5 Things On My Mind About the Cardinals: Why St. Louis needs more Brendan Donovans

He is the exact kind of player the Cards stopped acquiring multiples of during the past decade.

If the Cardinals were smart, they would have extended Brendan Donovan instead of taking him to arbitration, but you wouldn’t know it by the response from the ballplayer following a loss in court.

The St. Louis Cardinals differed on his 2025 salary by less than $500,000. Donovan requested $3.3 million and the club countered with $2.85 million, with St. Louis winning the case even though the utility player offers more of a seasonal assurance than a player who won his arbitration in Lars Nootbaar. Who are you putting chips on to make a bigger difference? But I digress.

Donovan is the kind of player that the team stopped going for in recent years, opting instead to spend heavily on big names like Nolan Arenado. A player that requested a little over $3 million had to go through court proceedings while the high profile third baseman could cost the team over $22 million. Funny part: The team was willing to eat the salary in order to move Arenado, but didn’t want to pay Donovan another $500k.

I know why, of course. One has a few years under his belt while the other is a 12-year veteran with ten Gold Gloves and a few Silver Slugger awards. If St. Louis were wise going forward, they’d do what the old Jocketty/La Russa team would do and gather up those kinds of players. The 3-4 WAR ceiling types who keep their head down, play multiple positions, and get big playoff hits. He’s not the guy you take to court.

Here’s a few other things on my mind as Saturday comes out of the stretch and heads into its windup:

~Quinn Matthews looks like a different animal for a pitching prospect. The Winter Warm-up showed he had the composure and maturity of a 5-10 year veteran player, but his mound poise and nasty offerings to hitters could see him climb into the picture sooner rather than later, even if 2026 seems more like it. Matthews only got limited time at AAA last summer, but he did do quite well with Springfield competition at AA ball, which is where the minor league sluggers do their damage. 70 strikeouts against 15 walks in 52.1 innings isn’t something to scoff at. Keep an eye on Matthews.

~I loved Oli Marmol’s radio interview with The Morning After this week. The manager actually read and responded to texts from listeners, including an hilarious instance from a June 6 game last summer. He laughed at it, showed a different side, and rolled with the humorous punches that co-hosts Tim McKernan and Martin Kilcoyne let come his way. I’ll have more to say on this in a future article, but he’s growing on me. I’d like to see what Marmol without Mozeliak supervision looks like; maybe it’s the same, maybe it’s different. He’s getting more comfortable, in managerial skin, which is normal after three seasons on the job.

~One guy who deserves some extra attention this spring but will ultimately end up playing in a foreign baseball league is Luken Baker. He showed significant improvement during his latest MLB stint last summer, flashing power and an ability to come off the bench and make a dent. Due to a clogged (a Mo special) infield, there’s no spot for him. The DH will fall to Nolan Gorman and Alec Burleson this season, so I feel bad for Baker and also want him to get a crack somewhere else. Why the Cards keep him in camp instead of setting him free to another team is beyond me? You’re literally using up his youth.

~I’m still puzzled by why Ryan Helsley is still a Cardinal. They settled on a contract and avoided awkward arbitration, but there’s still a head-scratching thought about what the team could have gotten for him after such a strong season. While I can lobby for the team to keep him even over a starter like Gray due to his ninth inning ability, one can easily see that 3-4 players would have been coming back to the Cards. Maybe, their offseason wouldn’t have been collectively panned if they actually did what they said and started rebuilding this roster. Making internal moves is one thing; moving players that don’t have a long-term future here is vital for a team wanting to reload or retool or rebuild or what the fuck ever it’s being called.

Unlike Arenado, Helsley has LEGIT trade value. Ah, too bad.

Spring training is here and it’s already cloudy, interesting, awkward, and intriguing around Cardinals camp. I’m glad baseball is back and like a lot of the players, but the team looks like an organization on a treadmill that isn’t going fast enough. Part of me wonders with the payroll still being high if the team would have added a piece or two and tried to do more than exist. However, the return of baseball should be celebrated.

As Joaquin Andujar once said, you never know what’s going to happen. For the 2025 Cardinals, that is very true.