Perhaps one of the most lamentable consequences of the Lopez signing is that the Cardinals aren't likely to utilize Josh Phelps as the 25th man.  As I write this post, Phelps is playing in Memphis and has just hit his 27th homer, his 9th in his past seven games.  He is playing in a different solar system right now.  If you remember, at the tail end of 2007, Phelps raked during a short stint as a Pirate.  I think this guy, age 30, might be at some performance spike and deserves to be on a big league club.  Baseball Prospectus has his major league eqa at .252 (his actual eqa is .294).  Granted, Stav's eqa in Memphis was .293, but Phelps has shown bursts of actual success at the big league level.  I really don't want to see Stav up there in a pressure situation and would much rather have Phelps.  Also, with Duncan out for the season, don't the cardinals need a backup first baseman/5th outfielder?  I guess he's never really played outfield in the bigs, but he's played rf in memphis this year.

Basically, I would have liked to have seen Barton switched with Stav and then Ryan switched with Phelps.  Now, we probably won't see him until Sept.