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The Cardinals are aiming to activate infielder Paul DeJong from the 10-day injured list on Sunday, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak told reporters (including Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch). A corresponding move will be determined by the team prior to its game with the Mariners.
A bad back sidelined DeJong about a week before the start of the regular season, and he began the campaign on the IL. The missed time in Spring Training meant that DeJong had a fairly lengthy minor league rehab assignment, as he played a combined 12 games at the A-ball and Triple-A levels, totaling a .302/.388/.512 slash line over 49 plate appearances. Yesterday, DeJong went 3-for-4 with a homer and six RBI with Triple-A Memphis.
Now recovered from his back problems, DeJong will enter the seventh and most pivotal season of his MLB tenure. This is the final guaranteed season of DeJong’s six-year, $26MM deal — he is owed $9MM this season, and the Cardinals seem very likely to then buy out DeJong (for $1MM) rather than exercise their $12.5MM club option on his services for 2024. After an All-Star performance in 2019, DeJong has hit only .196/.280/.351 with 28 homers over 813 PA since the start of the 2020 season.
In that time, DeJong’s shortstop defense has remained very good, but Tommy Edman has taken over the everyday shortstop job thanks to equal or better glovework and a more consistent performance at the plate. With this in mind, it is hard to see exactly how much playing time DeJong might get at shortstop or second base, with Edman now entrenched at short and Nolan Gorman and utilityman Brendan Donovan splitting time at the keystone. The DH spot doesn’t offer much relief, as the Cards are also trying to find at-bats for their outfield surplus.
It could be that St. Louis just uses DeJong as a bench player, perhaps supplanting Taylor Motter (who seems like the most obvious candidate to be optioned to Triple-A as DeJong’s replacement). In theory, the Cards might try to give DeJong some playing time to showcase him for any sort of trade, yet that doesn’t seem likely unless the Cardinals were to eat basically all of the infielder’s remaining salary, which the club was hesitant to do last winter.
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