The United Cardinal Bloggers (UCB) kicked off our revolving roundtable discussion this week, so please visit participating blogs. Today’s question came from Scott Deaner at Cardinal Nation Globe:

There has been quite a bit of talk/anxiety concerning where Albert will be after his contract is up. He has said that he would like to stay in St. Louis for his entire career. On the other hand, he has expressed the desire to consistently win and after this off-season one has to wonder if the organization is willing to put up the dough to supply this on top of giving Albert proper compensation.

We all know that Albert is a model player to build a franchise around. He provides one of the top and most consistent bats in baseball, a stellar glove at first base, and extraordinary leadership and character.

My question for you all is: Besides Albert, if you could pick one player in baseball to build the St. Louis Cardinals franchise around, who would it be and why?

Our reply:

Alex Rodriguez has several things going for him, but several things working against him, not the least of which is his age (33). Given other other options, I’m going to go with a player who hasn’t yet reached his peak age over someone a few years past it. That list includes:

David Wright, just turned 26
Joe Mauer, 26
Hanley Ramirez, just turned 25
BJ Upton, 24
Evan Longoria, 23

Wright and Longoria (and Mauer) are great options, but the Cardinals are hopefully going to fill their 3B hole with Wallace soon, so 3B (or C or, obviously, 1B) is not as big of a need as SS or CF. That leaves Ramirez, who still has a few years left at SS, and Upton. Ramirez just signed a six-year deal at the beginning of the ‘08 seasion that goes through 2014 at a pretty reasonable number ($70m), whereas Upton is under team control but not signed long-term. My pick? Ramirez, with Upton a close second.

Be sure to check out Deaner’s post, which includes all of the bloggers’ replies.

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 pm and is filed under group blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.