I was thinking up my Christmas wishlist the other day and I started looking at it from a Cardinals perspective.  Before you close this window, this is not a Hot Stove wish list.  This is what I want Santa to give to current Cardinals to help make them better players, thus making us a better team.  Basically, I wish Santa would wrap up certain skills and put them under the trees of different Cardinals.

1.  Pitch recognition skills for Tyler Greene-From what I've heard, Greene has some serious issues with recognizing pitches.  His numbers seem be bear this out as StatCorner shows that his swinging strikeout % in AA  the last two seasons were 17.8% and 18.7%.  League average is around 13%, so making contact seems to be a major problem for Greene.  This sucks for Greene because when he does make contact, he has some pop in his bat(ISO of .204 and .190 the past two AA seasons).  I don't have the time(or the know how) to go through his numbers and figure out what his OBP would look like if he just struck out swinging at the league average(13%).  Getting pitch recognition skills for Christmas would certainly increase his BB% which was 6.8% and 5.6% over the past two AA seasons(not good).  It would also increase his batting average(duh).  When coupled with his solid defense, his higher OBP would make Tyler Greene a pretty decent player.  There's your 2B over the next few years right there.

2.  A Slider for Jason Motte-This is pretty self explanatory.  If he had a legitimate slider(or any breaking pitch for that matter) to go along with his 98mph fastball, he'd be nearly unhittable.  In the long run, I'm not sure he can get by with just his fastball, but with a slider, we no doubt have our set-up man/closer/trade bait over the next 5 or 6 years.

3.  Command for Chris Perez-Also pretty self-explanatory.  He's got a nasty fastball and a nasty slider, he just needs to be able to consistently command those pitches.  If he does, there's our closer/set-up man/serious trade bait.

4.  Some power for Bryan Anderson-If Anderson had a little more pop, he would be a fantastic catching prospect.  We all know about his prowess with the bat in terms of contact and the fact that he is getting better behind the plate.  If he could increase  his power, he would be an incredible trading chip for us(or we could trade Yadi and use Anderson).  His ISO in AA in 2007 and 2008 was .090 and .138 and in AAA in '08 it was .098.  He's a singles hitter plain and simple.  If he could just add some doubles and the occasional HR, we would have ourselves a top tier prospect.

Thats all I have right now.  Anyone else have Christmas wishes?