There are plenty of reasons to be excited for the 2012 season. The Cardinals' Front Office led by John Mozeliak has assembled an interesting set of players despite the void left by Albert Pujols. Veterans Lance Berkman and Carlos Beltran will become key focal points in a revamped offense along with World Series MVP David Freese and the Cardinals will look to work Allen Craig's bat into the lineup upon his return from rehabbing knee surgery. The rotation is bolstered by a newly ligamented Adam Wainwright a deep veteran core of Chris Carpenter, Kyle Lohse and Jake Westbrook and the sole lefty Jaime Garcia.

I visited this topic early last year but it seems worthwhile to come back to it again. There is really one player who the Cardinals will depend on to fill the significant void left by the departure of #5. That would be #7, Matt Holliday. Despite appearing in approximately 75% of last year's games, Matt Holliday still managed to put up a 5.0 fWAR year. That was due in large part to what was, arguably, his best offensive season of his career factoring in league and park effects. Matt Holliday was simply terrific.

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the trucks have hit the road. ninety gazillion baseballs are bound for jupiter (not that jupiter).

meanwhile, the club keeps making small moves to improve depth, while it quietly plays a last-hand-on-the-car waiting game with roy oswalt. earlier, the club signed a minor league contract with alex cora, hopefully to be the eleventh-string guy called up rather than making kyle lohse play second base on his off-days.

maybe a more interesting signing was yesterday's minor league signing of scott linebrink. hopefully, he won't cut in line ahead of the more deserving young relievers. but, as relief depth that can be stowed in the minors at little to no cost, he seems like an excellent value. he's older (35), and he had a down year last year. he may be in a decline phase. on the other hand, he's been a pretty decent reliever in the past. bgh showed us yesterday how well he compared to kyle mcclellan in 2011. if anything, calling linebrink a mcclellan clone is selling him short. zips thinks linebrink will turn out more like mitch boggs - both have a projection for a 99 era+. mcclellan on the other hand projects to have only an 88 era+. a reliever who projects to be a hair below average is a good thing to get on a minor league deal, however you slice it.

the other most recent signing was a little younger and a little further from the majors. the cardinals signed andres serrano, a 17-year-old hurler from the dominican. for $750,000, getting a young pitcher with a fastball reportedly sitting in the low-90's, reaching up to 95 mph, with a nice curveball to complement his fastball. don't expect him to show up in jupiter next saturday.

but the gang has already started assembling. yadier molina and tony cruz have been catching pitches from adam wainwright, who apparently is in . . . wait for it . . . the best shape of his life. tyler greene and - bizarrely - rick ankiel have been standing in to take pitches against waino. it's great to see him obviously raring to go. i'm not sure that he would have told us that he felt terrible, but ordinary optimism wouldn't require the kind of hyperbolic commentary we've heard from him so far, as well as from the catchers and hitters sitting in with him.

not in the best shape of his life is allen craig, who isn't running and isn't taking swings. he is still rehabbing the muscles in his leg, following knee surgery a few weeks after the world series. it's hard to know how much time he'll need to get back into playing shape once his rehab is done.

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The St. Louis Cardinals signed free agent right-handed relief pitcher Scott Linebrink to a minor-league contract today that also comes with an invitation to Spring Training. Upon learning of the signing, I brought up Linebrink's Fangraphs page to se what type of pitcher the Cardinals were inviting to big-league camp in Jupiter. What immediately jumped out to me about Linebrink is just how similar his numbers are to those of Kyle McClellan.

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Friends and readers: As you might have noticed on the sidebar, a book I wrote is coming out on March 1. Today: I plug it. (Note: A non-plug post is scheduled to pop up in this space around one.) What follows is some questions I have arbitrarily decided you've frequently asked about The Ultimate Cardinals Record Book, which sits at this writing as among the most 125,000 talked-about books in the entire world.

1. Where can I buy The Ultimate Cardinals Record Book?

You could click on this Amazon link, if you're especially eager. After it comes out you could look in a bookstore, if you're in range of a bookstore with a local sports section. Triumph, the publisher, is also responsible for Derrick Goold's 100 Things Cardinal Fans Should Know and Do before They Die, so if you've seen that somewhere, look to its right or left.

2. Is it really the ultimate record book about the Cardinals?

It's actually the Cardinals volume of the Ultimate Record Book series. It's kind of a Nippon Ham-Fighters/Nippon-Ham Fighters situation—though if, after reading it, you find it the best record book you've ever read about the Cardinals you're welcome to consider the possibility.

3. What's inside?

Chapters about big names in Cardinals history—Stan Musial, Albert Pujols, Bob Gibson, Bob Caruthers (shut up) and the like—a ton of shorter sidebars and boxes about not-quite-as-big-names, events, and happenings in Cardinals history, and lots of all-time team leaderboards. It's the kind of book designed to be read at random intervals, in random order; more specifically, it's set up a lot like the Yankees version, only I do not once say "Joe DiMaggio."

