get their chance.”

While Thompson clearly understands his standing and the changing landscape within the organization’s pitching corps, he’s also not packing up his gloves and cleats and calling it a day. He changed his offseason training program, reconnected with a coach, and relocated to Sarasota, Florida.

None of that means he’ll definitely experience the breakout campaign that will solidify him as part of the Cardinals’ future, but that would be a great little yarn.

There’s really nothing like seeing a guy find success after folks seemingly had given up on him ever realizing the lofty potential previously forecast.

That competitive dissonance, the need to prove doubters wrong, is one of the inspiring things about sports. It’s the reason guys always make ridiculous claims that “nobody believed we could do it except the guys in this locker room” when in reality they were heavily favored to win. The narrative is so captivating that guys create it where it doesn’t exist.

In Thompson’s case, the narrative already has taken shape.

Go back to ’s . The top five players were outfielder Dylan Carlson, infielder Nolan Gorman, left-handed pitcher Matthew Liberatore, catcher Ivan Herrera and Thompson.

The Cardinals traded Carlson to Tampa Bay last summer. The Rays non-tendered him in November, and he signed a one-year contract with the Baltimore Orioles last week. Gorman led the Cardinals with 27 home runs in 2023, but he struggled last season. The Cardinals have committed to getting Gorman everyday playing time in 2025.

Liberatore, once thought of as a rotation option, became a key piece of the bullpen last season. The Cardinals moved veteran Willson Contreras to first base in part to clear room for Herrera and Pedro Pages to take over the catching duties.

Pages and Thompson were part of the same draft class in 2019. Right-hander Andre Pallante and left-hander Connor Thomas were also part of that class. The Brewers selected Thomas in December’s Rule 5 draft.

Last season, Pallante made the leap that Thompson had seemed poised to make.

Pallante, like Thompson in previous years, had found a place on the major-league roster as a reliever. But then Pallante went back to the minors last season to stretch out as a starter and made himself a critical part of the club’s starting pitching plans with his performance upon his return to the majors.

“It’s fun, but at the same time when you see all the guys you came up with are either in St. Louis or, unfortunately, a lot of them have moved on as well,” Thompson said of being the last guy standing from his wave of Cardinals prospects.

“I mean, it’s a weird feeling. It’s cool knowing that a lot of those guys have made it. They’re sticking. They’re part of the young core here. It’s been a weird shift seeing those guys come and go and then seeing this next generation come.”

While the Cardinals have newer, younger names on the pitching front, Thompson continues to hang around. He’s still on the 40-man roster, and he’s got a minor-league option remaining.

He showed signs he should be a strong rotation candidate at the end of the 2023 season despite yo-yoing between starter and reliever as well as between the majors and the minors. He earned the chance to jump into the starting rotation last spring when Sonny Gray started the season on the injured list.

Unfortunately for Thompson, he made just two starts and appeared in five total games in the big leagues — and posted a 9.53 ERA with a 1.88 WHIP — before he spent the rest of last season in the minors.

He’ll go into camp this spring and stretch out as a starter, initially. He’ll be ready for whatever role may present itself.

During Winter Warm-Up, Thompson sounded cautiously optimistic that he’d gotten to the bottom of the issues last season that robbed him of some velocity (his average fastball was 90.7 mph in the majors in 2024).

Thompson’s ability or inability to put himself back in the forefront of Cardinals pitching conversations will be one of the more intriguing things to follow.

“It takes an opportunity, then taking advantage of the opportunity,” Thompson said. “I’ve had opportunities here in the last few years and I haven’t taken it and run with it. It’s up to me to go out and perform if I get an opportunity this year.”

Cardinals fans, he’s not done quite yet.

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Not all that long ago, Dylan Carlson was the crown jewel of the Cardinals’ player development system.

Now, at 26 years old, he will head into spring training as a spare outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles after signing a one-year deal with that playoff contender. Carlson struggled to develop his left-side hitting over the years, then his 2024 season was ruined before it started because of a shoulder injury suffered in the spring.

The Tampa Bay Rays acquired him from the Cardinals ahead of the trade deadline for a reliever the Cardinals subsequently dumped. The Rays moved on from Carlson after the season, declining to offer him arbitration.

Each year brings another wave of young outfielders into the major leagues, so Carlson is on the brink of being washed away.

Writing for FanGraphs, Davy Andrews had this take on Carlson:

It’s probably too late to keep dreaming on Dylan Carlson. Nonetheless, this move makes a lot of sense both for him and the Orioles.

