Just when it looked like things couldn’t get any worse, Cardinals lost their best hitter
Already fighting to find offense wherever possible, the St. Louis Cardinals suffered a tragic blow to their recovery hopes on Tuesday night at the exact instant J.D. Martinez’s bat came crashing into Willson Contreras’s left forearm.
The team announced that Contreras suffered a fracture of the forearm, creating an enormous hole in the heart of the lineup and sidelining far and away their most productive offensive player for an extended period.
Iván Herrera replaced Contreras in Tuesday night’s game and will take over as the starting catcher for the time being, and rookie Pedro Pagés was removed from Triple-A Memphis’s game to allow for his recall in order to serve as Herrera’s backup.
In Herrera and Pagés, the Cardinals will be turning over catching responsibilities to two players with a combined 31 starts behind the plate in the big leagues, all of which belong to Herrera. But whatever impact Contreras has had behind the plate – his defensive output, particularly his pitch framing, has been dramatically improved – he far exceeds at the plate.
Herrera did turn in strong offense early in the season, driving three home runs. For a brief period, Pagés was added to the roster as a third catcher in order to provide more opportunities for Herrera to act as a pinch hitter or designated hitter.
Since April 19, though, Herrera is 3-for-25 with one double and two runs batted in. The double and the RBI came Monday in the first game of this series against the Mets, tying the game in the bottom of the sixth inning. The Cardinals will need him to find his prior success, and quickly.
Contreras entered play Tuesday as the only player on the roster with an OPS above .800; he was also the only player above .900. He leads the team in home runs and doubles, and has been thrust into the second and third spots in the lineup in recent weeks as Paul Goldschmidt has continued to struggle.
By OPS+, Contreras, Nolan Arenado and Masyn Winn have been the only three Cardinals hitters this season to perform at league average or better. He is a vocal and passionate teammate, a leader on the field, and in many ways the central figure in the ways the team positioned itself this winter on both sides of the ball.
In his absence, the Cardinals will continue to rely on a stable veteran starting staff to guide the catchers in game planning and management, though the rotation also suffered a blow within the last week as Steven Matz was placed on the injured list with a strained back.
Entering play Tuesday at a season-worst five games below .500, the level of urgency around the team has been at a peak. Through grinding and fighting for solutions at the plate, it has been Contreras’s consistency which has acted as a lodestar, the one point of stability in a sea of turbulent performances.
Now, for at least a period of weeks, that star has been extinguished.
The howls of pain from Contreras which were audible on the fourth level of Busch Stadium carried with them the sounds of concern and frustration from the dugout, as manager Oli Marmol squatted pensively with Contreras as he was treated by head trainer Adam Olsen.
His face was grim, set. From his seat, he both saw and heard the contact, and from Contreras, he both saw and heard the obvious pain and fear.
A team which was already scrambling to fill significant holes in its offensive attack was ripped a fresh wound on Tuesday, and there are no readily available bandages which can cleanly patch it.
All that’s left is to wait for Contreras to recover and, for the Cardinals, to hope that there’s season left to salvage when he returns.
