One of the biggest non-player questions St. Louis Cardinals fans have as the 2026 season is about to begin is what will Yadier Molina\u2019s real role be with the team. We\u2019re starting to get answers and it appears his impact with the 2026 St. Louis Cardinals team will be greater than the past which could be a crucial part of the team\u2019s ongoing rebuild.<\/p>\n
It was nearly a month ago that I shared the news that the St. Louis Cardinals had hired Yadier Molina as a Special Assistant<\/a> to President of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom. This was the same title Yadi received in December of 2023<\/a> when then POBO John Mozeliak brought him back into the organization, but his visibility then was scarce. There are signs that this new era of Yadi will be different as he just told KMOV in St. Louis<\/a> that he would be in the dugout for 2 or 3 series in St. Louis this year and then he would head to the minor leagues to help the young catchers in their development. I have not heard him specify exactly how much time he\u2019ll spend with the minor league catchers.<\/p>\n There is no doubt that Yadier Molina imparting his knowledge into young Cardinals catching prospects like Rainiel Rodriguez<\/a> could be the key to the team developing the next leader behind the plate. The newest MLB prospect rankings<\/a> said that Rodriguez has thrown out at least 30% of the base stealing attempts against him and you\u2019d have to believe that Yadi can help him increase that number. Pitch framing is another skill set that Rainiel needs to improve.<\/p>\n From what I\u2019ve heard Yadi say during his time at Spring Training over the past week is he believes the St. Louis Cardinals have the talent they need even if they don\u2019t have the recognizable names. He said his goal is nothing less than helping the Cardinals win the World Series again. Most believe that\u2019s nothing but a daydream for the 2026 season, but Molina\u2019s influence on all of the young Cardinals will be a key element in helping the organization bring back the winning mindset that is required for a future playoff-contending St. Louis club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the biggest non-player questions St. Louis Cardinals fans have as the 2026 season is about to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,4,673,67,65076,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-581933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cardinals","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-st-louis","12":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","13":"tag-st-louis-cardinals-analysis","14":"tag-stlouis","15":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116100023064722337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}