Jaime Garcia burst onto the scene in 2010 with an excellent rookie season that saw him finish third in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. Garcia posted a 2.77 ERA (which was good for a 69 ERA-) with two-to-one strikeout-to-walk ratio. In his first season post-Tommy John surgery, the Cardinals wisely shut the southpaw down once the club had fallen out of contention during the home stretch of September. This decision limited Garcia to 163.1 IP for the season. Impressively, Garcia accrued 3.1 fWAR over those innings. Despite a BABIP that was very close to the MLB average for a starting pitcher in 2010, there was good reason to believe that his ERA would rise in 2011.

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There's got to be a parallel dimension where Allen Craig is king of the St. Louis Cardinals. In that dimension, the 2008 Jim Edmonds trade with San Diego never happened. David Freese still broke both ankles there though.

It's been a weird journey for Allen Craig who was drafted in 2006 and did nothing but hit the ball all through the minors. Then, after being leapfrogged by David Freese, Craig found himself without a position and had to convert to the outfield. That's all been well and good -- the Cardinals essentially get to have their cake and watch it walk around on two metal ankles too -- but sometimes I still wonder about that other world.

The funny thing about that other world is that I'm not sure it even needs to be all that different from the one we're trapped in -- damn you, quantum mechanics -- sans David Freese, World Series hero.

Setting aside my personal opinion on Craig's ZiPS projection (for the record, I'll take the over), what does a .022 point advantage in wOBA mean for these two. Well, it means that Freese needs to be about 12 runs better than Allen Craig in the field to be the better third baseman. Again, this is all hypothetical bit it's not hard to see a scenario where Allen Craig is a -10 fielder and David Freese is a little better than average (that's what the metrics generally point towards) so this is in large part a moot discussion.

Somewhere though, Allen Craig is lofting his 2011 World Series MVP trophy in celebration of his 1.013 OPS in the post-season capped by home runs in game 6 and 7. (Hint both of those last things actually happened in our world too. Spooky.)

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your mind is no doubt drifting towards the upcoming pitchers and catchers report date (february 18th!).

and while roy oswalt waits to see if the cardinals can convince the local pawn shop/check cashing place to give them at least $2m for kyle mcclellan, there seems to be precious little else to discuss in the way of the roster.

but there are some upcoming changes in the way the sport of baseball is to be run. since i needed to sit down with the new CBA (which, funnily enough, still does not seem to be posted online). however, the good people at MLB put some intern on the task of reading through a gigantic block of legalese, digesting it, and regurgitating a semi-readable Cliffs Notes version.

mlb gone wild

as you probably know, the league wants to introduce a second wild card team in each league. the two teams will face off in a single game to determine which of the two will proceed to play in the four-team LDS we are more familiar with. i think this will probably be at best a lateral move for mlb. as some people point out, it does create an incentive to finish first in your division. there's less chance that people will just forget to care about their division race in september. there have been in the past a lot of divisions where the 1-2 are close (think red sox/yankees; braves/phillies; texas/angels) but the #2 team will get the wild card anyway, so who cares by the end of september? on the other hand, you'll lose the converse drama associated with inter-division wild card races (think cards-braves last year) or even intra-division (rays-red sox last year). i guess i just hate the idea of a 1-game playoff deciding anything other than a pure tie in a division or wild card race.

the other thing to track is that the CBA mandates that the new wild card system be in place no later than the 2013 season. "no later than" potentially includes the 2012 season, and bud selig is hard at work to make that happen this year.

surprising nobody, the winner in this new system will surely be the coffers of whoever gets to broadcast these two games and, by extension, major league baseball for the fees it will get.

other scheduling and realignment issues

the astros leave the NL Central for the AL West in 2013. you know this already.

and having two leagues of 15 teams means season-long interleague. to the extent that changes how the game is played, note that it was easier during a defined interleague season for a national league team to bring up a DH-type from the minors briefly. since our DH-types tended to be nick stavinoha or mark hamilton, this will have almost no effect on us at all, because both hamilton and stavinoha have thus far been terrible at everything including DHing.

i would imagine most AL teams were previously unable to make the converse adjustment (briefly demote an offense-first player for a strong defender from the minors) because they likely have DHs and 1Bs that they are unwilling or unable to demote during interleague play anyway, so the changed interleague schedule probably has a modest negative effect on the national league. like we needed a further handicap.

luckily, this doesn't start till 2013, so matt adams will maybe get a chance to see if he can outdo hamilton or stavinoha.

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A glut of work in my other life as Earnest MFA Student means I don't have anything interesting to report today, but in my defense neither have the Cardinals, so far—Roy Oswalt remains steadfastly unsigned and apparently displeased with the Cardinals' offer, although the Rangers, who apparently didn't want to start Oswalt in the first place, are supposedly out of the running.

I know the Rangers are rich and successful for the first time ever, but were they really chasing down a Hall of Very Good starter a year removed from a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.51 for the purposes of giving the rest of their admittedly strong rotation an extra night off every so often? That's just greed, the kind of greed that could be mitigated by, say, trading for Jake Westbrook, taking on all his salary, and using him as your swingman instead.

As for Edwin Jackson's signing, $10 million is good money on a one-year deal—just ask bereft, rapidly aging swingman Roy Oswalt—but it's right of the edge of where turning down three years, $30 million, as he reportedly did, makes sense. The longer he pitches on one-year deals, the more he risks exposing himself as someone who is excruciatingly tedious to watch.

Mainly, of course, I'm just in it for the draft pick.

