What does St. Louis Cardinals minor league catcher’s promotion mean for Contreras?

The whisper campaign that followed Willson Contreras out of Chicago this winter seemed harsh at the time. Members of the Cubs organization who worked with him for years were happy to pass along unflattering evaluations of his work as a defensive catcher, intimating that the primary reason he wasn’t traded at last season’s deadline was a lack of interest in a player who they characterized as declining.

However uncomfortable that may have been for Contreras, none of that noise was as deafening as the organizational yawp which greeted him upon entering the Cardinals clubhouse and finding Tres Barrera unpacking a bag.

Barrera’s recall from Memphis gave the team, temporarily, tres catchers on the roster. That number was arguably downshifted to two after manager Oliver Marmol, sent to deliver the message settled on after a series of wide-ranging meetings, declared that Contreras would spend the majority of his playing time in the coming weeks as the team’s designated hitter or in the corner outfield.

“One thing I want to make super clear, we are not losing ball games because of Willson Contreras,” Marmol said. “This is a guy that’s putting in an amazing amount of work to be able to…become more familiar with our pitchers, but also how we do things.”

It’s that familiarity that saw Andrew Knizner behind the plate Saturday – seemingly not coincidentally at the same time Adam Wainwright made his season debut after suffering a hamstring injury at the end of the World Baseball Classic.

Contreras, one month into a five year, $87.5 million contract that stands as the largest free agent signing in team history of a player who hadn’t previously been a Cardinal, was penciled in as the DH.

“I think that was a manager or front office decision,” Contreras said after confirming that a mildly sore ankle wasn’t keeping him from catching.

“Probably seems like I’m going to DH more than catching, which is not my decision, but I have to get used to that and move forward,” he added, later describing himself as “another employee.”

Saturday was in large part about meetings – meetings Marmol described taking place throughout the week about the best way forward for a pitching staff which has surrendered a preposterous 20 home runs in two-strike counts, and a video call meeting between Contreras and the recently retired Yadier Molina, in which the legendary catcher told the now-temporarily-former catcher that he was calling good games and needed to trust his instincts.

“He told me it wasn’t going to be easy to join a new team and catch up on a whole new staff,” Contreras said of his conversation with Molina. “He asked me to trust my game, trust my feelings, and go and (call pitches) with a reason, for a reason.”

The Cardinals, Marmol said, have seen great improvements in the defensive aspects for which Contreras was mostly readily criticized before coming to St. Louis; his framing around the bottom of the strike zone has improved, and despite some early hiccups, adjusting his positioning as a receiver has brought additional strikes.

The trouble has been in moving from strike two to strike three. Marmol said that no pitchers were directly involved in the conversations which ended in this substantial shakeup, but it is difficult to frame the narrative on the knife’s edge presented by the manager as a representative for the front office.

Their relationship with Contreras is new, and important, and weighed down with both expectations and money in significant quantities. For a team that entered play Saturday 13 games under .500 for the first time in more than 25 years, immediate panic and urgency for getting back on track has to be weighed against the risk of upsetting the apple cart.

Saturday runs the risk of becoming a significant pothole.

The Cardinals make their first trip of the year to Chicago on Monday, and Marmol said it’s important to the team to make sure Contreras has the opportunity to start behind the plate in the city where he was an important cog on a legendary team.

He might well instead find himself roaming the outfield grass in front of a chorus of bleacher bums, picking at an area where he’s spent less than 15 innings in the last five years.

As bad as things have been for the Cardinals through the first 20 percent of the season, it was difficult to imagine what they would do to course correct. If the solution is to sideline Contreras until he gains familiarity with the pitching staff, regardless of how delicately the team would like to phrase the decision, then it’s fair to wonder how he’ll gain that familiarity while milling around left field.

Asked that question on Saturday morning, Marmol answered, “that’s fair.”

He took an extended pause. Then he said, “that’s a fair question.”

He did not elaborate further.