“We’ve got to see how it translates this week when we really get going,” said Matheny, whose club begins its defense of the National League Central crown Sunday against the Pirates. “If they come out like gangbusters as we start in Pittsburgh, it will look awfully good, right? But we’ve seen out here a couple times it hasn’t looked so good. If they’re not going out there getting a lot of repetitions of game-speed stuff it’s hard to get into that. We had a schedule kind of paced that this is the time where we go to get you game-speed at-bats to get your game-speed defense, and we’re hoping that works.”

It is not unusual for a team to have multiple meetings at this time of spring — talking logistics, opening weekend schedule, shipping cars — but the Cardinals have had many.

Matheny referred to his club as “not a big meeting team” Monday, yet he acknowledged they’ve had a lot of meetings in the past three days. Matheny and the Cardinals’ four core-men — Adam Wainwright, Yadier Molina, Matt Holliday and Matt Carpenter — missed all of batting practice Monday and spent several hours in a meeting. It is unusual for Matheny to miss all of BP.