Cardinal Rumor Mill is Heating Up Now That Needs Are Obvious

May 25, 2009 | Clark | Comments 7

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Mark DeRosa

As the Cardinals slowly start to get healthy again, we’re able to look back and examine exactly where things fell apart while keeping an eye out for potential future moves.  The most glaring need right now is at third.   Mike wrote an excellent post last week, “I Don’t Know” is on Third Base, with the rationale for playing Brian Barden on a daily basis to see what he can do.  He also called for patience with Wallace, as Whiteyball founder Dustin noted his defense isn’t major league ready.

I like this approach for the short term, but as we’ve seen with many utility players in the past, they start to struggle when they get over exposed.  I think we’ve already seen this with Barden and Thurston.  My other issue with this is that we simply need more power from this spot.  Look, I very much like both Barden and Thurston, but a team’s offense is much like it’s bullpen.  If folks are out of place, it can cause issues.

That’s going to leave three options for Mo; 1., Wait for Glaus, 2., Make a trade, 3., Bring up Wallace.  Let’s just throw out option 1.  That leaves either a trade or seeing what the kid can do.  There are several interesting options that might be available via trade.  They include Mark DeRosa, R. Branyan, G. Atkins, A. Beltre, M. Mora and Mark DeRosa to name a few.  (I have no actual intel here folks, they just fit.)  Can you guess who I like here?  DeRosa is a perfect fit.  He can play third and if, by some strange cosmic event Glaus comes back, you can slide him over the second or in the outfield.  We’d need to figure out what to do with Skip, because he’s earned his spot and playing time on this team, but how would our lineup look with DeRosa playing second?  There’s a karma bonus here, DeRosa played for the Cubs and paybacks are hell.  Karma owes Cardinal fans with the Edmonds and Miles defections!

That still leaves Wallace.  I’ve been an advocate for calling him up and it certainly fits with the teams youth movement.  The problem, the bat will play, the glove won’t at the moment.  Would working with the secret weapon help?  It might, but this isn’t spring training.  I must point out that the club is willing to sacrifice defense for offense in the case of Chris “Two Hands” Duncan, so why not do it at third?  Wallace is mashing AAA pitching and you can help but think he’s staring down a big, fat carrot in a call to the show.  What do you want to bet he continues to mash?

I’m starting to think a deal for someone like DeRosa would be the best, giving Wallace the September call up to get acclimated for next years competition at the hot corner.

That takes us to the short stop position.  K. Greene is done as a major league regular.  If you look at his stats, he had one really good year while teasing with his ability.  I liked the gamble, especially for the price, but now it’s time to move on.  If we can deal him great – rumors have been noted about Boston – but that environment won’t be very friendly for Greene and his confidence.  There are several healthy in-house options here that might work.  We’re going to see if Ryan has what it takes now the T. Greene was sent down.  I don’t have a problem with this since Ryan has paid his dues, but there’s something to T. Green that I really like.  Both play spectacular defense, but with the stick, T. Greene offers more pop and may even be faster that Ryan.  Long term, he’s starting to look like the better option.  He still has a lot to prove and I don’t think we’ve seen all that Ryan has to offer.  We may even be talking about the Cardinals starting short stop and second baseman of the future.

There are trade options, namely Christian Guzman, but there’s no way ownership is going to take on the $15-$20 million in salary for both third base and shortstop options.  Especially considering the salary already in Glaus and K. Greene.  So this improvement will have to be internal and has already been made with Ryan slotted to see a majority of the time at short.  The defense will be good, let’s see if we get more than Izturis gave us with the bat last year.

So what else?  The bullpen could use another power arm and the bench could use a legit power option we just don’t have right now.  We simply have too many utility level power options there now.  If Mather can get healthy and make it back, there’s one option.  I’m not sure what might be there in trade.  The same goes for the bullpen, we have enough options at AAA to fill any void with Boggs, Todd, Kinney and others.

So there you have it – trade for DeRosa and the Cardinals are on the path to winning the series.  As I said before, it’s all about the Karma.

Clark

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