BOSTON, MA – MAY 8: Boston Red Sox #2 Xander Bogarts throws his helmet after hitting the Chicago White Sox during the eighth inning at Fenway Park on May 8, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts. Teams across the league wear pink today in honor of Mother’s Day. Cardinals (Photo by Winslow Townson/Getty Images)
The Cardinals have other options in their shortstop that don’t include Xander Bogaerts, should they choose to go that route.
Longtime Cardinals player Paul de Jong was recently demoted after a disastrous start to the 2022 regular season. The 28-year-old was hitting 0.130 with one home run and OPS+24 during his first 24 games of the season.
Xander Bogaerts of the Boston Red Sox is easily the most popular choice to replace De Jong. What if the Cardinals chose to go another, less expensive route to fill it with short? Can they even stick to some interior options?
Cardinal Short Options Not Called Xander Bogarts
Edmundo Sosa
26 years Edmundo Sosa It represents the first of two internal options that the Cardinals can choose to hand over to their short start contracts. Sosa debuted with the cards in 2018 but produced very little in 2018 and 2019 before taking off last year.
Sosa made 113 appearances for St. Louis last year (71 of them in a short period) and had the best performance of his short career. He hit fours, six home runs and had an OPS+ of 103 with a .271/.346/.389 slash. Sosa finished last year with 2.1 oWAR and 1.5 dWAR per Baseball-Reference.
Sosa is a player who adds value to his team in both attack and defense and his ability to play all over the field will keep him in the team for the foreseeable future. If he can match his offensive production from last season again, he could have a place in this Cardinal’s field for a while.
To start the 2022 season, Sousa has 13 games under his belt, scoring just 0.206 and exiting 14 times without any walking. He’ll need to turn things around to get another shot at extended playtime.
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