JJ Wetherholt named MVP, Ixan Henderson named Pitcher of the Year among multiple Springfield 2025 award winners

SPRINGFIELD, MO (September 23, 2025) – Minor League Baseball announced on Tuesday that multiple Springfield Cardinals have been honored with end of season Texas League awards following the winningest season in franchise history.

INF JJ Wetherholt has become the fourth straight Springfield Cardinal to be named MVP while LHP Ixan Henderson is the second consecutive Cardinal pitcher to win Pitcher of the Year. Wetherholt and Henderson are among four Postseason All-Stars alongside OF Joshua Baez and LHP Brycen Mautz. Springfield’s first-year manager Patrick Anderson has been named the Texas League Manager of the Year, the second straight season in which this award has been given to a Cardinals’ skipper.

INF JJ Wetherholt: MVP, Postseason All-Star

JJ Wetherholt is the fourth straight Springfield Cardinal to be named Texas League Most Valuable Player. He joins past Cardinals Jimmy Crooks (2024), Thomas Saggese (2023), Moisés Gómez (2022), Dylan Carlson (2019), Oscar Taveras (2012) and Matt Adams (2011) as winners of this prestigious award. The organization’s consensus top-ranked prospect began his first full season in professional baseball with Double-A Springfield in 2025, playing in 62 games and slashing .300/.425/.466 while swatting seven home runs, driving in 34 runs and stealing 14 bases. His Springfield career was highlighted by multiple dazzling defensive plays and a pair of walk-off singles on June 12 against the Tulsa Drillers and July 1 against the Northwest Arkansas Naturals. His final game in Double-A on July 6, Wetherholt tallied his first multi-home run game as a professional, launching a pair of homers against Northwest Arkansas. This summer, the first rounder became the 27^th Future’s Game Selection in team history, although he was already with Triple-A Memphis by the time of the All-Star Break, earning his call-up to the highest level of Minor League Baseball on July 7. He finished 2025 as the sixth-best prospect in all of baseball.

LHP Ixan Henderson: Pitcher of the Year, Postseason All-Star

Ixan Henderson enjoyed a breakout season in 2025 for Double-A Springfield. The southpaw led the Texas League with a 2.59 ERA, 0.06 points away from matching a franchise record of 2.53 held by Dakota Hudson (2017). He’s the first Springfield Cardinal pitcher to lead the league in ERA since Angel Rondón in 2019 (3.21). He also led the league in opponent batting average (.210) among qualified pitchers while reaching career-highs in starts (25), innings pitched (132.0), wins (9) and strikeouts (134). The Fresno State product was named the Texas League’s Pitcher of the Week August 11-17 and St. Louis’ Minor League Pitcher of the Month after an outstanding April. The southpaw is currently ranked as St. Louis’ 15^th-best prospect according to MLB Pipeline after entering the season outside of the publications Top-30 list.

OF Joshua Baez: Postseason All-Star

Joshua Baez began 2025 with High-A Peoria in the Midwest League, enjoying 38 games with a .317 average, hitting four home runs and stealing 20 bases in his brief stint with the Chiefs. His stellar performance led to a Double-A call-up on May 29, where he hit the ground running tallying at least one hit in nine of his first eleven games with Springfield (13-for-39, .333). Baez swatted a pair of homers twice this season on June 10 against Tulsa and June 19 against Corpus Christi, the latter aiding in his case for winning Texas League Player of the Week for the week of June 16-22. With numerous highlights in 2025, Baez’s marquee moment came on August 30 against the Midland RockHounds when he launched a dramatic two-run home run in the bottom of the tenth for Springfield’s only walk-off home run of the year. The Boston-born, Dominican Republic-raised slugger led the 2025 Cardinals with 16 home runs and 34 stolen bases. Across two levels and 117 games, Baez slashed .287/.384/.500, tallying 20 homers, 79 RBI and 54 stolen bases. The 2021 second-round draft selection skyrocketed to the number seven ranked prospect in the Cardinals organization after entering the season outside of the Top-30, according to MLB Pipeline.

LHP Brycen Mautz: Postseason All-Star

Brycen Mautz spent the entire season at Double-A and excelled in his first year at the level. The lefty starter led the Texas League among qualified pitchers with a 1.11 WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched) and a .727 win percentage. He finished second in ERA (2.98) and opponent batting average (.219), both right behind fellow Cardinal starter Ixan Henderson. Mautz, in his third season of professional baseball, enjoyed the most successful season of his young career, marking career-bests in ERA, WHIP, opponent batting average and walks issued (33). Minor League Baseball named Mautz the Texas League’s July Pitcher of the Month after a stellar stretch, going 2-0 with a 1.57 ERA while striking out 28 batters in 23.0 innings of work. He followed up that award with a 10-strikeout performance on August 8 against the San Antonio Missions, allowing just one hit in six shutout innings. That started earned him Texas League Pitcher of the Week. Of his 25 starts in 2025, Mautz surrendered one or zero runs (earned or otherwise) 16 times. He finishes the year as the number 21 ranked prospect in the system, according to MLB Pipeline.

Patrick Anderson: Manager of the Year

Patrick Anderson was named the new manager of the Springfield club prior to season’s start, following in the footsteps of 2024’s Texas League Manager of the Year José Leger, with Anderson winning the same award in 2025. It’s the first time in Texas League history that the Manager of the Year award has been given to a Springfield manager in consecutive seasons. After three seasons as the manager of the High-A Peoria Chiefs (2022-2024), Anderson led the winningest club in franchise history (88-50) in his first season at the Double-A Rank, finishing tied for the fourth most wins in all of Minor League Baseball (120 full-season teams). In his managerial career that began in 2013, he reached 700 career wins on June 18 and surpassed well past that number in a record-setting season in club history. For just the second time in team history, his Cardinals won both the First and Second Half North Division Championship (also 2007). His team struck out the fewest times in the Texas League while ranking in the top three in runs scored (678 – 3rd), home runs (118 – 3rd), stolen bases (181 – 3rd) and on base percentage (.338 – 3rd). His pitching staff led the league in ERA (3.55), strikeouts (1,324) and allowed the fewest hits (1,016), while his defense surrendered the fewest stolen bases (90) amongst all full-season Minor League teams.