Four Cardinals prospects received Texas League honors after Class AA Springfield’s historic season, including the league’s top two accolades.
Top Cardinals prospect JJ Wetherholt was named Texas League MVP on Tuesday, and left-hander Ixan Henderson was named the league’s pitcher of the year. Wetherholt and Henderson also received Texas League postseason All-Star honors alongside outfielder Joshua Baez and lefty Brycen Mautz.
The four All-Star selections tied Springfield for the most selections of any team in the Texas League this season.
Along with the player honors, Springfield manager Patrick Anderson was named Texas League manager of the year.
Wetherholt, 23, opened the year as Springfield’s starting shortstop and batted .300 with an .891 on-base plus slugging percentage in 62 games before getting promoted to Class AAA Memphis before Major League Baseball’s All-Star break in mid-July. Wetherholt, the seventh overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, drove in 34 runs, stole 14 bases on 16 attempts, and walked 44 times while striking out 40 times in Class AA to begin his first full season in the minors.
The honor marks the fourth consecutive season and fifth time since 2019 that a Cardinals prospect won the Texas League’s top honor. Wetherholt follows Jimmy Crooks (2024), Thomas Saggese (2023), Moises Gomez (2022), and Dylan Carlson (2019) as the most recent Cardinals prospects to do.
Henderson, 23, went 9-7 with a 2.59 ERA, a 1.14 WHIP, and struck out 134 batters over 132 innings across 25 starts in Springfield’s rotation. Henderson led qualified pitchers in ERA and batting average allowed (.210) while finishing fourth in both innings and strikeouts.
An eighth-round pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, Henderson is the second consecutive Springfield pitcher to win the award after Tink Hence received the honor last season.
Following a promotion from Class High-A Peoria near the end of May, Baez continued his breakout year by hitting .271 with a .374 on-base percentage and a .509 slugging percentage in 79 Class AA games. Baez, 22, batted .287 with an .884 on-base plus slugging percentage in 117 games between the two levels and cut his strikeout rate down to 20.6% after strikeout rates above 34% in the 2023 and 2024 seasons led to struggles for the 2021 second-round pick.
Mautz, 24, went 8-3, sported a 2.98 ERA, and totaled 134 strikeouts in 114 2/3 innings over 25 starts during his bounce-back season. After he went 3-13 with a 5.18 ERA and a .270 batting average allowed during a 2024 season spent in Class High-A, Mautz kept Class AA hitters to a .270 average and improved his strikeout rate from 23.8% in 2024 to 28.6%. Matuz, a second rounder from the 2022 MLB Draft, led his league in WHIP (1.11) and finished behind Henderson for the league lead in ERA.
Baez and Mautz are Rule 5 Draft-eligible this winter and will need to be added to the Cardinals’ 40-man roster to be protected.
In his first season managing Springfield after three seasons as Peoria’s manager, Anderson, 52, guided the Cardinals’ Class AA affiliate to a franchise-best 88-50 record. The wins total topped the 2024 Springfield Cardinals’ franchise mark of 79 wins. Springfield’s 11-game win streak this year set a new franchise mark after the 2024 Springfield club won nine consecutive games to begin that season. Anderson is the second consecutive Springfield manager to win manager of the year after Jose Leger did in 2024.
Springfield continues its postseason run Tuesday against Midland with Game 2 of the Texas League Championship Series. Springfield must win Game 2 in Midland to force a decisive Game 3 on Wednesday.
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Daniel Guerrero | Post-Dispatch
Baseball writer
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