[Monday's United Cardinal Bloggers postseason roundtable question came from Erik Manning of Play a Hard Nine.]

Time to play a little armchair GM, so forgive me if I roll two questions into one. It’s looking like John Mozeliak is working hard to re-sign Jake Westbrook, rounding out the pitching rotation. What would the right money be for re-signing Westbrook, and what other free agents are on your radar that you think Mo should pursue this offseason?

We’re torn on the Westbrook offer. On one hand, he was the only positive acquisition that Mozeliak made during the season and figures to solidify the staff in 2011. But lest we be inordinately swayed by recent performance, we should consider the bigger picture. Westbrook went on the DL three times after signing his last contract in 2007 and missed an entire season as recently as 2009 recovering from Tommy John surgery. Based on his 2010 performance, he has probably earned a two-year, $16 million contract, but it shouldn’t be with the Cardinals, from whom we’d only be comfortable seeing a less-costly (say, $7 million) one-year deal. It’s probably a case in which the Cardinals should amicably tell Westbrook that while they’ve love to have him return, he should optimize his value elsewhere. As the following graph shows, Westbrook appears to have passed the break-even point in his career for value:

As for others, we’re not sure why Mo would get hung up on the concept of "a couple of guys who can hit 15 to 20 homers," since it’s such a one-dimensional way to think about a player. We’d much rather hear him talking about offense generally, or, if he’s going to cite one stat, talk about the need to get on base. To that end, Orlando Hudson would be a positive addition, though at this point in his career, he doesn’t offer that much more offense than Schumaker should (his glove, of course is another story) — after all, the beleaguered Cardinal second baseman is younger and has a higher lifetime OBP than O-Dawg. Dan Uggla is an appealing choice, with his career .359 wOBA, but we fear that he, beginning his age-31 season next year, would be a classic example of paying for the best years that a free agent has already had with another team. Shorter-term, if Mozeliak wants someone who can both hit for power and reach base, we like Mark Tomasik’s suggestion of Brad Hawpe, whose off-year was partially explained by a 29-point drop in his BABIP. That would of course render Jon Jay superfluous, at least for 2011. And that brings up the real dilemma that Mozeliak faces in this winter’s free-agent market, which appears to offer only marginal or too-costly upgrades at the Cardinals’ positions of need and useful players at positions where the Cardinals already have capable players. In addition to Schumaker and Jay, David Freese’s uncertain health puts them in a situation in which they either bank on Freese returning or essentially carry two quality third basemen. But the relative cost savings of those three players is needed in order to keep payroll flexible to secure their biggest star, to enable a big trade and of course to pay their manager, who will likely be the highest-paid skipper in the game next year. Outside of trades, Mozeliak may be stuck with a seemingly intractable roster for 2011. Then again, a lot of GMs would be happy to be “stuck” with such a group.

A host of National League pitchers turned in exceptional relief seasons in 2010. In the end, we could only pick three for our ballot for the senior circuit’s Baseball Bloggers Alliance Goose Gossage Award. And wouldn’t you know, it had to be a Cub.

We put Carlos Marmol first on our ballot based on the quality and quantity of his relief work this year. The lanky righty with a herky-jerky delivery was 11th in the league in expected FIP and fifth in batters faced. And if the Cubs stank this year, it wasn’t because of Marmol, who was fourth in the league in win-probability added.

The players who rounded out our ballot were surprises. Brian Wilson, whose season continues into the playoffs, was nearly as dominant as Marmol, ranking second in WPA, 12th in batters faced and 14th in xFIP. And Matt Belisle faced the second-most batters in relief in the majors with 365 over an old-school-like 92 innings and outranked contenders like Heath Bell, Jonny Venters and Hong-Chih Kuo in xFIP.

[The United Cardinal Bloggers' postseason roundtable continues today with a question from Dustin McClure of "Welcome To Baseball Heaven."]

Fox Sports Midwest has just made the announcement that St. Louis Cardinals broadcasts had the highest rating among Major League Baseball’s regional sports networks this season. Combine this with the fact the team finished 4th in overall paid attendance with 3,301,218. A very nice show of support from Cardinal Nation which everyone has come to expect. Do you believe the Cardinals front office/ownership is holding up their end of the deal over the past few seasons (John Mozeliak era)? Examples would be team payroll, roster moves, player development, coaching staff, philosophy, etc.

