A Short Followup

Found this link via MLB Trade Rumors. Apparently John Mozeliak says that he’s not necessarily done with making moves this off-season.

Which, to me, is kinda interesting. What else could Mozeliak be working on?

The starting lineup is pretty set, as far as we know. We don’t know who will be shortstop, but there are a lot of options there. There are more starters than starting rotation slots already and the bullpen is pretty strong. The bench is likely full as well.

Seems to me that, if something does happen, it’d either be of the “minor league signing” variety or a trade. I can’t imagine what he’d package together to get, but I’d hope he’s thinking about another big bat. The pitching staff, of course, could always be upgraded but I’m thinking that is passable now.

It’ll be interesting to see if anything does happen. I’m leaning toward nothing until about the first week of spring training games, maybe mid-March. If I remember right, that’s about the time we got Edmonds back in 2000.

Oh, and you’ll see TLR still isn’t over the whole Rolen thing again in that link. At least make your comments funny, Tony. That one is pretty lame.

EDIT: Joe Posnanski’s blog about the St. Louis writers dinner looks pretty interesting.

Week’s End

If you’ve not gotten your picks in for VEB’s all-time sim tourney, you better hurry.  Results are supposed to start showing up sometime today.  If you miss out on phase I, don’t worry.  The reseeded phase II tournament will have more points available, so you won’t necessarily be at that much of a disadvantage if you play II without I.  And kudos to The Angry Rant for explaining his picks.

Speaking of VEB, here’s red baron’s grading of Mozeliak.  On the whole, I’d say I’d have to agree with him.  It appears that LaRussa still has considerable say in the roster management portion of the team, which can be good, can be bad as evidenced by Miles’s resigning especially.  Mo came into a tough situation and a transitional phase in the organization.  It’s going to be tough to give him an accurate assessment until two or three years down the line.

Deaner expands his thoughts on the possibility that the Cards might sign Juan Gonazalez.  I’m pretty much fine with a spring training invite for him.  I don’t expect he’ll make the team, but if he plays well enough to merit going north, then he could help the bench get a little more pop.

Also, Winter Warmup is this weekend so perhaps some news will be made then.  Troy Glaus and Matt Clement get their first taste of Cardinal Nation and I’m sure they’ll enjoy it.  I’ve always wanted to go to the WWU, though it’s so pricey and usually it’s tough for me to get away during January for something like that.

If you are looking for an all-sports website to comment on, CardinalsGM has a suggestion.

Kujo has an in-depth analysis of Rick Ankiel.   Rick’s always been one of my favorite players and I was very excited to see him return last year.  All that said, I’m afraid he’s going to regress some this year, especially if Rasmus comes up and takes that 2 hole away from him.  Still, if he can hit .260 with 20 HR, he’s got value to this team.  There may be a number of players doing that, what with Duncan and Glaus also being lower-average, higher-power type guys.

That’s a quick run around the blogs, though obviously there is much more out there.  Just go through my blogroll and check them all out.  I should have some news about this blog on Monday or at least early next week.

Back in Red

Just when we thought he was out, they pull him back in.  The Cardinals resigned Aaron Miles to a $1.4 million contract.

What exactly does Miles bring to the table to warrant that kind of money?  I mean, I know that’s not a lot for a baseball team to spend on a player, but shouldn’t they get some bang for their buck?

According to the always-impeccable VEB, Miles brings….well, nothing really.  Except the knowledge that TLR is still calling the shots.

Look, I’ve been a fan of LaRussa’s since he was wearing the green and gold of Oakland, even before his “mastermind” turn in George Will’s Men at Work.  But his obsession with scrappy veterans is going to be the death of a lot of Cardinal fans.

There’s probably nothing that Miles will do this year that Jarrett Hoffpauier couldn’t do.  The difference, at best, would be minuscule in favor of Miles.  So why spend an extra million to bring him back?  There was a reason you non-tendered him.

I’m glad that Larry was able to get sources to show that TLR was behind this move, otherwise we’d have to have another round of questioning Mozeliak.   The ownership of the Cardinals has an unhealthy fascination with Tony, I believe.  The logical thing to have done this offseason was to shake things up completely and let TLR walk if he wanted.  Instead, not only did ownership not do that, they didn’t wait to hire a GM before hiring him back on.  Which told us that no matter who got the GM job, TLR was going to have more influence on the comings and goings than a normal manager.

I hate to be critical of TLR or ownership, but this really is nonsensical, especially after freeing up roughly $6 million in the Edmonds trade.  You spend over 15% of that savings on a guy with 19 extra-base hits last year?  When you have someone you can play for the bare minimum in a year that’s already looked at as a rebuilding and regrouping year?  It just doesn’t make sense.

Year In Review: Top 5 Cardinal Stories

The United Cardinal Bloggers strike again, this time with a recap of 2007. We each selected the five stories that we thought were the most important for 2007 in relation to the Cardinals. Check out CardinalNationGlobe, CardinalGM, Readin’ Redbird, Rockin’ the Red and Stan Musial’s Stance for their takes. (I’ll direct link to their stories when they are up.)

And, after the jump, my selections:

So Long, Mr. Edmonds

It’s rare when I get a Saturday post up, especially this early, but the news I saw last night before going to bed about Jim Edmonds being traded to the Padres meant I had to get over here and write.

The dismantling of 2006 continues, as key players Jeff Suppan, Jeff Weaver, David Eckstein and now Edmonds are all in different locales.  The others I understood and expected, but this one really surprised me.  I’d written a couple of times over here that I thought Jim would stick around, especially with that new restaurant having just opened.   I guess the idea of going home and playing for a winner in his last season was pretty appealing.

Which makes you wonder if this was more about him than the Cardinals.  I know that the prospect that the Cardinals are getting back, third baseman David Freese, is supposed to be a pretty good one, but he’s just in A ball.  Some of you may remember the last trade of a star for an A baller in Cardinal history.  (OK, the last one I can remember without looking up.)  Lee Smith was sent to the Yankees for pitcher Rich Batchelor.  Batchelor never amounted to much (though I do think he got a cup of coffee with the Birds eventually).  I would hope that Freese will do more than that.  I also hope that the Cardinals didn’t take on too much of Edmonds’ salary in the deal, since that has to be the point of the deal in their eyes.

But Mozeliak may have thought that, with ’08 being pretty much a lost season, Edmonds deserved to go out better than that.  If 2008 truly is his last season, at least he’ll be on a competitive team with a chance to go deep into the playoffs.

And, hey, the last time we traded a St. Louis icon to San Diego, it worked out fairly well.  Remember Ray Lankford for Woody Williams?

But we thank Jim for the memories.  The walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 2004 NLCS stands out, of course, as do many of his home-run or base-hit robbing catches.  The one that stands out over all others, though, is The Catch in Game 7 of the ’04 NLCS.  That will be replayed so often in the talk about his trade, because it was one of–and possibly the–most important catches in Cardinal history.

Good luck, Jimmy.  And a standing ovation awaits you when the Padres come to Busch July 17.

And I guess this means the Colby Rasmus era might be starting earlier than we thought.