St. Louis Cardinals Hopes for the Offseason: Jhonny Peralta

Jhonny Peralta was the great surprise of the 2014 season. I hope that 2015 keeps the great surprise rolling!

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Peralta was brought in with the hopes of being the St. Louis Cardinals everyday shortstop for a few seasons. It was a great idea after fans endured several seasons of some pretty mediocre, albeit fan favorites, filling the spot … most recently Pete Kozma. But. Even faced with the prospect of Peralta or Kozma, fans scoffed at the idea of Peralta. Consider his age? Consider his range? Consider he’s only been in the American League? And… that Performance Enhancing Drug suspension. Oh, that PED suspension.

Peralta proved all the nay-sayers wrong. Pretty quickly.

Take a look at his stats:

YearTmGPAABRH2BHRRBISBCSBBSOBAOBPSLGOPS
2014STL157628560611473821753258112.263.336.443.779

And P.S.? He has a WAR of 5.7. Yes, 5.7 wins above replacement. Wow!

Great 2014. And my main hope is for him to get even better in 2015.

* Another year wiser. Another year in the league, another year seeing National League pitching. It will be interesting to see how well he hits in 2015. Look at those numbers… they aren’t bad now. It could and should be better this next season.

* Leadership. Being a good, older brother figure to the younger guys. As has been mentioned, this team is going to have a pretty big hole in its heart with the tragic loss of Oscar Taveras. He and several of his young teammates were pretty close to the young man. He will be able to help these younger guys.

*  Kolten Wong. Jhonny and Kolten need to keep working closely together to continue their superb middle infield tandem next season. They must make it to where no name can sneak into the mix during spring training. They must be the set for this season. Dean Anna, Ty Kelly, Greg Garcia and Kozma will get playing time giving these guys a day off here and there.

Basically? Jhonny should take 2014 and just build on it.

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