It of course depends on how you define “their end of the deal,” but by our definition — making an honest and optimal effort to help the team annually contend for a playoff spot given short- and long-term considerations — they have. The Cardinals are one of the few teams — and perhaps only team in their market cohort — that vies for a playoff spot almost annually. After all, one of the reasons for all of the fan and organizational angst this year about the mere idea of rebuilding is that it is such a foreign concept to us. The Cardinals are almost always buyers at the trade deadline, they outbid teams like the Red Sox for the biggest free agent on the market last winter, have one of the league’s top and highest-paid managers and have maintained a payroll in the top 40% in baseball:

This despite being the 23rd-ranked American media market in MLB (based on Nielson research).

* Does not include Toronto

In light of that, and Dennis’s interesting and important point about the team’s operating income, it’s disingenuous to allege that ownership hasn’t been very supportive of the team.

As for player development, the quality of their drafts has been uneven, and the system has produced some value, most visibly in the Holliday trade. One complaint about Mozeliak has been in-season moves, especially in 2010, in which he has fallen short in adapting to the team’s midseason needs. Overall, though, the front office generally puts the team in a position to win and fields a product worthy of the fans’ overwhelming support.

If it seems like we’ve been obsessed with postseason fielding-independent pitching performances lately, it’s because we’ve never seen anything like this. In the so-called "year of the pitcher," the first round of the 2010 playoffs lived up to the billing. Four games ranked in the top 20 fielding-independent game scores in playoff history — and those four don’t even include Roy Halladay’s no-hitter:

Besides Halladay’s masterpiece, which rated a 72 FIGS, Tommy Hunter also pitched a superb game (68 FIGS) that didn’t quite make the top 20, by striking out seven and walking none in an 18-batter start in Game 4 of the Rangers-Rays series.

In a comment last week, we supposed that the spate of greats was due in large part to an increasing trend in the strikeout rate generally across baseball, inasmuch as fielding-independent pitching rewards pitchers who succeed at the things that they are most responsible for, strikeouts being one. This postseason also happens to feature some of the best arms in the business: Although Lee and Hamels have shown their stuff on the big stage before, this October is the playoff debut for Halladay, Sanchez and Lincecum, three of the best pitchers in baseball (National Leaguers all, we should note).

As the league championships begin, the good news is that the entire cadre of hot pitchers advances. And that’s to say nothing of the Yankees’ CC Sabathia, who posted FIGS of 66 and 68 in the 2009 playoffs, and Andy Pettitte, who put up games of 67 and 63 last year and has five career postseason FIGS of 63 or more. Without too much imagining, then, the year of the pitcher could result in half of the best postseason games coming from 2010. Bob Gibson, look out.

Queen once sang about making a few bad mistakes but ultimately coming through to gain fame and fortune. Indeed, it takes a big man to admit his errors.

BJ Rains recently asked Cardinals GM John Mozeliak if he would’ve done anything "differently this season if given a second chance." His reply:

Not really. You think about the moves you made and obviously health was a big issue for us. When you look at overall the runs scored and how we played, probably if you run the season over again, we might have been the team with the 91 wins. Ultimately some things are just out of your control and I certainly think we had to make the deals we made to try and position ourselves to win. It didn’t work out but I don’t think if we had not done it, it would have changed the outcome.

We understand that a GM is limited to discussing current and future strategy in the same way the president of the United States can’t talk openly about foreign policy or military strategy. But past events are surely easier to discuss in retrospect, and we find it either dishonest or deluded that Mozeliak didn’t have one regret, at least "not really."

We agree that "ultimately some things are just out of your control." But let’s consider the deals that they "had to make." Mozeliak sets up a false choice when he claims that not doing "it" wouldn’t have worked, either. But that assume that only options he had were making the midseason deals he did — acquiring Jeff Suppan, Randy Winn, Mike MacDougal, Aaron Miles, Jake Westbrook and Pedro Feliz — or not making them. But presumably, Mozeliak had any number of options, including only making some of the acquisitions that he actually made, and of course acquiring different players. For example, if he had not traded on Aug. 19 for Feliz but instead summoned Daniel Descalso — who had a .324 OBP during his callup — the Cardinal lineup would’ve conceivably had 11 more times on base (or 11 fewer outs) over the final 40 games. The fact that Feliz created only 3.8 (weighted) runs in 125 plate appearances isn’t something Mozeliak would want to reconsider?

As we wrote earlier, the "unexpected injuries" excuse is valid but only goes so far. We don’t expect Mozeliak to offer up a public mea culpa or attend the winter meetings in sackcloth and ashes. But some acknowledgement of reality — and, yes, culpability — would go a long way toward healing a disappointed fan base, not to mention addressing player-acquisition strategy in an effort to improve it this winter. Despite their proclivity to being whipped up into the fever swamp by populist journalists, Cardinal fans are still generally a reasonable lot and are willing to understand, but only when they don’t feel someone is insulting their intelligence. In a long season that began with such insults, John Mozeliak should give fans the honesty they deserve.