Three Cardinal players to move on from right now

Tyler O’Neill

On August 6th our very own Josh Jacobs wrote an excellent article on Tyler O’Neill where he said “I am beginning to believe the Cardinals' best path toward contention in 2024 will be by keeping Tyler O'Neill in their starting outfield.” Tyler O’Neill was promptly shut down for a couple of games for ‘knee tightness”.

Josh is right, he is an amazing talent. A Gold Glove, a power hitter with speed, and recently he has been tearing the cover off the ball. He is the good Tyler O’Neill again. He is also the O’Neill who over six years has only played a hundred games in only one of those seasons.

We look at Tyler O’Neill and see the player from 2021 that hit .286, had 34 home runs, and won a gold glove. However, that Tyler O’Neill was an outlier. If you take out that one amazing year out of the equation, in the five other years he has averaged 62 games played, 8 home runs, and 4 stolen bases.

In 2021 he had an average of .286. The two years since, .228 and .242.

His slug percentage was .560 and then .392 and .396. The average MLB Slug this year is .411.

His OPS was .912 in 2021 and then .700 and .711 this year. The MLB average OPS is .730.

The numbers from this year and last year are more in line with the years prior to his amazing 2021 season. We should be looking at his performance over the five years rather than the one year. Those five years show an average player that can’t stay on the field.