Even with rosters expanding on Monday, the St. Louis Cardinals felt like they could not play short-handed over the weekend are are promoting infielder Cesar Prieto and catcher Jimmy Crooks III from Memphis. Francys Romero first reported the Prieto news on Thursday night and Derrick Goold broke the Crooks news Friday morning.. The Cardinals had a couple of openings on their 40-man roster, so no move was necessary there. To open up 26-man roster spots, outfielder Alec Burleson (wrist) and catcher Yohel Pozo (concussion) were placed on the injured list.

Cesar Prieto and Jimmy Crooks III receive first big league promotion

The Cardinals welcomed Prieto to the St. Louis organization in 2023 when he was a part of the Jack Flaherty deal that sent the pitcher to the Baltimore Orioles. FanGraphs had the lefty infielder ranked as the organizations 29th-best prospect and has continued to show a solid approach at the plate over his three seasons in the St. Louis minors. Since defecting from Cuba (highly recommend checking out Rob Rains’ article!), the 26-year-old Prieto has shown plenty of contact ability, never striking out more than 15% of the time and rarely walks, with this season’s 7.3% walk rate being a career-high. At the time of this promotion, Prieto has put together his best all-around season so far, with nine homers and career-highs with 62 RBIs and 11 stolen bases while spending most of his time between shortstop and third base, with occasional time at second. He was hitting .295 with an .807 OPS, helped by 29 doubles and three triples in 107 games.

While Prieto has been able to play a decent shortstop, the Cardinals have not announced a plan for his playing time. They have seemingly been more open to Thomas Saggese getting plenty of starts since his latest recall and is hitting .276 this month while playing three different infield spots. The announcement of Alec Burleson to the injured list due to a sore wrist opens up an active roster spot, but does not do much to open playing time for the infielder. Burleson had been fighting a wrist injury for a bit, but it either got worse or the Cardinals want him to take it easy in what is becoming another lost season.

The more interesting move comes with the promotion of Crooks, who was on the outskirts of many top prospect lists to begin the season but was surpassed by the other young backstops in the organization. Even with his dip in the rankings, Crooks has spent all season as the starting catcher with Memphis and has performed well, even though it was a regression from last year’s Minor League Player of the Year award-winning season. With the Redbirds, the lefty-hitting Crooks was batting .274 with 14 homers in 98 games while striking out more and walking less than previous seasons. Known more for his defense, Crooks has thrown out 29% of basestealers this season and hopefully can shore up the defense behind the plate. To open a spot for Crooks, Yohel Pozo will move to the 7-day concussion IL after taking a beating behind the plate yesterday.

Major league rosters expand from 26 to 28 players on Monday, which allows for teams to call up additional players from their 40-man roster for the remainder of the season. This expansion provides opportunities for teams to give their young guys some exposure to big league talent and gives Chaim Bloom a head start on his evaluation of some of the Cardinals prospects.