On Tuesday I talked about how the Cardinals have built out their post-Pujols squad with veterans available on short-term deals, and in general I'm very excited about it; they've risked nothing more than the chance to sign Prince Fielder, and they've gained a team that looks ready to weather the worst year or two of the post-Albert-Pujols lull. They can do this, in part, because they were already prepared to spend $25 million on a thirtysomething with visible health problems; spending $30 million, instead, on Lance Berkman, Rafael Furcal, Carlos Beltran, and maybe Roy Oswalt is no particular risk by comparison.

But they'e also able to put themselves in this position because they have prospects to turn to after these players go back onto the market, another year or two older. Right now, this is what the Cardinals look like behind their Astros implants.

Lance Berkman—$12 million through 2012

Poor Allen Craig—apparently hitting .315/.362/.555 in 200 at-bats in the regular season and double-Pujolsing Alexi Ogando wasn't enough to guarantee him a full season in 2012, even though the starting right fielder was 35 and the starting first baseman is gone. He's clearly the first in line at first and in right, and given Berkman's huge career platoon split (1.009 against righties, .778 against lefties) and the likelihood of ex-Astro injury and positional jiggery-pokery he should significantly improve on his 2011 playing time regardless.

Or—second base. Someone tell Mike Matheny this isn't just a meme.

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Okay, first off, you should all stop worrying. I will be using the full force of my unleashed magic baron powers to ensure Roy Oswalt will be signed today. It's a Wednesday, I won't be around much, and there is a potential bit of news in the works. Come on, universe, don't let me down.

Third, I have absolutely no time at the moment for a full post. Now, ordinarily that sentence would indicate an 1800 word manuscript after the jump, as I tend to write far more when I'm strapped for time than I do on an ordinary day, but not this time. This time I really do need to keep this short, so that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Here is your discussion topic for the day, gentle readers:

The Cardinals look, at this moment, to be the strongest team in the NL Central. The loss of Albert Pujols certainly hurts, but the return of Adam Wainwright, plus the value of Carlos Beltran, has largely served to mitigate the falloff. The projections mostly see the Cards as a 90-92 win team, and that feels pretty accurate to me. They aren't far and away the best team in the division, mid-2000s style, but they are a very strong squad on paper.

I see the NL Central as a three-team race in 2012. The Cubs are still in the early stages of their rebuilding process, the Astros aren't going to be good until they've long since bid the NL adieu, and the Pirates, while intriguing, don't look like serious contenders just yet. They may make it to .500, but I don't think they're making any real noise in the division race this year.

So that leaves the Cincinnati Reds and the Brewers from The Good Land. The Brewers were the cream of the crop last year in the Central (until the playoffs, that is; suck it, Milwaukee!), while the Reds fell off from their 2010 pace to finish third. The Reds went out and picked up Mat Latos and Ryan Madson, while the Brewers lost Prince Fielder and a third of Ryan Braun. On paper the Brewer rotation is still better, with Yovani Gallardo and Zack Greinke still forming a remarkably potent one-two, but I do worry about Shaun Marcum going forward. The Reds have Latos and Johnny Cueto, but are also paying Bronson Arroyo an enormous amount of money to watch his chorus line leg kick and 82 mph meatballs.

Here's the question: which of those two teams are you more afraid of? The projections will tell you the Brewers are still a hair better than the Reds -- though I haven't seen any projections yet which specifically have Braun missing 50 games -- but I'm not so sure. Personally I fear the Reds a bit more, largely because I think Jay Bruce is going to have a big year. Not necessarily basing that on anything; call it a gut feeling. I also think Homer Bailey takes a step forward this season. He'll never be the ace we all thought he would be coming up, I don't believe, but I think he could be a solid 2.5-3.0 WAR starter if he could just get his home run rate under control. Of course, pitching in the Great American Bandbox doesn't really help on that front.

So that's my two cents. I think the Reds, not the Brewers, present the biggest threat to a Cardinal return to the playoffs in 2012. Really, it wouldn't take much good or bad to move the needle on any of these teams, as I think all three are fairly closely matched.

What do you think?

Next week I'll have another batch of scouting reports, and the week after that we'll do a Spring Training kickoff chat thread. Take care.

The Roy Oswalt news continues in its stagnant way—what we know as of this morning (and keeping in mind that the Cardinals would like nothing more than to make this post completely obsolete this afternoon) is that they and the Rangers are both interested and that the Cardinals are shopping Kyle McClellan. If it comes down to who can trade their swingman fastest, I have to think the Rangers have the advantage—Koji Uehara, who should probably be closing somewhere, has a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 10 in two years as a relief pitcher.

So we don't know whether Roy Oswalt or Jake Westbrook will be making 30 starts next year, but we do know that the Cardinals have made a choice as to their immediate post-Pujols future—one that is taking a fascinating advantage of the changing economics of baseball. As prospects and pre-arbitration players become more valuable, the Cardinals have counted their prospects, paid for Jaime Garcia, and plowed the Pujols dividend into a bunch of thirtysomething ex-Astros.

The Cardinals have given themselves two years to act like a big-market team with a bunch of expensive, potentially valuable players—the two years it should take for their top-tier farm system to mature.

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via www.thegrio.com

Earlier, we looked at the five best St. Louis Cardinals by rWAR from 1959 through 1988. This the follow-up to that post, which covers the time period from 1989 through 2011. This list is inspired by David Schoenfield's post on the ESPN Sweet Spot blog which looked at the five best position players by WAR. Unlike Schoenfield, I have included pitchers and ranked the five best Cardinals by rWAR.

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