St. Louis Cardinals Place Tommy Pham on DL, Recall Aledmys Diaz
The St. Louis Cardinals will be without their Opening Day left fielder for at least the next couple weeks, but they’ll add some much-needed infield depth.
The St. Louis Cardinals didn’t wait long to make their first adjustment to the 25-man roster in 2016, placing outfielder Tommy Pham on the 15-day disabled list with a left oblique strain and recalling infielder Aledmys Diaz from Triple-A Memphis.
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Pham, who started in left field on Sunday while making his first-ever appearance on a big-league roster, exited the game in the second inning after suffering continued pain from an injury that had first creeped up before the game started.
The injury adds another black mark to Pham’s disappointing health history. The 28-year-old outfielder was a 16th-round pick out of high school in 2006, but it took him nine years to establish himself as a big-league regular because of the repeated injuries he suffered in the minors. After a spectacular spring training performance in 2015, he had a chance to make his first Opening Day roster, but he ended up suffering a quad strain and wasn’t able to get on the field for Triple-A Memphis until June 5.
Diaz’s quick return should be enjoyable for the chunk of fans that wanted him installed as the starting shortstop following Jhonny Peralta‘s injury earlier this spring. While Diaz was optioned out following the signing of Ruben Tejada, he’ll now make his first appearance in the majors despite having just 14 games of Triple-A experience.
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After a disappointing first year-and-a-half of his American pro career, Diaz hit .317/.381/.559 after the All-Star break at Double-A, earned a late-season promotion to Triple-A, where he hit .380/.448/.620, then hit .315/.370/.616 in the Arizona Fall League.
The 25-year-old is known primarily for his defense, and he’ll likely end up being a late-game defensive replacement for Jedd Gyorko, who played the 30th game of his professional career at shortstop in Sunday’s regular season opener. Seeing as the Cardinals want to keep Diaz active, he’ll likely draw at least a few starts while he’s in the majors.
Most importantly, Diaz gives the Cardinals some much-needed positional flexibility on the infield. Following injuries to Peralta and Tejada, Greg Garcia was the sole backup at second, third, and shortstop, and if they had encountered a situation where they needed to replace two infielders in the same game, they would have had to scramble and cast a catcher or outfielder into an unfamiliar role.
On the flip side, though, it must be noted that Diaz further contributes to the Cardinals’ significant lack of experience on the bench. With Pham out and Matt Adams seemingly cast into the regular starting lineup, the Cards’ primary bench group (Diaz, Garcia, outfielder Jeremy Hazelbaker, catcher Eric Fryer, and first baseman/outfielder Brandon Moss) now has just 2,589 collective major-league at-bats, 2,359 of which come from Moss. Particularly on the bench, this lack of big-league experience is pretty concerning, so the Cardinals might want to begin looking at the group of recently-released free agents, which includes guys like Nick Swisher, Reed Johnson, John Mayberry, Jr., Emilio Bonifacio, and Steve Lombardozzi.
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In an interesting twist, especially for a team that’s been as competitive in recent years as the Cardinals have, Diaz will be the fourth Cardinals player who’s expected to make his major-league debut during the season’s opening days. He’ll join Hazelbaker and reliever Seung-Hwan Oh, who debuted yesterday, as well as reliever Matt Bowman.