Three St. Louis Cardinals who will improve this year and two who will regress

These three St. Louis Cardinals should have markedly better years in 2023, while two others will likely face a downturn.

Rebounders. Post-hype sleepers. Stumblers. With a new season comes a new opportunity for every player to show that he can take that next step and have a breakout year. While some players on the St. Louis Cardinals and elsewhere will successfully continue to build on their careers through hard work and adjustments, others will find the climb more harrowing than they expected and slip down the mountain, whether it comes through age-related decline, bad luck or just a mysterious loss of previously reliable skills.

Although it's impossible to predict with complete accuracy how a given player will do in the next season, the development and evolution of sabermetrics have made it so scouts, team executives, and even fans can analyze the tendencies of players and the outcomes they provided and make an educated guess on how that player will perform in the future.

The Cardinals, like every other team, had players fail to meet expectations and others surpass them. Everyone is trying to find that new approach to give himself a leg up on the competition and improve his results, and sabermetrics can't account for the changes a player makes in the offseason.

Still, be it through analytical sabermetric predictions or just some old-fashioned gut feelings, these are three players I believe will have a significantly better 2023 than 2022 and two players who will face tough backslides this season.

Progression: Tyler O'Neill

Tyler O'Neill battled injuries all through 2022, but even during the periods he was healthy, he didn't come close to reaching his numbers from 2021. Two years ago, O'Neill hit .286 with 34 home runs and won his second Gold Glove Award. In 2022, he managed to hit only .228 with 14 long balls.

There are reasons to be optimistic about O'Neill in 2023, though. He was 16% above league average in exit velocity, so he still hit the ball hard. Also above average were his hard-hit percentage, barrel percentage, and sweet spot percentage. Good things were still expected to happen when he hit the ball; the results just didn't show it.

"When he hit the ball" is often the main issue with O'Neill given his propensity to strike out often. However, he improved upon his swing-and-miss rate in 2022; which dropped from 34.7% to 30.9%, which was aided by a decrease in his chase rate.

There were obviously some parts of O'Neill's 2022 season that didn't match 2021; if they all had, he would have had a better season. O'Neill's ground balls increased and fly balls decreased. Ground balls aren't a death knell for O'Neill given his elite speed, but he also didn't go the other way as often. His 42% pull rate suggested that he was attempting to sell out for power and wasn't trusting his natural approach.

O'Neill has been a popular name among the fanbase as a trade candidate, but he has every reason to be able to return to form in 2023 and remain an everyday outfielder despite likely competition from Jordan Walker.

Progression: Jack Flaherty

Injuries have ravaged Jack Flaherty’s career since his outstanding second half in 2019. Since 2020, Flaherty has only managed to pitch 154.2 innings and has an ERA of 3.90. But if he has shaken off the injury bug for good, Flaherty could prosper in 2023.

Much of this optimism comes from Flaherty’s underlying stats at the end of 2022. Flaherty experienced massive struggles in three starts in June before being shut down again, but in the six starts he made after returning from the injured list for the second time, he was able to show signs of progress. 

His fastball velocity jumped by about 2 mph, and while he had a poor showing against Pittsburgh on Sept. 10, where he walked four batters in five innings, Flaherty managed a FIP of 3.47 in his three starts after that. His strikeout percentage in these three games was nearly double that of his comeback attempt in June. He struck out 20 batters and walked eight in 17 innings during that stretch. The control wasn’t fully back, but that is normal for a pitcher returning from injury.

Although the gradual piling up of injuries could mean Flaherty never reaches the heights of 2019, where he looked to be a future Cy Young Award winner, a healthy season should allow Flaherty to get back in a rhythm and be an anchor for the rotation.

Regression: Brendan Donovan

Brendan Donovan had a marvelous debut season, finishing third in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. He hit .281 and demonstrated elite plate discipline, but he’s going to have a big test in front of him if he wants to come close to those numbers again.

Donovan’s exit velocity was in the 25th percentile of major league hitters, and his barreled ball percentage was only 3.4%, which placed him in the eighth percentile. It’s clear that power is not a part of Donovan’s game, and his outstanding walk and contact rate should help him get on base, but it doesn’t appear that he will be an extra-base threat. Pitchers aren’t going to shy away from you if they know the worst that can happen is a single.

This means that pitchers are likely going to attack Donovan aggressively in the zone and force him to swing. His ground ball percentage was 54.3% in 2022, and given his merely adequate speed, he’d be better served to hit the ball in the air more.

Donovan’s rookie year blasted most fans’ expectations out of the water, but there are adjustments he’ll need to make if he hopes to have anything resembling an encore. He’ll need to prove he can elevate the ball more and hit it harder; otherwise, he probably won’t be able to rely on his on-base percentage to prop up his numbers this time around.

Regression: Paul Goldschmidt

The National League MVP in 2022, Paul Goldschmidt finished the season with a thud after dominating for five months, leading the league in OPS+ and even entering the conversation for the Triple Crown. Goldschmidt will be 35 for most of the 2023 season, and while the age-related decline is likely, his descent could be steeper than many fans expect.

Throughout most of Goldschmidt’s career, he has been vulnerable to the slider. In 2022, he saw 714 sliders, the most he’d ever been exposed to in his career, at least since 2017 when this started being tracked. His batting average against sliders was a respectable .276. However, his expected batting average was 90 points lower, at .186. This indicates that Goldschmidt was extremely fortunate last year. Also concerning is his expected weighted on-base average against four-seam fastballs, which was a career-low .359. 

Goldschmidt’s defense slipped last year as well, as the four-time Gold Glover graded out as five outs below average. Although first base is a position where a strong glove is a luxury rather than a necessity, further deterioration from Goldschmidt in that domain could become a problem.

Goldschmidt is almost certainly on the downslope of his career, even if last year didn’t indicate it. He can likely still be productive, but expecting him to sniff his 2022 numbers would be unrealistic.

It will be fun to see how these players pan out this season. Can the players expected to improve do just that, and can others stave off likely regression? Here’s to another fascinating year.