Cardinals' big free-agent signing will return to catching duties

It was only a little more than a week ago that the St. Louis Cardinals made the decision to shift free-agent addition Willson Contreras away from catcher for the foreseeable future. 

That experiment is already over, though, as the team announced on Saturday that Contreras will resume catching duties on Monday when the team plays the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Cardinals have had many early problems which have pushed them to the bottom of the National League standings this season. They felt one of their issues revolved around the pitching staff's struggles to adjust to the absence of long-time catcher Yadier Molina. 

Contreras was brought in this offseason as a free agent, signing a five-year, $87.5 million contract to replace the now-retired Molina. 

While the Cardinals saw an issue between the pitching staff and catcher, Contreras was still hitting well enough to keep his bat in the lineup. So the team intended to move him to designated hitter and even flirted with the idea of playing him in the outfield. While that seemed like a reasonable short-term solution, his value would have been greatly reduced at either of those positions and would have made the signing look like a total bust. 

Cardinals manager Carlos Marmol said on Saturday, "We felt really good about the progress that we've made, and it lines up really well for him to catch Monday."

The whole situation makes the Cardinals look like a directionless team that is just sort of making these things up as they go. If they were that concerned about Contreras behind the plate and his ability to handle the pitching staff, so much so that they were even willing to play him in the outfield, it is hard to imagine that anything could have happened over the past seven days to reverse that decision. 

Molina was a great player for the Cardinals for many years, but his absence should not have resulted in this big of a drop for the team. Management simply built a bad roster and now they are scrambling for answers.