Cardinals rule in 2024? Willson Contreras, Lance Lynn looking to top Cubs, all others in Central

JUPITER, Fla. — There’s a favorite to win the 2024 National League Central race, and its first full-squad workout of spring training took place Monday, some 2,300 miles from Mesa, Arizona.

While the big-market, big-money Cubs are playing around at the edges with their payroll, so far avoiding an opportunity to grab control of a division they should control more often than not but don’t, the Cardinals — a last-place team in 2023 — have bubbled up to the top of the Central, according to the leading projection models.

Eighty wins isn’t going to get it done, but that’s where the Cody Bellinger-less Cubs are, if the slide-rule and pocket-protector crews at FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus, to name two, know what they’re nerding out about.

The Cardinals, projected in the low- to mid-80s in wins, are happily embracing the favorite’s role. It’s a lot more fun than looking back at last season’s 71-91 debacle, when their defense was awful, their starting pitching was even worse and their loss total and last-place finish were a worst and a first, respectively, since all the way back in 1990.

“We got our ass kicked, that’s it,” catcher Willson Contreras said, looking back for just a glimpse. “But in 2024, we’re looking to get back to what the Cardinals are, and that is a winning organization. I think we can be a very good team.”

Contreras got hit in the head Monday while taking live batting practice against starter Miles Mikolas, not exactly the best way to get things rolling. But it was a looping breaking ball that merely grazed the former Cub’s helmet. Crisis averted.

Like every team in the heavyweight-less Central, the Cardinals are facing all kinds of questions. Is 36-year-old slugger Paul Goldschmidt, whose power numbers dropped to sub-elite levels last season, beginning to decline? Will Contreras pick up where he left off in an outstanding second half at the plate and catch well enough to leave doubts about that part of his game behind? Will infielder Nolan Gorman, only 23, blow up into an elite home run hitter? Will shortstop Masyn Winn, who turns 22 a week before Opening Day, blossom as hoped?

The biggest matter for the Cardinals is their rotation, which was bolstered by free agents Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn. Gray, 34, is coming off a 2.79 ERA season with the Twins. Gibson, 36, won a career-high 15 games with the Orioles. And 2011 World Series winner Lynn, 36, who was much better with the Dodgers after a miserable four-month stretch with the White Sox, is back home.

“I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t think we’d win,” Lynn said. “I’m not playing to collect a paycheck or just do it. I’m trying to make a playoff run. In my time as a Cardinal, that was the goal every year. That hasn’t changed.”

Lynn, looking much trimmer than he did with the Sox, pushed back at an observation about his physique.

“No way, man,” he said. “I just haven’t been on TV yet.”

Adds some pounds, does it?

“My back still takes up the whole screen.”

Managers don’t always tip the scales much, but that might be where the Cubs have their most significant advantage in the division. The Brewers’ Pat Murphy is getting his first big-league shot. The Reds’ David Bell and the Pirates’ Derek Shelton have yet to be mistaken for Sparky Anderson and Chuck Tanner. And the Cardinals’ Oliver Marmol has serious heat on him in the last year of his contract.

“I’m more excited than ever,” Marmol said.

It beats complaining about the heat.

“We’re looking to win a World Series,” he said, “and we’re going to prepare to put ourselves in a position to do that.”

But the Cubs have Craig Counsell — hadn’t you heard? — and he is the Central’s star. This must be why the Cubs threw a record $40 million at him.

“No team’s going to give $40 million to a manager who’s not good,” Contreras agreed. “They added a great manager to their organization, so we’ll see. They have the talent to win the division as well. But it doesn’t mean they’re going to win.”

Many were surprised when the Cubs fired Counsell’s predecessor, David Ross. Contreras, who played with and then for Ross — and didn’t always see eye-to-eye with him — was, as he put it, “more like, OK, it just happened.”

“If you have the chance to upgrade the manager position with Counsell, a guy that’s been in the playoffs several times and had winning teams and knows how to have the communication with the players, knows how to handle every player and knows how to handle the clubhouse, you do it,” Contreras said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

That’s an assessment that might raise an eyebrow or two back in Chicago.

If the Cardinals finish at the top, with the Cubs looking up at them, it’ll speak a lot more loudly.