St. Louis Cardinals: 7 Cardinals who were blessed by Devil Magic

These seven St. Louis Cardinals players performed far beyond expectations with the team, whether it was for a few weeks or several seasons.

“Cardinals Devil Magic,” also known as “pixie dust,” is a phenomenon that we mortals don’t fully understand. It appears on rare occasions, dusting random players and fading away. The result is that every once in a while, a little-known St. Louis Cardinals player will emerge from obscurity and appear to be the second coming of Stan Musial or Bob Gibson.

Cardinals Devil Magic doesn’t treat all its recipients equally, though; while some players have managed to make the Devil Magic last for years during their Cardinals tenure, the dust doesn’t take as well to other players, and they fizzle out sooner than you can blink.

As there is no cut-and-dried definition for Cardinals Devil Magic, I will give it my best interpretation and apply it to the players in this list. I take it to mean a player who was never much of a prospect and massively outperformed expectations while with the Cardinals. Generally, these players weren’t drafted highly or scouted heavily.

I was originally going to make this a ranked list, because everybody loves a good ranking, but as Devil Magic manifests itself in different ways, it’s difficult to gauge whom it most affected and how to categorize the players. How much of it was the magic, and how much of it was the player’s true skill? It’s really impossible to tell.

Since I can’t come up with a good way to rank the players, this will be a chronological list of seven players who were sprinkled with the devil’s dust.