Attention, Cardinals: Play or trade Luken Baker
They're doing a classic case of wasting a slugging talent that happens to be cheap.
Few teams have traded off or wasted more talent than the St. Louis Cardinals in the past ten years.
Most of the shipped out talent wasn’t very costly; players like Randy Arozarena and Adolis Garcia won’t join the Hall of Fame any time soon, but they were cheap and productive talents that the Cards let walk for pennies or players that didn’t match the promise. The Cardinals traded Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen without a bleep in order to acquire Marcell Ozuna, who didn’t stick around too long.
Instead of fully investing in and developing young talent, they spent large stacks of money on Dexter Fowler, Brett Cecil, and Steven Matz. Every good prospect lately is either lost in translation or past their expiration date. Jordan Walker can still turn it around, but Dylan Carlson has already joined the land of journeyman outfielders who hit well for two weeks before seeing their lumber and potential drift to sleep.
They’re about to do the same thing with Luken Baker. The force may not be with his bat, but it’s been strong at every level he’s competed at as a professional baseball player. In one season at AA Springfield, he mashed to the point of an .853 OPS and 26 home runs. In 1,160 at-bats with AAA Memphis, he hit 86 home runs with an .879 OPS.
With each passing season, Baker has improved his strikeouts to walks ratio, reaching first with his eye more often than giving someone in the lower levels of the stadium a fresh breeze. All of this to say that he has done whatever was asked and everything necessary to receive a decent shot at being a big league player. It’s too bad the Cardinals had first base covered with a large salary-carrying Paul Goldschmidt. The DH spots have been consumed by a combination of Willson Contreras, Nolan Gorman, Alec Burleson, and others.
What about Baker? People point to his scattered MLB at-bats, and all I can do is snicker at those short-sighted, small sample size number calculations. He’s done more to deserve a shot than Walker or Carlson ever did, yet he has only received a total of 126 at-bats. At the age of 27, that’s ridiculous.
Let me ask you a question: If Baker and Gorman got the same number of at-bats in 2025, who would do better with the time? I’d lay bets on Luken. He strikes out less, walks more, and has the same kind of pop. If only he could show those skills off in months other than March and September, dead times for a non-competing baseball team like the movies released in January and February when awards season controls the Hollywood playing field.
Contreras will be the first baseman this season, but Burleson shouldn’t consume the rest of the at-bats there either. The LH/RH split works, but Baker should find some time there when the starter needs a rest or the team needs a jolt. The DH at-bats should be tossed up in the air like a jump ball. The presence of Nolan Arenado doesn’t help the logjam, but that should prevent Baker from seeing more time.
What do the Cardinals have to lose here by investing some time in Baker? They’re rebuilding, resetting, restructuring, or whatever the next 2-3 years. The front office will say they believe in this team, but they also didn’t make a single upgrade in the offseason. Play the kids, huh? Play Baker. 27 years old is still kid-like in the Majors.
If not, trade the guy. It would be a transaction, so that may be too much for this sleepy front office that is going through its own transitional phase. Get value from him on the field, or let some other team reap the rewards of cheap slugging labor.
Stop wasting a hitter who could help the team right now. In seven spring training games, he has three home runs and four walks to go with just a single strikeout. The ball is jumping off his bat. Hopefully, the Cardinals allow him to jump out of oblivion this year. If not, their porous trends are only being extended.