Two Things To Watch In 2016.

Hey there folks been a while.

I’ve been watching the Cards this pre-season, and beyond the obvious things like Yadier Molina‘s injury and Adam Wainwright‘s return to being our ace, there’s a couple of emerging stories for next season.

Aldemys Diaz:

The story here, is that, with Jhonny Peralta‘s injury, Diaz has emerged as a candidate to take over the SS position while Peralta recovers.

To me, the more interesting story is what happens when Peralta gets back.

Diaz is having a solid spring training, and his bat is starting to catch up with his glove. Well, what if that continues? He ended last season on a high point, and tore up the Fall League. The kid has impact potential.

Peralta, however, has been productive, exceeding expectations by a lot of what fans expected when the Cards signed him. He’s going to start when the kid comes back. And we have a utility guy we just traded for in Jedd Gyorko who can play SS in a pinch. Seems odd to keep the kid around just to play shortstop when we have Gyorko. Probably more efficient ways to handle that roster spot.

So what happens if the kid produces? It’d be a shame to reward that production by sending him to AAA, even if he’d get more playing time there.

This is, of course, all dependent on the fact that he’ll be our regular shortstop. He may not be. There’s time for that to change.

The other story that’s caught my eye is that the Cardinals are working on making Michael Wacha and Carlos Martinez more efficient, so that they can pitch over 200 innings in a season. I saw a story where it said that they’re trying to get Wacha to use his cutter more to help him do this.

Why is this interesting? Well, they tried something similar with Shelby Miller, it didn’t quite take and they ended up trading him. I don’t think that’ll be an issue with Wacha, but Carlos is more interesting, because to me, he seems a little stubborn at times. He seems like a passionate guy, so that bears watching.

There’ll be more things to watch of course, but these are a pair of things that caught my eye recently and could have a long term impact on the team.

As always, thanks for reading.

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