One thing we have been able to confirm in the too-early moments of the St. Louis Cardinals' 2013 Spring Training: They are apparently serious about dropping Matt Carpenter into their rather spartan second-base rotation. There are already plenty of Carpenter-Oquendo odd-couple stories floating out of Florida—here's the Jenifer Langosch version—and both sides seem completely serious about the arrangement.

So now we know that this is more than an offseason fancy; Carpenter has spent the winter watching Robinson Cano and Brandon Phillips's every move, and now he's playing for what appears to be a very real starting job. There's certainly no reason not to try this; the Cardinals don't have much going between Daniel Descalso and Kolten Wong, and the Skip Schumaker experiment produced at least one useful season at the position.

With only Oquendo's word to go on, there's only one thing left for us to do in February: Speculate wildly. With that in mind, a very simple poll: How long do you think the Matt Carpenter show will run? Take your pick below, from not-even-a-little-optimistic to wildly-optimistic.