ST. LOUIS — To reach the historic heights that Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn soared to during the 2025 season — one where he committed just three errors and awed nightly with his grace with the glove and electrifying arm — he had to first be willing to embrace the mundane and boring.
Winn’s path to becoming the youngest Gold Glove winner in the rich history of the Cardinals was lined with monotonous ground-ball drills, maturity in making the simple, fundamental plays and fully committing himself to becoming — at least in his mind — the game’s best fielding shortstop. While that might not sound like much, sticking to the basics and being content with the boring runs somewhat counter to the personality of the 23-year-old shortstop decked out in diamonds and fittingly carrying the middle name of Blaze.
“When I got to pro ball, I wanted to make the [Derek] Jeter plays, do all the flashy stuff and show off my arm,” admitted Winn, who became the 100th Cardinal in team history to become a Gold Glover. “That was one thing that [instructor José Oquendo] stressed, and I credit all my defensive ability to him at this point. He brought everything down to the fundamentals.
“I made three errors this year and the only way I could have done that was by making the fundamental, simple play every single time. That’s made me so much better.”
Winn was significantly better in 2025, cutting his fielding errors from 18 to three, and he’s feeling better after having arthroscopic surgery to correct meniscus damage in his right knee. Winn’s season was limited to 129 games, and it ended prematurely on Sept. 12 because of lingering pain in the knee. From his offseason home in South Florida, Winn said his hope is that he will soon be fully cleared by doctors so that he can start swinging a bat and resume a few of those mundane ground-ball drills.
“It ended up not being as bad of a surgery as we thought it was going to be, so we’ve been able to expedite the program so that I could have a normal offseason,” said Winn, who is expected to have no physical limitations by the start of Spring Training in early February. “It’s going great. I jogged for the first time this week. [The workouts] suck, but it’s good for me. It’s a lot of leg workouts — which nobody wants to do — but it will give me a good base for a full 162-game season. But I knew a week after the surgery that the pain I was dealing with during the season was gone.”
Winn was a pain to opposing hitters in 2025 by making both the routine and fabulous plays at shortstop. At the time the Cardinals shut him down because of issues with the knee, Winn was leading all of MLB in outs above average at 21. He ultimately finished fifth in that category, but his lead among all NL shortstops remained. Also, his three errors at arguably the game’s most demanding position matched the historic totals of Cal Ripken Jr. (1990) and Omar Vizquel (2000), the fewest by an MLB shortstop in a single season.
To put Winn’s low error total into perspective, AL Gold Glove winner Bobby Witt Jr. committed 10 errors in 2025.
Now that he’s proven himself defensively, Winn said the goal for this offseason is to work to become a more well-rounded shortstop who also displays consistency at the plate. He is spending his offseason working at a baseball skills center with Cardinals teammates Jordan Walker and Iván Herrera and top prospect JJ Wetherholt. He hopes to settle on a swing that will help him improve upon a 2025 in which he slashed .253/.310/.363 with a .673 OPS, nine home runs and 51 RBIs. While his whiff rate (19.6%) was in MLB’s 79th percentile, his average exit velocity (88.3 mph, 24th percentile) and hard-hit rate (34.6%, 16th percentile) lagged, per Baseball Savant.
“The biggest thing is I’ve got to improve offensively and defensively stay right where I am,” Winn said. “Pretty much every offensive aspect, I regressed this year. Going forward, hopefully I’ll have a full, healthy season and I’ll have a good season under my belt [offensively].”
As the fifth-youngest shortstop in MLB history to win a Gold Glove, Winn knows he must prove that he can do it again. Ten-time Gold Glover Nolan Arenado and four-time winner Paul Goldschmidt have said they expect Winn to reel in several Gold Glove Awards over the next few seasons.
“[Arenado] is a benchmark to look at and 10 [Gold Gloves] is ridiculous,” he joked. “But I think I can win multiple — five, six or seven — if I just stick to it.”
