{"id":562203,"date":"2026-03-26T14:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/562203\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T14:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T14:18:10","slug":"a-historic-mlb-debut-on-opening-day-for-jj-wetherholt-with-cardinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/562203\/","title":{"rendered":"A historic MLB debut on Opening Day for JJ Wetherholt with Cardinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

A historic MLB debut on Opening Day for JJ Wetherholt with Cardinals<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

JJ Wetherholt has arrived.<\/p>\n

The St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> decided not to wait any longer. Rather than send Wetherholt back to the minor leagues, he’s in MLB on Opening Day.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

On Thursday, that means Wetherholt will make his regular season MLB debut. He most likely will bat leadoff.<\/p>\n

If Wetherholt leads off, he’ll be the first Cardinals rookie to bat in the leadoff spot for his MLB debut on Opening Day since 1949:<\/p>\n

The first Cardinals player to ever do this was Pug Bennett in 1906, which is really just a great excuse to spell out the name Pug Bennett.<\/p>\n

Wetherholt is hoped to have immense staying power. He’s a top-10 prospect in the entire sport, and the Cardinals will be hoping he’s their shortstop for the next decade or more.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

But every career starts somewhere, and Wetherholt’s is slated to start Thursday at the major league level.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals didn’t have to bring him to the majors to start the season. Not many expect St. Louis to be competitive. They could’ve delayed Wetherholt’s service time clock.<\/p>\n

But they decided he’s ready, and they chose not to hold back a special talent any longer.<\/p>\n

Wetherholt is making his MLB debut on Thursday, and it could be a day Cardinals fans look back on for a long time as a significant one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A historic MLB debut on Opening Day for JJ Wetherholt with Cardinals originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,66892,462,6286,217036,1521,82,14577,3982,217037],"class_list":["post-562203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-jj-wetherholt","tag-mlb","tag-opening-day","tag-pug-bennett","tag-reds","tag-sports","tag-st-louis","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-wetherholt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}