Paul Goldschmidt Unlikely to Return to Cardinals This Off-Season
For the first time since 2019, first baseman Paul Goldschmidt is expected to play somewhere other than with the St. Louis Cardinals next season.
The 37-year-old, a pending free agent, isn’t expected to return to the Red Birds in 2025 as both sides prepare to part ways, The Athletic’s Katie Woo reports. His impending departure appears to be one element of a much larger organizational reset that’ll occur in the coming weeks.
Goldschmidt recently concluded the final season of a five-year, $130-million contract with an average annual value of $26 million per season. He’s been with the franchise since coming over via trade from the Arizona Diamondbacks in December 2018.
It was a tough year for Goldschmidt, particularly at the plate, as he hit .244/.300/.411 while driving in 64 runs and posting a 98 wRC+ – all career lows, excluding the 2020 campaign. He also blasted 22 home runs, his third-lowest total since becoming a full-time player in 2012.
In 154 games, the veteran first baseman accounted for just 1.0 fWAR, the lowest rating of his career – including the COVID-shortened ‘20 campaign – outside of his rookie season that consisted of only 48 games with Arizona.
“This is probably the worst I’ve performed on the field in my career,” Goldschmidt told reporters of his ‘24 performance last week, including Woo. “That was disappointing, a good bit of that burden was on me. If I could’ve played how I believe I’m capable of playing, we could’ve won more games and maybe this might have turned out differently.”
Goldschmidt is a seven-time All-Star, five-time Silver Slugger, four-time Gold Glove winner and won the 2022 NL MVP. He finished as a finalist for that award three times (2013, 2015, 2017) before capturing it two years ago.
The right-handed-hitter spent the first eight seasons of his big-league career in the desert, making the playoffs only twice during that span. With the Cardinals, he reached the postseason four different times but couldn’t advance further than the NLCS.
In free agency, Goldschmidt will join a talented class of first basemen that includes New York’s Pete Alonso, Arizona’s Christian Walker and Josh Bell. They could also be joined by Anthony Rizzo, whose contract includes a $17-million club option for next season.
The Wilmington, Delaware, native has registered 2,055 hits, 445 doubles, 362 home runs and 1,186 RBIs across 1,928 career games split between the D-backs and Cardinals. If he stays healthy in 2025, he could become just the fourth hitter to log 2,000 career games played since 2010, joining Andrew McCutchen, Freddie Freeman and Carlos Santana.
In addition to parting ways with Goldschmidt, St. Louis is also planning to move on from fellow pending free agents Andrew Kittredge and Matt Carpenter, according to Woo. It also appears unlikely the club will retain Keynan Middleton, who has a $6-million club option for next season either.
The futures of other veteran players are also in flux, including Sonny Gray, who could be on the move just one year after inking a three-year, $75-million contract with the franchise per USA Today’s Bob Nightengale.
After missing the playoffs for a second consecutive season, the consequences of those failures could cause the Cardinals’ roster to undergo a significant overhaul this winter.
-Thomas Hall
Twitter: @Hall_Thomas_
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.