Counting down the 20 most important Cardinals in 2023: #20 Juan Yepez

The 20 most important St. Louis Cardinals in 2023: #20 Juan Yepez

The St. Louis Cardinals are just a few weeks away from Opening Day of the 2023 Major League season, and there are so many different players that could play a huge role in the success, or failure, of the club this coming season.

The position player group is as deep as I can ever remember. Gone are the days of wondering if the Cardinals can start more than four quality hitters in their lineup. Now the club has to weigh which high-performing players have to be sent down to Triple-A, even if their performance warrants starting on a big league club.

The pitching staff has so many different wild cards, both in the rotation and in the bullpen. Although the offense looks locked in and ready to be one of the best in baseball, the club's pitching is a different story. There are a lot of quality arms, but whether it's age or injury risk, there are so many variables at play that will influence the success of this team. No matter how good the offense is, the club will need quality pitching to compete.

Some of the Redbird Rants team and I took time this last week to rank our most important Cardinals heading into the 2023 season, and we averaged our rankings out to create a comprehensive ranking amongst our team. While there are way more than 20 players who could have a major impact on this club's fortunes this year, we felt like these 20 will play the biggest roles this coming season.

Each day, for the next 20 days, we will be counting down the 20 most important Cardinals of the 2023 season. This ranking is not simply a list of the best players on this team. Instead, we sought to figure out whose performance may be most directly linked to this team reaching its ceiling, or falling all the way to its floor. Let's take a look at our number 20 player on this list: Juan Yepez.