The Cardinals will have a hard time replacing Peralta’s production, especially with Jason Heyward leaving this winter and Yadier Molina battling both injuries and a steep decline in offensive production over the past two seasons.
Advertisement
This is an injury with which the Cardinals are quite familiar.
The team does not expect to have results from the second opinion until Wednesday. He hit. 275 and had 17 homeruns and 71 RBI’s previous year, according to ESPN. An MRI taken on Sunday suggested otherwise and necessitated Peralta travel back to St. Louis for a second opinion.
Advertisement
Peralta is entering the third year of a four-year contract. “We’ve got to determine what this next step looks like”. Instead, they’ll likely have to look in-house with Aledmys Diaz, Jedd Gyorko and Greg Garcia being the most obvious potential fill-ins. Gyorko, who has averaged 16 homers in the last three years for San Diego, was at shortstop for Monday’s game with the New York Mets. 391 on-base percentage in the minor leagues, and batted. He has also played in at least 155 games the past two seasons, so he has stayed healthy and been a consistent and reliable part of the team’s lineup. He has missed only 12 games in the past two seasons but the opening games of the 2016 campaign are less than a month away.
