JJ Wetherholt Helps Capture Affiliate Ball Championship for Cardinals

WVU Baseball product JJ Wetherholt’s trophy case just keeps getting bigger.

Barely three months after leading the Mountaineers to the first Super Regional appearance in program history—and two months after hearing the St. Louis Cardinals call his name with the seventh overall pick in the MLB Entry Draft, the highest selection in WVU Baseball history—Wetherholt can add a championship title to his quickly growing résumé.

The #STLCards quickly assigned 2024 Draft selections to Single-A in July, and the wins kept coming.

Led by No. 7 overall pick JJ Wetherholt, Palm Beach leaned into its newcomers for a title: https://t.co/xD4yv8YNZM pic.twitter.com/l8qd6eKXiV

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) September 19, 2024

The 22-year-old middle infielder helped the Palm Beach Cardinals, St. Louis’ Single-A affiliate, to a Florida State League title, knocking in the eventual game-winning run with a seventh inning triple.

JJ Wetherholt put together a strong showing in his first (abbreviated) season of professional baseball, slashing .295/.404/.400 with five doubles and two homers in 29 games. He then caught fire as the postseason began, reaching base more often than not as he put up a .421/.522/.684 slash line.

The 5-foot-10 lefty bat also demonstrated his ability to play a dependable shortstop, committing just two errors in 243 innings at the position. That’s an especially important point for Wetherholt, as he didn’t get a full chance to do so with the Mountaineers last season.

After switching to shortstop ahead of West Virginia’s 2024 campaign in order to show his defensive strength—and boost his draft stock—Wetherholt sat out for close to two months because of a hamstring injury and spent even more time limited to serving as designated hitter while working his way back to full health.

29 games in the field is an admittedly small sample size, but it still marks an important step in Wetherholt’s development.

West Virginia Sports Now caught up with JJ Wetherholt following the draft to get his early impressions of professional baseball: click here to read more.