Clearly the Cardinals are not pleased with their center field situation, cycling through Jon Jay, Peter Bourjos, and now Randal Grichuk while getting terrible combined production from the position. So why haven’t they called up top prospect Oscar Taveras, who in addition to thriving at Triple-A right now also has quite a bit of center field experience in the minors?
General manager John Mozeliak explained to Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post Dispatch:
We’d still like him to play a lot more center field, but there’s no doubt he’s playing well. I know a lot’s being made out of Oscar … coming to St. Louis, but right now I don’t even think it’s a logical thing to do.
There are a lot of question marks going on in the outfield to begin with, and I think that would muddy it up. He needs to do what he’s doing and that obviously will make it a very difficult decision at some point. But when you look at some of the guys we have here playing center field, a couple of them are pretty good players.
So it could be partly that the Cardinals aren’t ready to give up on Jay or Bourjos, the latter of whom was just acquired from the Angels for David Freese this offseason. And it’s also possible that they have questions about whether Taveras is still capable of being an asset defensively in center field following ankle problems. He’s only played four games in center field at Triple-A, so the Cardinals don’t appear to be grooming him to take over anytime soon.
Combine those factors and keeping Taveras in the minors a bit more makes some sense, but at some point it’ll be tough to keep down a 22-year-old stud prospect hitting .312 with power at age 22.
