St. Louis Cardinals should trade for Willson Contreras

The St. Louis Cardinals are struggling at catcher, with all four players they’ve tried at the position this season struggling at the plate.  It’s time to bring in outside reinforcements.

Catcher generally is a defense-first position, with many squads sending out backstops on a daily basis who can call a good game, frame pitches effectively to steal a few strikes for their pitchers, gun down a reasonable percentage of base stealers…and provide close to zero with their bats.  It’s suboptimal, but when the options are few, it’s the path teams often have to follow.

The individual ineptitude of the Cardinals‘ catchers is detailed here, and if you sum up their performances through their Saturday, July 23, win over the Cincinnati Reds, they have produced a .199/.257/.257 line with three home runs, 28 RBI, 23 runs scored, and a 73:22 K:BB ratio in a combined 360 plate appearances.  There’s no way to put a positive spin on such dreadful output.  St. Louis catchers simply have not hit this season.

Yadier Molina is rumored to be returning soon from his Injured List sojourn to Puerto Rico, and while he and Andrew Knizner have been the leading hitters at the position, neither of them has been impressive, and Molina’s age and well-worn knees don’t portend a likely return to even the 85 OPS+ range he achieved during the 2019-’21 time period.

Considering the available solutions, there’s a clear path to improvement, though it would be jarring to a number of Cardinals fans: trade for Willson Contreras.