At non-tender deadline, Cardinals part ways with four from big-league roster

Friday evening’s deadline to tender contracts to players for the 2024 season brought a wave of significant change to the St. Louis Cardinals, who cut ties with four players who have had significant roles in recent seasons.

Right-handed starters Dakota Hudson and Jake Woodford, catcher Andrew Knizner, and slugger Juan Yepez were not offered contracts, sending them instead to free agency and leaving four vacancies on the club’s 40-man roster.

Hudson, 29, was St. Louis’s first round pick in the 2016 draft, rising quickly through the system from Mississippi State and making his debut in the second half of the 2018 season. His strong 2019 season earned him fifth place in voting for National League Rookie of the Year, and he seemed primed to take his place as a rotation stalwart for years to come.

After injuring his elbow late in the truncated 2020 season, though, Hudson underwent Tommy John surgery, and struggled to regain his prior form following rehab from that surgery. Always a pitcher who relied on high ground ball rates rather than striking opponents out, he suffered from some bad batted ball luck which paired unfortunately with high walk rates; his 86 walks led the majors in 2019, and both this season and last saw him approach four walks per nine innings.

He was optioned to Triple-A Memphis out of spring training last season and did not make his season debut in the majors until a fill-in start due to a doubleheader on July 1. He would remain on turn for the remainder of the season and struggle down the stretch, seeing his season ERA jump from 4.02 following his start on September 1 to a season ending total of 4.98 just a month later.

That stint in the minors, coupled with his midseason debut in 2018, meant that Hudson lost a year of progress for free agency. He will be eligible for arbitration for a fourth time in the winter of 2024. MLB Trade Rumors projected his likely salary for next season to be $3.7 million through the arbitration process; that relatively high cost, compared with poor results, made him a strong candidate to be non-tendered for months, despite the team’s dire need for innings.

Woodford, 27, was a first round pick in 2015 who was shuttled frequently between St. Louis and Memphis since making his debut in 2020. He was a member of the rotation as the team stormed down the stretch with a franchise-best win streak in 2021, and broke camp last spring as a starter after Adam Wainwright was injured at the conclusion of the World Baseball Classic.

Like Hudson, Woodford was a stylistic match with a pitching philosophy that is seemingly going out of style. A new found focus on swing and miss plays poorly for Woodford, who turned in a dreadful 6.61 fielding independent pitching mark in his 47 ⅔ innings in 2023.

With the departure of the two pitchers, alongside the trades of Jordan Montgomery and Jack Flaherty at the deadline and Adam Wainwright’s retirement, the Cardinals no longer have on their roster the pitchers responsible for more than half their starts in 2023 – 82 of the 162 games were started by those five.

A team that has been habitually short of pitching is now critically so, faced with a winter in which there can be no debate that a minimum of three starters acquired is the bar to be cleared.

Knizner, 28, was popular among pitchers for his skill behind the plate and a leader in the clubhouse, including a stint as the team’s representative to the MLB Players’ Association. He had a career-best season at the plate in 2023, pairing ten home runs with a .712 OPS, more than adequate for a backup catcher.

His roster spot, however, was squeezed by the emergence and development of Iván Herrera. This week’s selection of Pedro Pagés to the 40-man roster suggested movement in the offing with the team’s catchers, and indeed, Knizner’s escalating salary became a casualty of the business of baseball.

Yepez, 25, showed flashes of outstanding raw power during his long climb through the minor leagues and had an impressive showing in 2022 as a bat off the bench, but he faltered in 2023. After not making the club out of spring training, he turned in lackluster results for Memphis and made only sporadic appearances in the majors, seemingly passed on the depth chart by Luken Baker, among others.

He was just 11-for-60 with 20 strikeouts in the majors last season, driving in only two runs in 65 plate appearances – both via solo home run. Yepez was the only player of the four non-tendered who was not yet arbitration eligible; the Cardinals chose to release him to free agency rather than offer him the Major League minimum.

Among the players to whom the Cardinals did offer a contract was outfielder Tyler O’Neill, projected by MLB Trade Rumors to earn $5.5 million in his third and final year of arbitration.

The Cardinals have sought to trade O’Neill for months, in large part due to an uncertain fit in their current roster makeup, but have been unable to find a suitor. The transaction frenzy in the run-up to Friday’s deadline failed to shake loose progress on that front.