Henry Roldán
Yadier Molina’s final season in the Major Leagues is not going as planned for all parties concerned.
In addition to a low performance from the experienced catcher, Katie Woo, of The Athletic, announced that the Cardinals would place the Puerto Rican on the 10-day injured list this Friday, something that the team confirmed at noon.
According to Woo, Molina has had discomfort in his right knee since the beginning of the season, this being one of the main reasons for the poor performance of the stellar catcher. Yadier Molina, 39, is batting just .213 with two home runs and 10 RBIs this season, his lowest since 2016.
To this, we must add that he has not been able to remain behind the plate with the same consistency as in past years due to knee discomfort, which has limited him to only 38 of his team’s 65 games.
He even received several cortisone injections last weekend to try to alleviate the discomfort. However, this does not seem to have disappeared, so the Cardinals will give him a couple of weeks off on the injured list.
Yadier Molina’s Substitutes
Without Yadier Molina at catcher, the Cardinals will have to rely on two guys who have shown to be promising but are still unknowns.
The first of them is Andrew Knizner, who has been Molina’s backup for the last two seasons. This year, with more playing time due to the Puerto Rican’s inconvenience, he has not been able to react as St. Louis expected.
According to Woo, the team is also considering promoting young Panamanian Iván Herrera, who is widely regarded as one of baseball’s top 100 prospects.
On this season in Triple-A, Herrera played 20 games with a .291/.388/.824 offensive line and will likely share playing time with Knizner, if the latter fails to pick up the pace needed from him.
The Cardinals also seem to have the option of going to the market taking into account that they are the leaders of the Central Division of the National League and that they will surely have to fight until the end of the regular round with the Milwaukee Brewers.
The difficulty with this option is what will happen when Molina returns, because, if they look for someone on the exchange market, it’s unlikely that both parties will want him to wait out his final season. But, San Luis also cannot afford to lose a battle that they have been winning so far, so everything will depend on the evolution of the catcher’s knee and the performance of his replacements.
