5 Cardinals who played their way onto Opening Day roster, 3 who played their way off

Michael Siani is playing himself off the Opening Day roster

Last season, Michael Siani stole the show on a consistent basis with his Gold Glove-caliber defense in center field. At the same time, Siani also made many of us want to turn off our televisions with his terrible offensive production, and unfortunately, he looks even worse in camp so far.

Siani slashed .228/.285/.285 with two home runs and 20 RBI in 124 games played, good for a 64 wRC+. Yes, Siani was 36% below league average at the plate, and he even did that with the 27th-highest BABIP in baseball last year. Yikes.

If you thumb over to Siani's spring training numbers so far, you'll see that he's tied with Nolan Arenado and Alec Burleson for the third-most at-bats on the team in camp. Must mean he's showing them a lot at the plate right? Nope. In 33 at-bats, Siani is slashing .061/.162/.061; that's just two hits and four walks in all of those plate appearances.

The games this spring are just confirming to us what we already know to be true about Siani: He is not a Major League-caliber hitter. His glove is so, so good, and it would be really fun if he could figure out how to get on base, but he can't. And the Cardinals have far too many other options on their roster to continue to force the issue with Siani.

Even when Siani had *some* success at the plate last regular season, it correlated with a stretch where his BABIP was north of .400. He just has not shown us anything at this point that indicates he will be better offensively, and so the Cardinals cannot fool themselves into that experience again this year.

I don't mind sending Siani down to Triple-A and seeing if he can figure things out there. But for now, he does not belong on the Opening Day roster.