It's no secret that the St. Louis Cardinals possess a litany of talented catchers in their minor league system. It's also clear that Pedro Pages' defense behind the plate hasn't reached the same highs as in years prior. This combination has led to Pages becoming persona non grata in St. Louis, and the calls are gradually growing louder for the Cardinals to acknowledge Jimmy Crooks' production in Triple-A and bring him up for another taste of the majors. However, if the Cardinals are smart, they will resist the allure.
Remember when Jordan Walker set the Grapefruit League on fire during spring training in 2023? During his torrid streak, Cardinals fans clamored for Walker, the team's top prospect at the time, to break camp with the big-league club. The Cardinals obliged, but despite his productive first month, the team backtracked, sending Walker to Triple-A in an attempt to have him launch the ball in the air more often because they believed the results of his current style of play were unsustainable. If the Cardinals were to promote Crooks now, he would likely follow a similar path after some significant flaws in his game are inevitably exposed at the highest level.
Cardinals fans shouldn't be tricked by Crooks' surface stats.
Crooks is currently hitting .288 with eight home runs in 66 at-bats. He's doing damage when he connects with the ball, and the home runs are music to the ears of fans who are praying for the Cardinals to replace Pages with Crooks. Unfortunately, Crooks carries a 35% strikeout rate, and if one dives further under the hood, the numbers become even uglier.
So far, Crooks has taken a hack at 44.6% of pitches he's faced, and his contact rate is 64.7%, which would have been the lowest of any qualified major league hitter last season. He's swinging outside of the zone less often than in 2025 and his chase rate is around league average, but he's also making far less contact on pitches outside of the zone, with him making contact on 39.3% of chases. That would be tied for the fourth-lowest out-of-zone contact in baseball in 2025.
Crooks isn't making outs on weak contact on balls outside of the zone because he generally isn't making any contact on balls outside of the zone, as he looks to have changed his hitting style to sell out for power. Aaron Judge is the only hitter who comes close to missing this much and having sustained success in the majors. And remember, Crooks' abysmal contact rate is in Triple-A. It only gets harder.
Major league pitchers who can dot the edges of the plate would have no fear attacking Crooks in the strike zone and taking advantage of his whiff-happy tendencies. A promotion to St. Louis might provide some immediate results, but it wouldn't be long before teams start to adjust to Crooks' new approach.
The Cardinals have little reason to promote Crooks now.
The Cardinals are now smart enough to see that the glaring issues with Crooks' game will allow major league pitchers to eat him alive, even if his stats haven't reflected that yet. However, some may argue that with the Cardinals in a rebuilding year, there's no reason to leave Crooks in the minor leagues and that he should sink or swim at the highest level.
This is a time to remember the differing goals of Chaim Bloom and Oli Marmol. Bloom's aim as the Cardinals president of baseball operations is to build for the future, not to win immediately. Walker's hurried arrival onto the St. Louis scene came during a time where the Cardinals thought they would be competitive and that he would step in as an impact bat to help them reach the postseason. With no such delusions this time around, the Cardinals can afford to play it slow with Crooks and let him adopt an approach in Memphis that will allow him to succeed at the highest level.
Marmol's objective as the manager, of course, is to win baseball games, and if Crooks were to receive a promotion but soon fall flat on his face, as the numbers suggest would happen, Marmol would likely cut Crooks' playing time. It doesn't matter if Crooks performs better or worse than Pages in the role, because the Cardinals know what they have in Pages; he's most likely at or near his professional ceiling. Crooks has more time to develop his skills, and he won't do that by sitting on the bench.
If the Cardinals were still trying to fool fans and themselves into thinking they were a winning ball club, perhaps Crooks would be knocking on the door. But these Cardinals should no longer be the franchise that makes the head-scratching decisions we all saw in the John Mozeliak era. They're better than that now, and they won't be blinded by the smoke that Crooks is currently puffing out.