After the 2007 season, I took an extended look at the Cardinals injuries in that season.  If memory serves, I believe 22 of 25 opening day starters were hurt at some point throughout the year.  That was 88% of the roster from Opening Day.

In 2008, the Cardinals were similarly hurt.  Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright (the club's two aces) missed time due to injury.  The rotation also had Todd Wellemeyer and Braden Looper miss a little bit of time to the injury bug.  The bullpen was in shambles because of injuries to Josh Kinney, Tyler Johnson, Jason Isringhausen, (and others?).  Also, nobody needs to be reminded of Mark Mulder's season(s).

In the field this season, Yadier Molina, Albert Pujols, and most of the outfield was injured for parts of the season.  It is not nearly as extensive a list this year as last.  That is a good thing.

Lastly, in the minors/majors department, one Colby Rasmus went down with an injury AND we already know that Jaime Garcia and Mike Parisi are probably lost for the entire season in 2009.

My questions, then, are:

Why are the Cardinals so injury plagued?  Are we targeting players with higher risk of injury somehow?  Are we not doing a good job of preventing injuries?  Are our GM's gullible in trading for injured players?  Are we taking riskier chances on free agent acquisitions?

How can the Cardinals franchise, as a whole, become more preventive in health care of their employees?  There is not much use in having a Chris Carpenter, Mark Mulder, Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds etc. to long-term contracts in which we pay players to sit on the bench (thank goodness McGwire retired when he did and pretty much gave the Cardinals salary cap to work with.)

In essence, what is going on and how can we fix it?