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The puzzle pieces are starting to fit together on the St. Louis Cardinals’ Brendan Donovan trade, which has been reported as close to final as of Monday evening, but not quite over the finish line.
St. Louis’ top trade chip of the offseason, the All-Star second baseman Donovan, will go to the Seattle Mariners in a three-team trade involving the Tampa Bay Rays. And the presumed headliner of the deal for the Cardinals’ purposes, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post, will be 22-year-old Jurrangelo Cijntje.
Cijntje has been a fascinating prospect for years, and he’s also been in the news recently because of a change he seems to be making. Let’s break it all down, and give Cardinals fans reason to be excited about (arguably) the best prospect they’ve landed in a deal all winter.
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What we know about Jurrangelo Cijntje
Cijntje, 22, is the current No. 91 overall prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. Most folks know him as a “switch-pitcher,” an extremely rare phenomenon we haven’t seen in the majors since Pat Venditte in 2020. However, it’s possible that Cijntje’s incredible ability to throw over 90 mph with both arms may not be utilized as much as some thought moving forward.
The Mariners recently designated Cijntje as a right-handed pitcher for spring training program purposes, and general manager Justin Hollander said at Seattle’s FanFest on Sunday that it planned to have him develop as a right-handed starter, which the club believed was how he could maximize his potential (via Daniel Kramer of MLB.com).
However, that was the Mariners’ plan. We’ll have to find out at some point from the Cardinals’ brass whether that’s the same plan Cijntje will follow in St. Louis, but the stats bear out that Cijntje is significantly better righty, against batters from both sides of the plate.
Cijntje posted a 3.99 ERA and 120 strikeouts in 108 1/3 innings last season, which, combined with his former first-round status, should have already had Cardinals fans excited. But looking under the hood, his numbers as a righty alone should have them downright ecstatic.
Cijntje held right-handed batters to a .481 OPS in 241 plate appearances at High-A last season. Lefties fared better against him as a righty, with an .845 OPS in 154 plate appearances. However, both lefties and righties were over the 1.000 OPS mark in smaller sample sizes.
If the Cardinals follow the Mariners’ plan and have Cijntje focus on throwing righty-only, his ceiling could be limitless. And for the cost of two years of control over Donovan at the start of a rebuild, that was a bet worth making.
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