The Cardinals still have a hole at third base, and Chaim Bloom didn’t dance around it.
At his year-end press conference, the president of baseball operations made it clear St. Louis is staring at a “long-term vacancy there” after spending much of the 2025 season piecing the position together.
Nolan Gorman began the year as the Opening Day starter, but he was demoted by June. Ramon Urias, brought in during the offseason, missed most of the season because of injury.
In all, the Cardinals used four different players for 70-plus plate appearances at third, and none of them managed an OPS over .700.
The organization does have options on hand, even if none jump off the page. Blaze Jordan showed some promise as a rookie before an ankle sprain ended his season.
Thomas Saggese got a look at third base late in the year and put together a respectable .730 OPS in September. Jose Fermin also survived his first full major league season.
Still, Bloom’s group doesn’t appear sold on any of those names, and Gorman’s strikeout rate remains a problem.
One player who does fit the Cardinals’ future infield picture is Rainiel Rodriguez. The organization’s top prospect is mainly a catcher, but he also spent time at first base last season, and St.
Louis wants him getting work at third too. Bloom framed that kind of flexibility as a real asset, saying, “ More versatility tends to be better as long as it’s real,” Bloom said.
“ As long as you can get someone there with a chance to play the position [capably].”
Rodriguez has the bat to profile as a corner infielder. He hit 27 homers in 115 games this season while splitting time between High-A and Double-A, and he posted a .324/.413/.574 line across the two levels.
He’s only 19 and has never played third base professionally, so he’s not a simple plug-and-play answer for 2027. But the added versatility could help his path to a roster spot.
Elsewhere in the infield, the picture is much clearer. Masyn Winn and JJ Wetherholt are set to handle the middle for the foreseeable future, and the Cardinals kept Alec Burleson at the trade deadline, meaning he’ll return at first base. Burleson is open to extension talks, though Bloom said the club didn’t have “ anything up our sleeves right at this moment.”
That matters because Burleson is entering his age-28 season and has two arbitration years left. Without a new deal, he won’t reach free agency until the 2028-29 offseason.
He’s become a central piece of the lineup over the last three seasons, and 2025 was his best showing yet: 26 homers, a league-leading 116 RBI, and a steady middle-of-the-order presence. Locking him in long term would give St.
Louis a powerful core alongside Wetherholt and Jordan Walker.
Walker’s season followed a much rougher path down the stretch. After looking like he’d broken through, he stumbled badly in September, hitting .172 with a 36.8% strikeout rate.
Bloom said Walker was dealing with a hip issue in the final weeks, and that the injury was tied to a heavier workload and a stance change. Walker ended up playing 158 games, far and away a career high, and piled up more than 200 additional plate appearances than he had ever reached before.
Even with the late fade, Walker still finished with 29 home runs and 22 stolen bases, earned his first All-Star nod, and showed enough to suggest the bigger picture is still bright. He also appeared to be avoiding the dreaded Home Run Derby hangover after winning the event and then putting up an .853 OPS in August. The final month dragged his season OPS below .800, but it was still a strong year for the former top prospect.
In Other News...
Cardinals Just Added To A Trade Return Fans Need To Judge Carefully
The Lars Nootbaar deal from Aug. 3 is finally complete, and the Cardinals have filled in the last piece by adding right-hander Brian Curley from the Diamondbacks as the player to be named later. Curley, 23, was taken 92nd overall in 2025 out of Georgia and split the 2026 season between High-A and Double-A, where his numbers were uneven but he kept working his way through the system.
For St. Louis, this is less about immediate impact than adding another arm to the organizational pipeline. The Cardinals are treating Curley as pitching depth with a chance to develop further, which is often the quiet logic behind these delayed-return trades. The real question for fans is whether this turns into one of those moves that looks modest now but becomes easier to judge only after the next step in Curleys development plays out. [Read more 🡒]
Rainiel Rodriguez Is Entering Historic Territory For The Cardinals
Rainiel Rodriguez spent 2026 making a forceful case as one of the most advanced young hitters in the Cardinals system, and the numbers only got louder as the season went on. The 19-year-old led St. Louis prospects on MLB Pipeline after putting up a .999 OPS at Double-A and carrying that production into the minor league postseason, a year that also earned him Keith Laws Minor League Player of the Year recognition.
For a Cardinals organization that has spent plenty of time searching for impact bats, Rodriguezs rise stands out because of both the performance and the age at which it arrived. He finished with 23 home runs and a profile that kept separating him from the rest of the system, putting him in a place few players reach this quickly and leaving the next question centered on how fast the club will push him from here. [Read more 🡒]
Cardinals Just Got Pulled Into A Max Scherzer Debate
Max Scherzers name is back in the St. Louis conversation, and this time its less about what he once meant to the game and more about whether the Cardinals could make sense as a late-career landing spot. Greg Amsinger of MLB Network floated the idea on 104.1 KMOX Sports, pointing to the right-handers St. Louis roots and future Hall of Fame case as reasons the discussion has some local appeal.
The pitch comes with obvious caveats, though. Scherzer has dealt with declining performance and injuries over the past three seasons, which is why any Cardinals talk around him is as much about mentorship and depth as it is about innings and impact. Amsinger framed it as a possible fit for the 2027 season, but for now there has been no report of negotiations or any agreement, leaving it more as a debate than a destination. [Read more 🡒]