Cardinals waste no time admitting Mariners were right about Jurrangelo Cijntje

Mariners fans didn’t need another reminder that Seattle’s player development group tends to be ruthlessly practical, but the Cardinals just gave them one anyway.

The easiest dunk after the Jurrangelo Cijntje trade would’ve been St. Louis immediately going, “Cool story, Seattle. We’re bringing the switch-pitching experiment back.” That’s the version that would’ve made the Mariners look like they bailed on the thing that made him special.

Instead, the Cardinals basically confirmed what a lot of people suspected: Seattle wasn’t trading away a two-handed gimmick. They were trading away a pitcher they’d already started shaping into a right-handed starter, and St. Louis appears to agree with that direction.

Cardinals deliver a revealing verdict on Mariners’ Cijntje development call

Cardinals president of baseball ops Chaim Bloom was unusually candid about it. He said that, “broadly speaking,” the Cardinals see Cijntje’s strengths and upside “similarly to Seattle,” and that it’s “not a shock” the Mariners were prioritizing the right-handed side. Bloom also made it clear this wasn’t some snap judgment — it was something discussed over “months” of conversations with Seattle, including how the Mariners envisioned his development path.

The good news: Seattle wasn’t blindly selling a mystery. The Cardinals are treating it like “Seattle already had the right idea, now we’ll learn the player and build from there.” Bloom even acknowledged Cijntje’s own preference and routine — that he’s “passionate about keeping up the left side” — but framed it as something that might continue in a controlled practice setting while they evaluate him in-person.

The bad news is the obvious one: if Cijntje turns into a frontline right-handed starter, then the trade becomes painful in the exact way Mariners trades always get painful — not because Seattle didn’t understand the player, but because they did, and still decided the cost was worth it. 

The Cardinals aren’t rushing to resurrect the full switch-pitching experiment. If anything, they just validated the Mariners’ read. The right-handed version of Cijntje is the real ceiling play.

Which means Seattle can’t really claim ignorance if it goes nuclear in St. Louis. They knew what they were giving up, and St. Louis just acknowledged it out loud.