When the St. Louis Cardinals signed Albert Pujols before the 2022 season, I thought it was a crass public relations gambit that was bound to fail, and I was extremely wrong. But it was also really easy to see coming–truthfully, I didn’t think it was actually going to happen, but the rumors had circulated for months. But for Matt Carpenter, whom the Cardinals signed today to a one-year contract, I have no idea what to think. I hadn’t even considered the outside possibility that this might happen.

Matt Carpenter, while often underrated by some of the more traditionalist among St. Louis Cardinals fans, is certainly not the caliber of franchise legend that Albert Pujols was (he should make the Cardinals Hall of Fame, but he’s closer to the Lance Lynn class of Cardinal than the Pujols one), but he figures to fill a similar role in 2024 to the one Pujols filled in 2022. Unlike Albert Pujols, Matt Carpenter is not a half-decade removed from his last good MLB season–in 2022, Carpenter provided a shocking offensive surge for the New York Yankees, with 15 home runs and a 216 OPS+ in 154 plate appearances, primarily as a designated hitter. But Carpenter struggled in 2023 with the San Diego Padres–despite primarily worked as a platoon DH, his OPS+ was an unremarkable 81, a number that would be acceptable for a solid fielder at a premium defensive position but is quite a bit less acceptable for a veteran with minimal defensive value.

Matt Carpenter, for the first seven years of his Cardinals career, had a somewhat strange shape to his production–he was a straight-up candidate for MVP votes in 2013, 2015, and 2018, and was merely pretty good in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017. And then over the next three years of his Cardinals career, he became known primarily as a contract–his lapses in production in 2019 and 2020 was the precursor for the Nolan Arenado trade, and by 2021, his presence on the roster was some combination of a complete lack of reasonable alternatives and sparing a likable guy the indignity of his unconditional release.

Carpenter should benefit from greatly reduced expectations, surely the lowest he has had since his rookie season. He will be 38 years old this season, coming off a sub-Replacement Level year. And since Carpenter is still being paid by the Atlanta Braves (the Padres had traded him as a salary dump to Atlanta, who subsequently released him), the club only owes him the league minimum. But as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free-ish veteran.

The St. Louis Cardinals wasted no time sliding Carpenter onto their depth chart–per their website, he currently is listed as the backup at first base, second base, and third base. I have my doubts that this will be his actual role–I can’t imagine the Cardinals regularly giving Carpenter playing time at second base over Nolan Gorman, though Gorman is listed on the designated hitter chart while Carpenter isn’t, for instance. But it is a fair question to ask whether Matt Carpenter, in 2024, is actually a superior option at first base to Luken Baker, or at second base to Gorman, or at third base to Brendan Donovan (given Donovan’s other various roles, I suspect Carpenter may get most of Nolan Arenado’s days off regardless of Donovan). At his peak, Matt Carpenter was the kind of player that, if you were concocting some absurd all-star team in your head, would be an incredible bench asset because he could handle any of the base positions aptly even if he wasn’t a super-duper-star at any of them, but in 2024, this is more in doubt.

For all of the attention that the Cardinals’ need for pitching has received this off-season, the addition of another bat does make sense. The Cardinals have a lineup with potential but without a ton of depth, particularly in the outfield; while Carpenter does not directly fix for that (he might play a corner, but I wouldn’t recommend it often), he helps with the fluidity of Donovan and especially Tommy Edman. But this also further cements Tommy Edman as a true center fielder, and while Edman has been a very valuable player for the Cardinals because of his strong middle infield defense, his stature as a league average-ish hitter with solid-at-best center field defense severely limits his potential.

By itself, I don’t hate the Matt Carpenter signing–I don’t care a ton about the nostalgia hit, but more depth is a good thing. And if it turns out he’s completely washed, it’s not as though cutting him from a league-minimum deal would be costly or even be the least dignified way for one of his tenures with the Cardinals to end. I suppose I thought Matt Carpenter would sign somewhere on a non-roster invite to Spring Training type of deal, but a total expenditure under a million dollars to get the inside edge on a player you think might be useful isn’t exactly an awful use of resources.

What I do hate, however, is that this move is a tacit admission by the St. Louis Cardinals that there was a need here. With their previous inaction, I thought they were wrong; now, I think they understand enough to acknowledge a problem but not enough to actually try to rectify that problem. Did the Cardinals place a call to Whit Merrifield, a current free agent who I refuse to call old since he’s only a day older than I am? Or Gio Urshela? Amed Rosario? I could see why Tim Anderson would want a more pronounced opportunity to start and prove himself after he fell off a statistical cliff in 2023, but did the Cardinals place a call?

Bringing back Lance Lynn, whose signing I liked a lot more than this one, in conjunction with bringing back Matt Carpenter suggests a Cardinals organization that, after the last two years proved so lucrative, wants to continue to sell nostalgia. But ultimately the gravy train is going to stop if the team does not perform–had Albert Pujols not bounced back so aggressively in 2022, we wouldn’t look back on that season of his so fondly. The Cardinals are opening themselves up to a ton of criticism if this backfires, and the nostalgia for a lack of batting gloves and overpriced salsa probably isn’t going to be enough to put a bandage over that.