St. Louis Cardinals: Paul DeJong’s IL stint brings up Max Moroff

Paul DeJong is going to be out for a while with a cracked rib and in his place, the St. Louis Cardinals have brought up Max Moroff.

Paul DeJong’s start to the 2021 season has been worse than everyone wanted. Though he has hit seven homers, his .177 batting average and 82 OPS+ is not good enough from the St. Louis Cardinals’ shortstop.

He was going to be given time to work through his struggles, but now has hit the IL with a fractured rib.

In a corresponding move, the Cardinals moved Jordan Hicks to the 60-day IL and called up Max Moroff from AAA to fill DeJong’s roster spot.

Presumably, this is the pitch that did it for DeJong, who finished the game and started on the next day before getting pulled after two at-bats. Per Zachary Silver of MLB.com, Mike Shildt said that he hopes DeJong’s IL stint can be less than 14 days long.

In the first game without DeJong in San Diego, Tommy Edman flipped over to short and Matt Carpenter was given the reigns at second. After another 0-3 night, fans seem to be starting to lose patience for Carpenter being in the starting lineup at all.

As far as Max Moroff goes, the 28-year-old middle infielder has been absolutely on fire to start the season at Memphis. Through 26 at-bats, he hit .538 with four homers. Moroff signed with the Cardinals this winter as a minor league free agent. During spring training though, it was the other shortstop minor league free agent signing, Jose Rondon that stole the spotlight.

At Memphis this year, Moroff and Rondon have been batting second and third in the lineup for the most part and the lefty has made the most of it.

In my opinion, I’d rather see a rotation of Moroff and Edmundo Sosa at shortstop with Edman staying at second for the duration of DeJong’s injury, but Mike Shildt does seem to want to give Matt Carpenter as much of a chance as possible to figure things out as possible.

DeJong’s power will be missed, but he hadn’t started hot on either side of the ball. Moroff has earned the call-up, the hope now is just that he gets to see some playing time before DeJong returns.