Cardinals Open Door For Unexpected Iván Herrera Decision

The St. Louis Cardinals were fortunate to get Iván Herrera back into the lineup on Sunday against the Atlanta Braves.

He went 1-for-3 and got walked once as well in his return from the Injured List. Before Sunday's contest, he hadn't appeared in a big league game since June 19th. This was his second significant stint on the Injured List this season and because of that, he's only played in 43 games.

The Cardinals clearly want to keep this guys' bat in the lineup and keep him healthy and because of this, Cardinals manager Oli Marmol recently made it sound like there's a possibility that Herrera doesn't catch the rest of the season, as shared by MLB.com's Jeff Jones.

"We have to definitely keep that in mind as far as if we want to keep him healthy for the remaining couple months," Marmol said. "We’ve talked about that. We haven’t come up with, like, 'This is exactly what it will look like,' but we’re pretty close to (not catching)."

That's something that certainly wasn't expected at the beginning of the season, but when you have two long stints on the Injured List, something needs to at least somewhat change. St. Louis needs Herrera's bat in the lineup each day and there are other options available to do the catching. This would be a pretty solid idea to at least try to take him off his feet and keep him healthy.

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