Brendan Donovan and the importance of his 2025 season

He needs to get back to what he was a hitter and possibly adapt to a more specific defensive role

The upcoming season will be a critical one for Brendan Donovan. Donovan turned 28 today, and he’s now into his arbitration years. It won’t be the least bit surprising if he and the Cardinals agree to a multi-year extension before it’s time for an arb hearing. I don’t expect that such an extension will span into Donovan’s free-agent years, but I do think it would cover the next three seasons and thus provide Donovan with a life-changing guarantee and the club with some cost certainty.

Speaking of all this, the 2025 season will be his fourth in the majors, and offensively it’s time for Donovan to get back to flashing the on-base skills that helped make his rookie campaign of 2022 so special. Most fundamentally, that means reversing the trend of his eroding plate discipline. Consider how Donovan’s relevant indicators have tracked across his three seasons in the bigs: