The Cardinals have a chance to clean up one of their biggest messes this winter, and third base is the spot that stands out most.
St. Louis is heading into the 2026-2027 offseason with plenty of optimism after a wave of young players has already reached the majors and more are on the way.
Even so, that doesn’t mean president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom can just sit back and wait for internal options to solve every problem. There are still holes to patch, and third base looks like the most obvious one.
Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat said on his Twitter/X page that two of the three problem areas for the Cardinals this season - catcher, center field and third base - are settled heading into the winter. Manager Oli Marmol said Nathan Church and Leo Bernal will go into the offseason as the incumbents in center field and behind the plate, respectively.
That leaves third base, which Jones described as "wide open".
The numbers explain why. Since 2025, Cardinals third basemen have produced a dead-last mark in the majors, with a combined -0.1 fWAR at the position.
Nolan Arenado, Nolan Gorman, Thomas Saggese, Ramon Urias and Blaze Jordan have all taken turns there, and Arenado’s 0.8 fWAR is the best of the group. Gorman, Cesar Prieto and Urias have all been negative players at third.
So if St. Louis wants outside help, one name worth watching is Teruaki Sato.
The 27-year-old third baseman from Nippon Professional Baseball is shaping up as one of the top free agents available this offseason. He’s the reigning NPB MVP, and his 2026 season has been huge at the plate: a .313/.391/.613 line with 36 home runs in 134 games. Those numbers lead the league across the board, and in a low-offense environment like NPB, they jump off the page even more.
If Hanshin makes him available, Sato would have to go through the posting system, meaning any club that signs him would also owe the Tigers an additional percentage of his contract.
There are still real questions about how his bat translates. Sato, a left-handed hitter, has struck out 155 times in 575 plate appearances for a 27% strikeout rate.
That’s a concern, even if it lines up in the same neighborhood as the 28.6% K rate Munetaka Murakami posted in 2025, his final year in NPB. Sato has drawn plenty of comparisons to Murakami, too.
His defensive home is another issue. He’s mostly played third base in Japan, but there’s an expectation that he could wind up in a corner outfield spot or even first base in the majors.
That matters for St. Louis, because those positions are already spoken for by Joshua Baez, Jordan Walker and Alec Burleson.
The Cardinals also haven’t made a habit of shopping in Japan for major free agents, especially not on this scale. They did pursue Yoshinobu Yamamoto a few years ago, but his price went beyond the DeWitt family’s puke point.
Sato would give St. Louis a major jolt offensively, but the defensive fit and the likely cost could be enough to push the club in another direction.
In Other News...
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The memory appears to trace back to a 2023 road trip, though the exact timing and some of the names around the conversation are a little hazy now. Even so, the takeaway is clear for a manager whose edge was never in question: the challenge was not just getting players to meet a standard, but making sure they could hear it without feeling shut out. For the Cardinals, that kind of evolution matters because it says as much about the tone in the room as it does about the results on the field. [Read more 🡒]
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Still, the offseason questions are the kind that can shape whether this rebuild moves forward or stalls out. The bullpen needs help, the rotation needs a front-end starter, and third base remains unsettled after Oliver Marmol called the competition there wide open with several players in the mix. For a team trying to thread the needle between development and contention, those are the decisions that will tell the story of what comes next in St. Louis. [Read more 🡒]
Jordan Walkers Late Slump Just Took On Bigger Meaning
Jordan Walkers breakout 2026 season already had all the markers of a budding star for the Cardinals, with his first All-Star nod and a Home Run Derby title giving St. Louis plenty to dream on. But the finish to his year now looks a little different in hindsight, after Chaim Bloom confirmed Walker was dealing with hip pain and discomfort during the final weeks of the season.
For a player whose late slump had raised some questions, the injury context matters in a big way. The Cardinals have prescribed rest as Walker works to recover, and his offseason now carries a different kind of significance as St. Louis waits to see how much of that downturn was about fatigue, and how much was about the hip limiting him down the stretch. [Read more 🡒]