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From Missoula to St. Louis: The Rise of Paul Goldschmidt
Posted: May 28, 2022

From Missoula to St. Louis: The Rise of Paul Goldschmidt

By: Carter Lewis, Syracuse University Undergraduate ‘24

From Missoula to St. Louis: The Rise of Paul Goldschmidt 

            Baseball is one of those sports where development can take a while. Most baseball players are drafted in their late-teens or early-20s, with most players making their debut around the age of 24 or 25. Paul Goldschmidt was initially drafted in 2006 in the 49th round by the Los Angeles Dodgers before he opting to enroll at Texas State University. At TSU, he won Southland Conference hitter of the year in 2008 and 2009, leading to him being drafted again, this time in the 8th round by the Arizona Diamondbacks.

            Making his Rookie Ball debut at age 21 with the Missoula Osprey (now known as the Missoula PaddleHeads) he fit in right away. In 74 games, Goldschmidt managed 96 hits, with 48 going for extra bases and 18 going for home runs, a Missoula franchise record at the time. He also ended the season with an excellent slash line of .335/.408/.638, resulting in an impressive 1.046 OPS. For context, the average slash line that season was .273/.345/.408, with an OPS of .753. While his offensive statistics were quite impressive, his defense was also eye-popping. Goldschmidt finished with a Range Factor per Game (Putouts + Assists / Games Played) of 10.47, the highest of his career and one of only two times he finished with a RF/G above 10, the other being in 2013 with the Arizona Diamondbacks. This impressive performance earned him an immediate promotion to A+ ball the following season, where he continued to put up impressive numbers, and just 2 years after playing in the Pioneer Baseball League, Goldschmidt found himself finishing the 2011 season on the Arizona Diamondbacks roster, making the jump from AA affiliate Mobile BayBears straight to the MLB.

            Since his major league debut in 2011, Goldschmidt has been a mainstay in the lineups of the Arizona Diamondbacks and St. Louis Cardinals. He was an All-Star for 6 straight seasons from 2013 to 2018, finished top 3 in NL MVP voting 3 times, finished 6th in NL MVP voting last year, won 4 Golden Gloves, most recently last season, and won 4 Silver Sluggers. According to OPS+, a metric that normalizes a player’s OPS to league averages for the season, Goldschmidt has finished as an above-average hitter in every season he has been in the MLB, and this season it looks like more of the same for Goldschmidt, as the St. Louis Cardinals make a World Series push.