Carlson was a first-round draft pick by the Cardinals in 2016, and he eventually rose to 16th on our top 100 prospects lest. He struggled in his 2020 debut — though he got hot enough down the stretch that the Cardinals batted him cleanup in their three-game wild card series loss to the Padres — but put up a promising full-season campaign in 2021. That season, he batted .266/.343/.437 with 18 home runs and a 111 wRC+ across 149 games, good for 2.4 WAR and a third-place finish in the rookie of the year voting. And then he plunged into a spiral of injury and underperformance.

He made two trips to the injured list in both 2022 and 2023 for four separate injuries; he missed a combined 29 days in 2022 with a hamstring strain and a thumb strain, and then in 2023, an ankle sprain and an oblique strain cost him a total of 76 days. While he was out with the oblique strain, he underwent season-ending arthroscopic surgery on the same ankle he’d sprained earlier that year. During spring training in 2024, he sprained the AC joint in his left shoulder in an outfield collision with human mountain Jordan Walker ...

Carlson put up an xwOBA between .301 and .322 in every season between 2020 and 2023, and a DRC+ between 97 and 104 in every season between 2021 and 2023. When he returned from that shoulder injury, he wasn’t himself.

... The Cardinals traded him to the Rays at the deadline, and the Rays non-tendered him after the season rather than pay him a couple million dollars in arbitration. Now, the Orioles have decided that they like him better than the $975,000 they used to have.

The projections see Carlson bouncing back to the league-average bat he was over the first four years of his career, and that’s presumably what the Orioles are expecting. However, let’s take just a moment to dream. We don’t know how much speed and power Carlson would have if he were to finally have the chance at a full, healthy season. His zone swing rate and contact rate plummeted in 2024, and you have to imagine that had something to do with his physical limitations at the plate.

Over the course of his career, he’s got a solid .330 wOBA against fastballs, but Statcast puts his run value against them at -17, which speaks to an approach issue. He takes too many fastballs and whiffs at way too many fastballs, but when he hits them, he has a great deal of success. So why isn’t he looking for them more often?

Yeah, well, there’s a lot of mystery surrounding Carlson and his inability to reach his full potential.

Here is what folks have been writing about Our National Pastime:

David Schoenfield, , on the Blue Jays signing pitcher Max Scherzer: “As far as backup plans go, signing a 40-year-old future Hall of Famer who might still have something left isn’t the worst idea, but let’s be honest here: Scherzer was most definitely not Plan A for the Toronto Blue Jays. ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” were the runner-up for Roki Sasaki. Before that, the Jays had reportedly discussed a franchise-record contract with Corbin Burnes only to see him sign with the Diamondbacks. ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” were linked to Max Fried before he signed with the Yankees and Juan Soto before he signed with the Mets.

Heck, they might still be in on Pete Alonso and Alex Bregman, the two top remaining free agents — and they have made other significant moves, signing free agents Anthony Santander and Jeff Hoffman and trading for defensive wizard Andres Gimenez to play second base.

In other words, Scherzer is meant to be a complementary addition to the roster, not the centerpiece of a team trying to return to the playoffs after plummeting to a 74-88 record in 2024. The contract reflects that: It’s the standard $15 million, one-year deal that Justin Verlander, Charlie Morton and Alex Cobb all signed — with an extra $500,000 thrown in. Call that a Canadian tax.

Can Scherzer help? He’s clearly on the downside of his career, with his last dominant season coming with the Mets in 2022, and his yearly WAR figures since 2021 have dropped from 6.1 to 5.2 to 3.2 to 0.4 with the Rangers in 2024. He made just nine starts after spending the first three months of the season recovering from offseason surgery to repair a herniated disk in his back and then later missing time with fatigue and nerve issues and a hamstring strain. He finished 2-4 with a 3.95 ERA and 22.6% strikeout rate — the first time he had been under 27% since 2011.

You never want to bet against somebody as competitive as Scherzer, but age and injuries are usually a double whammy.”

Ginny Searle, Baseball Prospectus, on the Astros trading Ryan Pressly to the Cubs: “Since his debut in 2013, only Kenley Jansen and Bryan Shaw have accumulated more innings than Pressly’s 650⅓. He’s also had the third-highest workload among relievers since the mid-2018 trade that brought him to Houston, and accumulated 7.0 WARP in his Astros years.

... Are all the peripherals going the wrong direction? For sure. Pressly’s 93.7-mph average fastball velocity last season was the lowest of his career and down some three ticks from his peak. The strikeout rate looks even more dire, with Pressly’s 23.8% K-rate last year down more than 12 percentage points from his 2022 peak against the second-highest walk rate he posted in Houston.

