Welcome to rates and barrels. It is Monday, May 8th, Derek Van Riper here with Enosaris on this episode.

We will discuss the very strange situation that started to play out over the weekend in St. Louis. Wilson Contreras isn't going to be a catcher for a little while, a long while. It's kind of hard to tell because for a moment it looked like he was going to be an outfielder slash DH, and then a day later he wasn't going to play on the outfield at all. So I don't know if the Cardinals know for sure what Wilson Contreras is going to do. We're going to talk about that situation. We've got a few other roster moves. Luis Ortiz, a favorite of Eno, is going to be up this week. He's going to take the place of the injured Vince Velasquez and the Pirates rotation. So that's pretty exciting. Christopher Morel looks like he's coming back up for the Cubs, and then we have a ton of great mailbag questions trying to catch up with the mailbag. Mailbag Monday, I guess we'll call it, since it's May 8th and we needed some content, which is always nice. Nice to be able to fall back on that one, when the current of the game doesn't just throw us into the topics that we're

going to talk about. But we'll begin with Wilson Contreras in year one of a five-year deal,

in month two of year one of a five-year deal where he was brought in to replace Yaddi or Molina,

which was pretty much an impossible task for any catcher anyway. The Cardinals are moving away from Contreras as a catcher for the time being.

They're going to have him sit in a meeting and still try and sort some things out.

And the main issue is apparently game calling.

That's the problem the Cardinals have.

And, you know, they've got a few folks quoted as saying he's not the reason things are going

this way.

There are other problems with the team, which, yeah, we know.

But the thing that doesn't make any sense is I saw a Ken Rosenthal story back in February

where John Moseilock acknowledged the issues that the Cubs had with Wilson Contreras's

game calling. And yet they sign out

this five-year deal anyway. So this seems like another bizarre move by the Cardinals front office

that could have been avoided, much like their logjam in the outfield. There could have been

things done prior to the start of the season that would have enabled them to shuffle things around a bit

more easily.

I think the big question to have for you, you know, is, is Wilson Contreras going to hit

enough to just be a DH for the foreseeable future for the Cardinals?

Do we trust the bat enough for him to be productive and be an above average option for

them? I mean, for fantasy

...