I do think that we need some better hitters at two key positions: LF and 3B. Holliday takes care of LF, but there’s nobody in the pipeline who looks like they might hit for a .360 wOBA at 3B, at least that I can see, and there’s really nobody on the FA market who can do that either.

Skip is probably an above average second baseman with the bat. Compared to Utley he looks horrible, but Utley’s one of the top 5 players in the league, compared to the rest of the league, Skip grades out pretty well.

Ryan will have to keep hitting to be worth playing at SS, even though he can be worth somewhere between 1 to 2 wins with the glove. If he can somehow post a league average wOBA for the SS position than he will be a very valuable player, albeit one that hits lower in the lineup.

Jury is out on Ludwick. I’m guessing he’s somewhere in between his 2008 and 2009 numbers - probably a .350.360 wOBA player who provides league average to plus defense in the corner outfield.

A key thing that I’ve found for great offensive teams is how many players they have who have a wOBA above .360. Most above average offensive teams are going to have 3 players above that number (min 100 PA’s). The Phillies have 4 (Utley, Howard, Werth, Ibanez), the Dodgers have 3 (Ramirez, Kemp, Ethier), the Yankees have 8 (A-Rod, Jeter, Teixeira, Matsui, Posada, Damon, Swisher, Cano), the Rockies have 5 (Tulo, Helton, Hawpe, Smith, and Gonzalez).

With Holliday, the Cardinals have 2, Holliday and Pujols. Then next closest guy is Lugo at an unsustainable .351, then Yadi at .337 and Skip and Ludwick tied at .336, just .003 points better than the overall league average for hitters, which is .333. Now, we can do a lot of things to remedy this, but I think that our best bet is try and re-sign Holliday at all costs. He’s one of the top 10 hitters in the game over the past 3 seasons and will most likely provide a wOBA of around .400 for at least the next 2-3 years. After that, I think you have to hope that Ludwick returns to semi-Studwick form (.360 wOBA, splitting the difference between 2008 and 2009) and that Rasmus makes the leap to the talent that he flashed in AA. High OBP, High SLG, and a wOBA of around .360 to match.

I don’t see us buying that type of talent on the free agent market, so we’re going to have to hope that these players develop.

One thing that you didn’t address, and I thought sure you would have after reading the first sentence, is starting pitching. It was great this year, probably unsustainable, but you wouldn’t look at our staff right now and say that it “needs tremendous improvement” — but we’re one injury away from having a pretty mediocre staff.

I agree that the Cards have several good players but only one great player. I also believe that the way the current team is constructed that they cannot compete with the big boys if they don’t upgrade.

The focus of your post and the needed upgrades that have been discussed in additional comments has been on need for offensive upgrades. One cannot argue against upgrading offensively but I think the lack of speed and defense may be this teams most pressing problems.

I don’t have to remind any true Cardinal fan how the Cards use to win with speed and defense. I remember the years when I simply hoped that the Cards could find just one guy who had the potential to hit 20 HR’s. Remember the Jack Clark days? Those teams had very little power hitting but they had speed and they played great defense and they won.

To make a long story short, I firmly believe that the Cards have got to get better defensively and they have to add speed. Pujols is great but there is entirely to much focus on Pujols and there is not nearly enough focus on speed and defense. This team has above average speed in only two positions, Rasmus in CF and Ryan at SS and neither of those guys are anywhere close to being an intimidating speed guy once they get on base.