On the third day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

Three clutch men,

Two golden gloves,
And a vote for the finest rookie.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

Two golden gloves,

And a vote for the finest rookie.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me

A vote for the finest rookie.

The Milwakee Brewers improved both themselves and the entire NL Central by trading for Kansas City’s Zack Greinke, arguably the best pitcher in baseball over the last two seasons. As for Cardinals fans, who at various times wondered about the possibility of Greinke coming to St. Louis, the questions are 1) Could the Cardinals have acquired him? and 2) What does this now do to our chances to win the division?

First, even though Keith Law panned as inadequate for a player of Greinke’s clout Milwakee’s package of Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Jake Odorizzi and (possibly) Jeremy Jeffress, the reality is that the Cardinals likely didn’t have that kind of talent to offer. Assuming as Law does that the Royals sought not overall trade value but value at certain positions, the Cardinals didn’t match up well. Of course, if they had been willing to deal Colby Rasmus, a centerfielder who is already much better than and has a higher ceiling than Cain — and obviously some people in the organization don’t have a problem with that — they might’ve been in the running. As for shortstop, though, they had nothing: Even before he was traded, Brendan Ryan couldn’t have been considered a prospect, though we’d give him even odds of posting as many WAR as Escobar in 2011. And outside of Shelby Miller, the organization doesn’t have any pitchers who are as close to making a major-league impact as the Brewer farmhands.

Moreoever, as much as Greinke would’ve given the Cardinals a Phillies-like rotation, they didn’t need him — or more accurately, another starting pitcher — as much as the Brewers. The Cardinals’ rotation is arguably their strongest suit today, and assuming that Rasmus would’ve been a casualty of acquiring Greinke, they had more to lose offensively and defensively than they stood to gain by adding the Royals’ righty. And we’d rather have a top-four rotation of Wainwright, Carpenter, Westbrook and Garcia with Rasmus in center than Wainwright, Greinke, Carpenter and Garcia with, well, anyone else in the organization in center.

Which brings us to the second question: Milwaukee, then, stood to gain more by bolstering their rotation with Greinke, as most teams would’ve. They clearly got the better end of the deal, and they’re better starting in 2011. As stacked as their rotation now is, though, they still don’t measure up around the entire diamond like the Cardinals, and possibly even the Reds. Cain was no Rasmus, but they replace him with Carlos Gomez, a one-dimensional player, unless you consider spazzing out to be a skill (if writers thought Ryan was "flighty," they haven’t met Gomez). So the trade, as Law writes, "makes them contenders, but not favorites" in the division. They appear to have positioned themselves as a wild-card team, not unlike the World Champion Giants: a dominant top three in the rotation, but only the hope of random rally-making in their lineup. One shouldn’t overlook the potency of a top-heavy batting order of the underrated Rickie Weeks, Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder, of course, but they have too many out-makers in the lower half.

We look forward to having an elite player like Greinke in the league and division, as he both enhances the flaccid repuation of the Central and provides competition for the Cardinals. Competition is "the incentive to progress," and as such, the Brewers’ new addition should force the Cardinals to shape up and make smarter, more knowledge-based decisions to improve than they have this winter. And if they do win the division, their title will be all the more legitimate in the face of better opposition. So welcome to the Central, Zack Greinke — and may the team with the best rotation win.

In explaining the Cardinals’ recent capitulation to Tyrant Tony, Jeff Gordon likens La Russa’s purging of non-traditional players like Brendan Ryan to Whitey Herzog’s winter 1980-81 makeover of the team in his own image. The two movements bear some similarities on the surface, but we see some notable differences, too. In particular, Gordon uses the case of Herzog effectively swapping Ted Simmons for Darrell Porter as evidence that Herzog was somehow able to improve his team by trading talent for grit (a.k.a. trading down). Gordon writes: "Was Darrell Porter a better baseball player than fan favorite Ted Simmons? Of course not, but Porter fit what The White Rat was doing with this team. Porter was better defensively. He was a hard-nosed guy playing a leadership position."

The stats beg to differ. It’s true that for before 1980, Simmons was the more accomplished player, having racked up 53.7 WAR over 13 seasons. However, in the two seasons leading up to the winter of 1981, Porter had actually produced more than Simba — 10.3 to 9.2. And the clincher: Over the next five years — the period for which the Cardinals signed Porter (1981-1985) — Porter posted 13.2 WAR, 62% more than Simmons did for Milwaukee (8.2). And it wasn’t even as though Porter did it only via his defense, which was laudable: He posted a .332 wOBA (110 wRC+) in that time, while Simmons had a .315 (102). According to the AP dispatch at the time of the signing, Porter was "the top offensive player at his position in the American League under Herzog with the Kansas City Royals in 1979." Moreover, Porter was 28 years old at the time; Simmons was 31. Moreover, the notoriously frugal Gussie Busch-owned Cardinals made Porter baseball’s highest-paid catcher with a five-year, $3.5 million deal; so it wasn’t like the move was necessitated by cost considerations. To say that Porter was "of course not" better than Simmons is at best difficult to substantiate.

Besides, history tells us that Herzog’s team-chemistry makeover may not have mattered, anyway. After all, Herzog incensed Cardinal third baseman Kenny Reitz when he learned that the team had acquired Porter and that Herzog was planning to move Simmons to first base, and consequently either trade Keith Hernandez or relocate him to left field. Further, Simmons didn’t exactly acidify the clubhouse of the Brewers, who won back-to-back division titles as soon as Simmons arrived and of course won the AL pennant in 1982. And speaking of Hernandez, whom Herzog tried to trade every winter after coming to the Cardinals, the player whom Herzog found so irritably independent captained the World Series championship team in 1982 and somehow went on to win another title as captain of the Mets. Chemistry, indeed.

The bottom line is that teams don’t improve themselves by trading talent for inferior players, no matter how "hard-nosed" they are. Time will tell whether the Cardinals made the right move by exchanging Brendan Ryan, Blake Hawksworth and $2 million for Ryan Theriot and Mikael Cleto. But if they did, it won’t be because Theriot was good in the clubhouse but because he produced on the field. Just like Darrell Porter did.