[Trending News] Cardinals leading prospect JJ Wetherholt scores his first Grapefruit League start, at short

JUPITER, Fla. — Almost exactly a year after his final college season began, JJ Wetherholt is taking the field with the Cardinals for a Grapefruit League that they hope is only the start.

Wetherholt, the seventh overall pick in this past summer’s draft, will make his first appearance and start of big-league spring training Sunday as the Cardinals host Houston for the first home game of the exhibition schedule at Roger Dean Stadium. Wetherholt will start at shortstop.

The West Virginia alum said one of his goals of spring is to show improvement at shortstop and be an infielder who plays shortstop isn’t just positioned there.

The Cardinals’ plan is to alternate starts at shortstop daily between Masyn Winn and Wetherholt with two players battling for a bench job, Michael Helman and Jose Fermin, backing up for the second half of the games. At some point during spring, the Cardinals do plan on getting Brendan Donovan a handful of innings at shortstop, too.

Miles Mikolas will make the start for the Cardinals, and he’s set to pitch two innings against the Astros.

The Cardinals have been swapping several positions through the opening days of spring training, all of these moves in preparation for the team’s two-day, two-game road trip to the Tampa, Florida, area. The catchers, Ivan Herrera and Pages, have been alternating games, and so have first basemen Burleson and Willson Contreras.

Burleson is set to get most of his work this spring at first or DH, and the team is less inclined to have him play much outfield.

That is in part because of the outfielders in camp that they want to see. Scott, Michael Siani, and also Lars Nootbaar are competing for playing time in center field, while a corner outfielder like Koperniak is making his case to be on the bench to open the season or at some point during it.

The pitchers set to follow Mikolas into the game are Tekoah Roby, Sem Robberse, John King, JoJo Romero, Ryan Loutos, Michael Gomez, and an intriguing prospect Edwin Nunez.

Sonny Gray is on the schedule for a live batting practice as he moves closer toward his first start of spring, which is penciled in for Friday.

Look for all the usual constant Cardinals coverage this afternoon from the Post-Dispatch staff at the ballpark and then more in the pages of Monday’s newspaper.