Cardinals have assembled a curious glut of first basemen in St. Louis and Memphis. Why?

There’s not always a great deal of deeper meaning to be gleaned from a baseball team’s waiver wire moves at the end of January. If it’s true that the 26th player on a 26-player active roster is too often criticized and dissected, then it’s surely also true that the 40th person on a 40-player roster matters even less than that.

The St. Louis Cardinals claimed lefty first baseman Alfonso Rivas from the Los Angeles Angels on Monday. They’re the third team of the winter for Rivas, who was designated for assignment by Pittsburgh in November, claimed by Cleveland, subsequently designated by Cleveland in December and claimed by the Angels, and then shipped along from the Angels to the Cardinals early this week.

With just two weeks remaining before spring training opens, it seems that Rivas can at least safely conclude that he’s headed to spring training in Florida rather than Arizona. Outfielder Moisés Gómez was designated for assignment by St. Louis to make roster room, and his odyssey through the waiver system has not yet reached its end.

Potentially letting go of Gómez, who could still clear waivers and be outright assigned to Memphis, raised both some eyebrows and some hackles. He set a franchise record for home runs in a single minor league season in 2022 when he hit 39 split nearly evenly between Double-A Springfield and Triple-A Memphis.

Last season at Memphis was a significant step back. Despite another 30 homer season, his slugging percentage at the same level tumbled nearly a hundred points, and he posted an on-base percentage south of .300. Despite a seemingly unending march of players to the injured list, Gómez seemingly never received serious consideration for a call-up; Óscar Mercado enjoyed about a month on the active roster, and Gómez didn’t get a whiff.

In fact, the closest he came to reaching the big leagues was in that outstanding 2022 season, when the Cardinals found themselves without Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt on a trip to Toronto which they were not approved to take without having received the COVID-19 vaccine. The team decided to call him up and delivered the good news, only to discover that Gómez, a citizen of Venezuela, did not have the necessary work visa to play in Canada.

Team officials were, put mildly, not thrilled.

The wheel spins now to Rivas, a perfectly adequate defender and largely uninspiring hitter who is listed on various rosters as having a place in the outfield but who has spent 973 of his 1048 fielding innings in the majors at first base. He’s the second former Chicago Cubs prospect first baseman acquired in the same fashion this winter, joining fellow lefty swinger Jared Young, who has all of three major league innings in right field.

Between those two, presumably ticketed for Memphis, and both Alec Burleson and Matt Carpenter, seemingly destined for the big leagues, the Cardinals now find themselves with a curious glut of upper level first basemen. With Paul Goldschmidt the entrenched starter and Luken Baker holding his spot with the club through the winter, a full 15% of the 40-player roster is now composed of largely positionally inflexible first basemen.

Burleson is the only one of the six with significant time in the outfield, and he played well enough there that he shared with reporters at the team’s Winter Warm-Up that he was told by coaches, flat out, that they did not trust him to play defense.

Some redundancy in any roster is to be expected, and spring training plays a role in separating roster wheat from chaff. Goldschmidt is a free agent at the end of the season and the Cardinals have said they don’t intend to pursue an extension before the season starts; should it go south, he would be a candidate to be traded. Carpenter may prove himself unable to compete at the plate, and the team could have to reconsider his spot. Injuries happen. Burleson, in possession of elite batted ball data, may yet be a trade target for a team with a reliever to spare.

There is, however, another consideration: the Memphis Redbirds have not posted a winning season since Stubby Clapp managed them to a Triple-A National Championship in 2018. As last season turned south and prospects were increasingly visible at the highest level, manager Oliver Marmol openly discussed the team’s desire to win more in the minors, and the development concerns which accompany players graduating through the system having only seen ways to lose.

Whether Rivas, Young, or anyone else in their roster neighborhood will contribute to the 2024 Cardinals winning big league games is an open question, but players of their ilk certainly are good for the upper levels of the minors. Baker presumably will return there, but the other main drivers of their offense – Iván Herrera and Masyn Winn – are ticketed for the big leagues.

Of course, perhaps the waiver wheel spins again in the days ahead of camp and the hope for depth is for naught. In the short term, though, the Cardinals are encouraged that one cure for being backed up might just be racking up wins in the minors which make the whole system function a great deal more smoothly.