JJ Wetherholt Signs Eight-Year Deal With Cardinals

JJ Wetherholt is one of the biggest All-Star snubs this year, but he still had a pretty great end to the first half of his rookie season. On Friday, he agreed to an eight-year contract extension that runs until the end of the 2034 season. Wetherholt is hitting .259/.356/.399 for a 114 wRC+ and 3.5 WAR, the last number leading the St. Louis Cardinals and ranking second among all second basemen, in a virtual tie with Brice Turang and trailing only Luis Arraez, whose advantage of two-tenths of a win comes from his time as a DH. The eight-year deal guarantees that Wetherholt will make $112.5 million, with the potential to net an additional $20 million from MVP votes and All-Star appearances. He also receives a $2 million signing bonus this fall, which ensures he’ll get something soon if the upcoming CBA negotiation proves to be an extended one.

We can argue all day whether or not Wetherholt is the most glaring All-Star omission this year, but with eight of the top 10 second basemen by WAR not making the cut, and a whole bunch of other positions to dig through, I’d have to write a very different article to tackle that question. But it’s inarguable that Wetherholt is having a marvelous rookie season, and is one of the favorites to win NL Rookie of the Year honors when it’s over.

A first-round pick in 2024 out of West Virginia, Wetherholt was expected to march through the minors quite quickly, and that prophecy turned out to be a good one. After a late-summer professional debut for Palm Beach in the Florida State League during his draft year, Wetherholt started off 2025 for Double-A Springfield, and it only took a couple of months of hitting .300/.425/.466 before he earned a promotion to Triple-A Memphis, where he played even better and added power to the mix.

While it was never guaranteed he’d start the season in the majors, he entered spring training in the best spot to do so among baseball’s deep pool of infield phenoms (Kevin McGonigle, Konnor Griffin, Colt Emerson, Jesús Made, Leo De Vries, and I could keep going with this very long parenthetical). Trades of Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan cleared the deck for Wetherholt, as long as he didn’t go completely splat in the spring. He didn’t.

The Cardinals prepared for his quick arrival, making sure to give him a good chunk of his playing time in 2025 at second base and third base, considering Masyn Winn was entrenched as their starting shortstop. Landing at the keystone, Wetherholt has taken to playing the position, his +15 FRV nearly doubling up the next-best in the league, the trio of Arraez, Turang, and Nico Hoerner at +8. Remarkably, 15 runs is elite defense even over a full season, and Wetherholt already ranks sixth among second basemen in single-season FRV, though take note that the stat only goes back to 2016. Defensive statistics are quite volatile, but I’ve found that outlier Statcast fielding measures do tend to be more sticky when they align with the Baseball Info Solutions metrics, and his +11 DRS is nearly as stunning. Adding Wetherholt to Winn has given the Cardinals one of the best middle infields of the Statcast era.

The emergence of Wetherholt as an instant star is not the only reason that the Cardinals, who entered the season in a clear retooling phase, have remained competitive in the NL Central. While catching the Brewers and their 8 1/2-game lead is a tall order, at 50-45, St. Louis is just a game out of a playoff spot. If Jordan Walker can maintain his blistering breakout year, then he (2.7 WAR, 142 wRC+) and Wetherholt (3.5 WAR, 114 wRC+), along with Winn (1.4 WAR, 83 wRC+), All-Star catcher/DH Iván Herrera (1.5 WAR, 121 wRC+), and first baseman Alec Burleson (1.7 WAR, 122 wRC+) would combine to make a pretty good position player core to build upon. And also, the Cardinals have some promising prospects in the high minors who could reinforce that group in the coming years.

You didn’t think I was going to try to sneak out of here without some projections for Wetherholt, did you? This projection is through the All-Star break, so it’s hot off the presses, or whatever the computer projection system version of a printing press would be.

Even with the normal (mathematically required) skepticism inherent in a projection system, ZiPS is very positive about Wetherholt’s outlook. It doesn’t expect him to hit more than 15-20 home runs per year or to become a force when it comes to batting average, but it does view him as an above-average contributor at the plate who should have a good number of All-Star nods in his future — and that’s with more conservative defensive projections of 10-12 runs above average. This deal buys out five years of club control, not a full six (since it does not cover the 2026 season), and ZiPS would have been quite satisfied, as with Konnor Griffin, to extend him a deal in the $160 million range. (This is under MLB’s current collective bargaining agreement, which could obviously change in the next CBA. Since Dan is not a magical sorcerer, he does not know what the new deal will be.)

Hopefully, the Cardinals will continue to sign their offensive core. With superb defense at short and, at times, a league-average bat, Winn would be an excellent extension candidate. However, because he’ll have three years of service time after 2026, he’s about to enter his first year of arbitration, meaning the team won’t get any pre-arbitration discount on the terms, which could make it more difficult to come to an agreement. St. Louis should at least talk with Walker about what it would take to extend him long-term, though that feels a bit riskier given his up-and-down career. Burleson, who is steady at the plate but with a lower ceiling than Walker, Wetherholt, and Winn, could be the most likely player for the club to extend next. Considering the Cardinals haven’t had as much success developing their stable of pitching prospects, they may have to bolster their rotation and bullpen through free agency, and if that’s the case, they would probably want to have some cost certainty on the position player side of things.

No matter what happens with the others, when it comes to Wetherholt, the Cardinals accomplished what they needed to do. They locked up a player who looks capable of anchoring their infield for the next decade, one who should play a key role in the next good Cardinals teams. The core that led St. Louis to four consecutive postseasons from 2019 to 2022 is gone, and lately, the team has been defined more by the players it trades away rather than the ones it gets to keep. As a small-market team that relies on punching above its demographic weight through its loyal fanbase, that’s not the best position to be in. Now, at least, Wetherholt is one player the Cardinals are keeping. They’d be smart to make him the first of many young stars to stick around.