St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina is on the team’s NLDS roster.
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Manager Mike Matheny made the announcement on Thursday afternoon, as well as the other decisions for his 25-man squad.
“Yadi Molina looks great, going to be ready to go,” shared Matheny. “He looks good to me and he’s swinging the bat well. He took some live swings today off a pitcher throwing a simple battery game. Everything looked right. You saw him receiving the ball. Everything looked right. So I don’t have a percentage for you except he looks good.”
Molina and Tony Cruz will make up the Cardinals catching corps. Then Matt Carpenter, Jhonny Peralta, Kolten Wong, Mark Reynolds, Brandon Moss, and Greg Garcia will compose the infield. In the outfield, Matt Holliday, Jason Heyward, Randall Grichuk, Tommy Pham, Stephen Piscotty and Jon Jay are on the roster.
Following Game 1 starter John Lackey in the rotation will be Jaime Garcia, Michael Wacha, and Lance Lynn.
Trevor Rosenthal, Kevin Siegrist, Jonathan Broxton, Adam Wainwright, Seth Maness, Carlos Villanueva and Tyler Lyons will make up the 11-man bullpen.
Looking from the outside are players such as Matt Adams, Peter Bourjos, Randy Choate, and Pete Kozma.
“We could sit here for a long time talking about the decisions made on this roster, and you know, it wasn’t a lot of fun,” continued Matheny. “It’s been tough to go sit and talk with some guys who have made serious contributions to this club and not allow them to be part of this playoff roster. So trying to get together with the staff and figure out what’s going to be best for our club as a whole. You just try and take our club as a whole and realize what potentially might happen and how we could best set ourselves up.”
Out of respect for those left off, Matheny declined to go through each roster decision case by case, but he did specifically address questions regarding the addition of Tommy Pham and exclusion of Adams.
“His ability to come off the bench and run, the defense that he brings and the ability to play center field at times; and then the bat,” explained Matheny about Pham. “The bat plays into it, and the offense that he was able to produce in the short time that he was here. So all those go into that plus column for him, and we believe gives him an edge to where he can help us move forward.”
“Matt Adams is a guy that we think very highly of and somebody we still want to keep sharp–never know how this will all play out and I can say the same thing about quite a few guys that aren’t on this roster right now.”
photo credit: Bill Greenblatt/UPI
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