StuffPro and PitchPro still saw Pressly’s curveball as a marquee pitch last season, but evaluated his fastball and slider as taking significant steps backward. Still, it’s not like a 3.49 ERA is unusable, and DRA largely supported that performance.

The 36-year-old got more than half of batted balls on the ground last year, and is unlikely to again suffer through a .336 batting average against. It seems counterintuitive for the Astros to move their most dependable reliever for nearly their entire competitive window, and a reasonably paid one under contract for one more season, simply because he performed a bit worse in the prior year ... which makes it all the more frustrating that precedent suggests the Astros will be proven more right than wrong.”

Esteban Rivera, FanGraphs, after former Mariners reliever Paul Sewald signed with the Guardians: “Sewald’s deal ... is for one year and $6 million, with a $10 million mutual option for 2026. The move solidifies the middle part of their bullpen, which already was one of the best in the majors.

With Emmanuel Clase, Cade Smith and Hunter Gaddis anchoring the group, Sewald will occupy a lesser role than he’s held over the last few years. That’s not a bad thing for him, as he can work to return to form without the pressure of having to deliver in high-leverage innings.

As velocities have increased over the years, and hitters have adapted to them, the margins for error for pitchers living in the low-90s band have grown thinner and thinner. What we saw from Sewald last season is a good example of what happens when pitchers with such a profile lose even just one tick on their fastballs.”

Megaphone

“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kind of things that (the Dodgers are) doing, We’ll see if it pays off.”

New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner, crying poor.

St. Louis native Max Scherzer is joining the Toronto Blue Jays, agreeing to a 15.5 million, one-year contract on Thursday, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal.

The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the agreement had not been announced and was pending a physical.

The 40-year-old Scherzer (Parkway Central, Mizzou) was limited to nine starts with Texas last year, going 2-4 with a 3.95 ERA. The three-time Cy Young Award winner opened the season on the injured list while he recovered from lower back surgery. He also was on the IL from Aug. 2 to Sept. 13 because of shoulder fatigue, and he missed the end of the season because of a left hamstring strain.

Scherzer joins a rotation that is fronted by Kevin Gausman, José Berríos and Chris Bassitt. The Blue Jays also have Bowden Francis coming off an impressive rookie season and Yariel Rodríguez, who signed a $32 million, five-year contract last February.

The Blue Jays finished last in the AL East with a 74-88 record in 2024. They haven't won a playoff game since they were eliminated by Cleveland in the 2016 AL Championship Series. ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” were swept in the wild-card round in 2020, 2022 and 2023.

The addition of Scherzer marks a second notable move for Toronto after it finalized a $92.5 million, five-year contract with outfielder Anthony Santander on Jan. 20.

The Blue Jays made a play for Shohei Ohtani last year and were in the mix for Juan Soto before he joined the New York Mets in December. The Blue Jays also were reportedly one of the finalists for Roki Sasaki before the Japanese pitcher signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Scherzer became a free agent after he completed a $130 million, three-year contract. He agreed to the deal with the Mets in November 2021, but he was traded to Texas in July 2023.

The right-hander won his second World Series championship in his first year with the Rangers. He also won it all with the Washington Nationals in 2019.

Scherzer was selected by Arizona in the first round of the 2006 amateur draft out of the University of Missouri. He made his big league debut with the Diamondbacks in 2008.

He won his first Cy Young Award when he went 21-3 with a 2.90 ERA in 32 starts for Detroit in 2013. The eight-time All-Star earned consecutive NL Cy Young Awards with Washington in 2016 and 2017.

Scherzer is 216-112 with a 3.16 ERA in 466 career games over 17 seasons, including 457 starts. He also has 3,407 strikeouts in 2,878 innings.

He ranks second among active pitchers in strikeouts, wins and innings, trailing former teammate Justin Verlander in each category.

Scherzer joins other St. Louis natives on the move

It's been an eventful offseason for many St. Louis natives across Major League Baseball.

• Devin Williams, one of baseball's best relievers, was traded to the Yankees last month. Williams attended Hazelwood West and played all of his six previous MLB seasons in Milwaukee.
• Slugger Jake Burger (CBC, Missouri State) was traded to Texas from Miami last month.

The Hot Stove needs a spark, and the Best Podcast in Baseball has flint ready to strike steel.

The forecast calls for a flurry of moves in Major League Baseball before next month's arrival of spring training, and big reason for that isn't market cooling. After the brief, jubilant sparks of signings around the annual winter meetings, the free-agent market has gone cold, and the Cardinals have had difficult finding a trade partner for Nolan Arenado as a result.

