PITTSBURGH — As the Cardinals finalized Monday the largest bonus — by a lot — they’ve offered a pick since the advent of the modern draft, they remained on track to spend beyond their assigned cap for the 13th consecutive year.
JJ Wetherholt, the seventh overall pick, signed his first pro contract with the Cardinals on Monday, the club announced. He received a bonus of $6.9 million, according to sources. That is just ahead of the MLB-assigned bonus for his spot in the draft ($6,823,700), and it is nearly twice as much as the most the Cardinals have paid a first-round pick since 2000.
Their previous high was $3.6 million a year ago.
The No. 7 pick was their highest since selecting fifth in 1998.
Wetherholt, a gifted left-handed hitter who won the NCAA batting title as a sophomore with a .449 average, will report to Jupiter, Florida, to begin his pro career. The Cardinals have two affiliates, Class A Palm Beach and their Florida Complex League club, housed at their spring training campus. It’s common for newly drafted players to get experience at both levels. Wetherholt will debut as the Cardinals’ top prospect and a top 25 prospect in all of the minors, according to updated rankings from Baseball America. The magazine puts him at No. 24 overall, one spot ahead of the Cardinals’ top pitching prospect, Tink Hence.
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The Cardinals said Wetherholt, 21, will play shortstop to start this career.
The Cardinals have agreements in place with all of their picks from the first 10 rounds, according to sources and also reports by Baseball America. They have announced all but one: third-round pick Ryan Campos.
With the No. 7 pick and then not another pick until No. 80, the Cardinals entered the draft with a bonus purse of $10,213,000, as assigned by MLB. The bonuses for players picked in the first 10 rounds count against that limit. For any bonus larger than $150,000 in the 11th round or later, the difference counts against the cap. The Cardinals signed 11th-round pick Jon Jon Gazdar and 12th-round pick Ian Petrutz to bonuses larger than $150,000, so that overage counts against the Cardinals’ spending cap.
With Monday’s finalized deal, the Cardinals were trending toward spending about $400,000 more than their limit. If the remaining signings sign for assigned slot, they’ll have an average of $386,100. That puts them within the 5% overage penalty, and they’ll pay a 75-cent tax for every dollar over — or an extra $289,575 as a result.
The penalties become more severe and include losing draft picks when spending more than 5% the assigned limit. No team has ever violated that penalty.
The Cardinals are one of four teams to spend beyond their purse and pay a penalty in the first 12 years of the current draft-pool rules. The others are the Cubs, Giants and Dodgers.
Cards need starter for Wednesday
While the clock is ticking on the Cardinals’ search for a starter to add via trade, they’ll need one more immediately Wednesday due to the doubleheader this past weekend in Atlanta.
Before announcing a starter for the series finale in Pittsburgh, the Cardinals wanted to see how Tuesday night’s game played out and whether Matthew Liberatore would be needed to cover innings or targeted for a specific assignment. Lefties Liberatore and JoJo Romero had yet to appear in the first four games back from the All-Star break in part because of how Atlanta structures its lineup, which is rich with right-handed power. There weren’t many “lanes†— the phrase manager Oliver Marmol uses for relief use — for lefties, and not one of the Cardinals’ three lefty relievers appeared in the weekend series.
If he’s not used Tuesday night, Liberatore will be on 10 days of rest.
A roster move would be discussed if he’s unavailable.
Bringing back a starter on short rest was not an option as the team has “been pretty adamant about health and not pushing our rotation into any of those spots,†Marmol said. Sonny Gray will start Friday against Washington when the Cardinals return to Busch for the first time since the break, and Kyle Gibson will start Saturday.
Pages’ improv earns praise
When detailing the upshift his start took Monday night after the first inning, starter Andre Pallante credited his efficiency and effectiveness to improvisation from his catcher.
Pallante slogged through the first four innings with a pitch count in the 60s, and then catcher Pedro Pages adjusted the use of Pallante’s fastballs. The four-seam fastballs he throws inside to left-handed batters, Pages started calling away. The two-seamers he saves for left-handed batters, right-handed hitters got them, too. Pallante retired 10 of 11 consecutive batters when he was throwing with a 1-1 game.
“It was all Pages today,†Pallante explained. “It wasn’t a ton of growth on my part, more him.â€
A rookie, Pages has played his way into being Willson Contreras’ backup with the trust he’s earned from pitchers. That began in spring training, but it’s been amplified during the season as the young catcher has shown the pitchers his feel for adjusting within games and branching out from scouting reports when pitches or hitters behave differently than expected.
“I can’t state enough how well Pages has done behind the plate in understanding our pitchers but also really diving into the second and third layer of understanding the opposition,†Marmol said. “When you have those two things and you put them together there’s a script and then there’s if this isn’t working, where do I go? If this isn’t working, where else do I go? He’s understanding that at a really high level right now.â€