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The Cardinals are in a weird place with Yadier Molina. In order of ascending weirdness:

1. Yadier Molina is a catcher. Catchers are difficult to value because they accumulate fewer wins above replacement than everybody else and they're scarier to lock in on long-term at the ages when most stars and near-stars become free agents. Since 2000 there's been all of 11 instances of five bWAR seasons from catchers, and four at six—Joe Mauer twice, Jorge Posada once (at 31), and Javy Lopez in that random season where he slugged .687.

Albert Pujols notched five WAR 11 times in that span. Shortstops did it 36 times, corner outfielders 60 times, and so on. A lot of this is likely related to our limited understanding of catcher defense, but unless the Cardinals know something we don't or are confident in a specific estimate of Molina's defensive abilities catchers remain more difficult to evaluate, let alone to sign long-term.

On the Cot's list of enormous contracts, there's Joe Mauer at sixth—$184 million over eight years—and Mike Piazza's highest-paid-player-in-baseball contract at the turn of the millennium. Before Mauer the biggest active catcher's contract was Jorge Posada's four year, $52 million deal. Catchers just rarely get long-term deals; the closest comparison I can come up with is Jason Varitek, who got a four year, $40 million deal to be the team captain of the Red Sox in 2005. Varitek was three years older than Molina will be, and had two Jason Varitek seasons and two below-average ones.

2. They didn't sign Albert Pujols. That leaves Yadier Molina atop the list of popular Lifelong Cardinals with just one year left on his contract. Right now the Cardinals basically look like last year's squad with a bunch of robotic old-player enhancements bolted to their spindlier limbs; 2013 will be our first glimpse at how or whether the Cardinals go in a different direction as they attempt to rebuild on the fly.

Whatever signal John Mozeliak intends to send, he'll have a hard time pushing it out there over the din of the Molina negotiations.

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I was in the supermarket just the other evening when I spied something a bit unusual in the frozen foods section. It was a new premium ice cream, brand name Magnum. Now, I stopped when I spotted this ice cream, largely because of the name and the packaging. See, Magnum brand ice cream is sold in a very dark brown, almost black carton, with gold writing. What's odd, at least to me, is both the name and colour scheme of Magnum brand ice cream are essentially the same as Magnum brand condoms. (They're the large-sized condom line of Trojan.)

Well, this seemed like a terrible idea to me. When I'm shopping for ice cream, I really don't want to suddenly be reminded of oversized male genitalia. Just not my thing, you know? So how, I asked myself, did no one at this company say at any point in the process of bringing this product to market, "Hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't give our product the same name and look as plus-sized condoms," thus avoiding having people staring at their product in the frozen case, trying to decide if what they're seeing is a joke or not.

Just now, in the process of writing this intro, I became curious and checked out the company's website. Nice site, two front page panels, both containing the word Pleasure. "For Pleasure Seekers," proclaims one. The other advertises the "Magnum Pleasure Hunt," some sort of ice cream- or dick-themed scavenger hunt, I would imagine. The tagline for the Magnum Pleasure Hunt is, and I quote: "You're in control as you run and jump across the internet in search of pleasures. Let the hunt begin!" I don't even know where to begin explaining how many things are wrong with that sentence.

I'm still not sure if this is a joke or not. If it is, well done Magnum brand ice cream. You have elevated double entendre to an art form. If it isn't , then this has got to go down (tee-hee, go down), as an incredible failure of a company's entire marketing department to do even the most perfunctory of research.

Scouting reports after the jump.

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Jeremy Guthrie—traded by the Orioles to the Rockies on Monday for Jason Hammel and Matt Lindstrom—is better than Kyle McClellan or Jake Westbrook, but if the Cardinals are really trying to deal either of them for salary-relief purposes, the move makes me wonder why they appear to be having so much trouble. Bill James projections:

The Guthrie trade is salary-neutral, but the Orioles are getting two useful pitchers in the deal, one of whom has an extra year under team control, out of the deal; if the Cardinals are looking to trade McClellan for the 2012 equivalent of Luis Perdomo and most of their money back I'm not sure what the trouble is. (Westbrook has a no-trade clause, although the possibility of getting bumped into the Kyle McClellan role seems like sufficient cause to exercise it.)

(As for the move itself, I like it for the Orioles—I think the average mediocre team has more to gain from patching two potential sub-replacement-level holes on its roster than it does filling one with Jeremy Guthrie.)

Elsewhere: The Cubs trade their defensively suspect infielder for the younger model.

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Jaime Garcia burst onto the scene in 2010 with an excellent rookie season that saw him finish third in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. Garcia posted a 2.77 ERA (which was good for a 69 ERA-) with two-to-one strikeout-to-walk ratio. In his first season post-Tommy John surgery, the Cardinals wisely shut the southpaw down once the club had fallen out of contention during the home stretch of September. This decision limited Garcia to 163.1 IP for the season. Impressively, Garcia accrued 3.1 fWAR over those innings. Despite a BABIP that was very close to the MLB average for a starting pitcher in 2010, there was good reason to believe that his ERA would rise in 2011.

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