Does Major League Baseball need a winter deadline for transactions to spur moves, to grab the headlines?

ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ” baseball writer Derrick Goold and sports columnist Jeff Gordon discuss how creating a signing deadline in the offseason would change the pace of free agency and possibly benefit. The two writers discuss the history of baseball's deadline-less offseason, compare to other leagues with their frenzy of signings in a allowed window, and explore when and how a deadline would work for a sport that has long defined itself by just always being there, even if being there means being in the background.

Goold wonders if a winter deadline might shake owners from their methodical, ruminating, risk-adverse approaches by limiting the time they have to marinate over moves and talks themselves out of it.

The podcast explores the Chicago Cubs moves and how the Wrigley Astros will tilt the NL Central, Major League Baseball's most forgiving division. The discussion touches on whether the Cardinals would be the division favorite if they made the moves for outfielder Kyle Tucker and reliever Ryan Pressly that the Cubs did. And finally, the podcast concludes with a suggestion -- really, a solution -- that blends all of the topics about deadlines and doldrums into a proposal that's three words long:

Luxury tax amnesty.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the ÁńÁ«ÊÓÆ”, , and Derrick Goold. BPIB is available weekly wherever you find your podcasts. Please rate and review the podcast because it is feedback from the community of listeners that has shaped BPIB as it nears its 13th year.

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Albert Pujols’ first season as a manager in professional baseball culminated with a championship celebration for the Cardinals great.

A spark from Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero helped secure it.

Behind a go-ahead solo home run from Caminero in the ninth inning Monday night in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Pujols’ Leones del Escogido won 6-5 over the Tigres del Licey in Game 7 to become the Dominican Republic’s winter league (LIDOM) champions. The win clinched Escogido its 17th LIDOM title and its first in nine years — the last of which came over Licey during the 2015-16 season.

In his first season managing a professional baseball team, Pujols guided Escogido to a 24-25 finish in the regular season — a record that clinched Pujols’ club the fourth and final spot in LIDOM’s postseason format. Once in the playoffs, Pujols’ Escogido club went 10-5 and produced a plus-42 run differential in the league’s round-robin semifinal to advance to the finals for a matchup against Licey.

Escogido came into Monday’s decisive Game 7 after a Game 6 loss Sunday during which it went from holding a 4-2 lead in the ninth inning to losing 7-4 in 13 innings.

On Monday, Escogido took a 5-4 lead over Licey in Game 7 following a three-run sixth inning but had that one-run lead erased in the seventh inning on an RBI single from designated hitter Harold Ramirez that scored right fielder Emilio Bonifacio.

The tied ballgame set the stage for Caminero, a 21-year-old shortstop ranked by Baseball America as the Rays’ top prospect entering the 2024 season, to provide some heroics with one out in the ninth inning.

Caminero belted a 454-foot solo home run to center field that hit off the stadium’s video board. Caminero’s tape-measure homer emptied Escogido’s dugout as his teammates, his coaches and even the team’s mascot celebrated with Caminero as he made his way up the first base line for a home run trot that took the 21-year-old nearly a minute to complete.

In the bottom half of the frame, right fielder Socrates Brito’s diving catch on a shallow fly ball kept runners at second and third base from scoring and sealed the win for Escogido.

During the path to the championship, Escogido claimed three of its 10 round-robin victories against the Aguilas Cibaenas, the club managed by fellow former Cardinal Yadier Molina. Molina’s club went 4-11 in round-robin play and was in fourth place among the four teams that qualified.

Molina took over as Aguilas manager Oct. 28 in place of former manager Manny Garcia. The Aguilas went 2-7 under Garcia before Molina managed the club to a 22-15 finish and a second-place finish in the regular-season standings.

Molina finished second in LIDOM’s manager of the year voting behind former Cardinal Fernando Tatis Sr., who managed the Estrellas Orientales to a 30-20 regular season and a first-place finish in the standings. Although Molina garnered 34 first-place votes to Tatis’ 33, Tatis totaled 269 votes while Molina received 262.

Pujols came in fourth in LIDOM manager of the year voting behind Licey manager Gilbert Gomez.

With the championship win, the Pujols-managed club will represent the Dominican Republic in this year’s Caribbean Series.

This year’s Caribbean Series will be hosted in Mexicali, Mexico, and it will feature championship teams representing top winter leagues in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Japan. Japan, which will be represented by the Japan Breeze, is a first-time participant in the annual winter baseball tournament.

Pujols and his club will begin the tournament with a Jan. 31 matchup against the Cardenales de Lara of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League.

Caribbean Series games will air in English on MLB Network.

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