Former Cardinal centerfielder Jim Edmonds certainly has backers of his comeback attempt, including Jeff Gordon. We, however, are not one of them.

Edmonds returning to the place where he gained fame in the club’s halcyon mid-2000s run may conjure up glorious, romantic thoughts, but as a sound move for the current team, it makes little sense.

We have yet to read a compelling reason for Edmonds making the team, and in fact have run across some rather bad ones. Let us clarify:

1. Edmonds should never take plate appearances (or fielding appearances) from Colby Rasmus. At this point in his career, Edmonds offers no skill advantage in any category over Rasmus. The only reason he could play center is if Rasmus gets injured.
2. Even if Rasmus gets hurt, Edmonds isn’t the man for center. Jon Jay is. The projections give Jay a slight advantage with the lumber, and he’s most likely better with the leather. And of course, he’s a lot more durable.
3. Edmonds doesn’t upgrade the team’s “defensive profile,” because the Cardinals have better options for late-inning defensive replacements. At first glance, Edmonds would appear to be a candidate to replace Lance Berkman in right field in late innings. But if Tony La Russa deploys his “hands team,” he has better alternatives, namely Skip Schumaker. Schumaker (or Jay) in right and Theriot/Punto/anyone at second base is a double upgrade over Edmonds in right and Schumaker at second.
4. Edmonds probably can’t hit lefties anymore. Once impervious to lefthanded pitching, Edmonds has been increasingly declining against them recently, widening his platoon differential. Nowadays, he’s merely a LOOGy magnet.
   
5. Edmonds probably isn’t the best mentor for Rasmus. How quickly people forget Edmonds’s petulance and soap-opera relationship with La Russa. And how wise is it to use one of their roster spots for a mentor? Why not hire him as a coach instead?

Adding Edmonds would simply continue the cult-of-personality movement that the Cardinals have begun this winter, in which the team has prized likeability over productivity. The only skill that Edmonds offers as a useful asset over what the Cardinals already have is pinch hitting against righties. But unless La Russa for some reason decides to use fewer pitchers than he has in the past, the Cardinals need more than that from their 25th man.

MLB.com is asking "Who was black baseball’s best pitcher?" Among the pitchers that the 19-member expert panel will consider to name in their top five is Satchel Paige, who, pitching in St. Louis and being one of baseball’s all-time characters, has always been one of my favorites. It’s impossible to really know who was best, let alone how they compared to the major leaguers of the day. But Richard Donovan’s famous profile of Paige for Collier’s magazine (the source of Paige’s apocryphal "rules for living") contains a helpful anecdote involving Joe DiMaggio in 1935:

At the time, DiMaggio was playing around the Bay Area with an off-season team of major-league all-stars. Yankee scouts, who wished to see how their new find reacted to serious fire, finally got hold of Paige, who was taking the sun in Los Angeles. Paige was willing, after hearing about the guarantee, and started North with his team, composed entirely of Ebel Brooks, catcher for the New York Black Yankees of the Negro National League.

In Oakland, Paige found three local semipro players, filled out the roster with high-school boys and gazed solemnly at the terrifying line-up of major-league talent. Then he proceeded with the business of the day, which was to fan 15, allow three hits in 10 innings and lose the game, two to one, when his youths, possibly rendered hysterical by the reputation of the opposition, threw to the winds the three balls that came their way. With a man on third in the tenth inning, DiMaggio, who had struck out twice and fouled out once in his previous official times at bat, finally hit a hopper which Paige lost in the shadows of dusk. One ex-Yankee scout remembers sending a telegram East: DIMAGGIO ALL WE HOPED HE’D BE; HIT SATCH ONE FOR FOUR.

Of course, Old Satch did eventually get to pitch in the major leagues, breaking in as a 41-year-old rookie and ultimately setting the record as the oldest player to play in a game, at the ripe old age of 59 in 1965 (courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com):

But Paige didn’t simply get credit by making a cameo pinch-hitting appearance or DHing, as Minnie Minoso did as a 50-year-old. No: Satch started and faced 10 batters over three innings, striking out one and yielding one hit (to fellow future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski). And that was after pitching in probably 2,500 games.

In the spirit of Rob Neyer’s Monday Mendozas and Friday Filberts, we bring you Saturday Saturrias.

• Perhaps Cardinal fans are a bit edgy these days waiting for Albert Pujols to sign an extension. Or maybe they just have long memories. When former Cardinal Brad Penny posted a seemingly innocuous tweet about his recent workout, JoeSportsFan’s Matt Sebek took umbrage, perhaps still upset that Penny’s injury left the Cardinals in the lurch last year. One thing led to another, which wasn’t surprising, given that it was at least the third time that the two had locked horns. Perhaps Penny should take some Twitter-PR lessons from Logan Morrison.
• The Dodgers and reliever Hong-Chih Kuo reached agreement Wednesday on a one-year, $2.725 million contract, with another $675,000 possible through bonuses. According to Dylan Hernandez, Kuo can max out his incentives by finishing 55 games. Given that the most games he has ever pitched in an entire season is 56, that seems unlikely. But think for a moment about the incentive of finishing games. First, it’s a usage-based stat, so it’s largely out of his control. But second, finishing games, especially for LOOGYs isn’t like, say, games started for pitchers, simply because starts imply multiple innings pitched, and therefore a reasonably consistent leverage index (a measure of pressure situations during the game). For a pitcher like Kuo, who has averaged about one inning per game the last two seasons, his leverage index can vary greatly dependning on when he pitches that inning. And the last one may not be the highest. For example, his average leverage index in 2010, when he finished 16 games, was 1.51. But in 2009, when he finished only two games, it was slightly higher, at 1.55. Assuming both Kuo and manager Don Mattingly act in good faith to help the pitcher attain his goals, this would likely be a case of incentives being misaligned with the best interests of the team.
• Vladimir Guerrero’s one-year, $8 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles makes for an interesting comparison with Lance Berkman’s identical arrangement with the Cardinals. Neither player is the fielder he once was, but their new teams obviously believe they can still hit. The major projection systems do, too: Bill James figures Vlad is good for a .373 wOBA in 2011 and Berkman .385. Fangraphs’ fans are more bullish on Berkman, whom they expect to hit for .366, whereas Guerrero "only" .345. Time will tell whether the Cardinals or O’s got the better deal.
• The 2004 Cardinals own the best regular-season record — 105-57 — over the last nine years. So it’s understandable that their aging alumni would still carry some cache around the league. Earlier this winter Jeff Suppan signed with the Giants, Edgar Renteria joined Scott Rolen and Walt Jocketty’s Reds, Rick Ankiel signed a one-year deal with the Washington Nationals and even Hector Luna inked a minor-league contract with the Red Sox. And now, Jim Edmonds has signed a minor-league deal with his old team. Who’s next, Roger Cedeno?

According to Joe Strauss, Albert Pujols’s agent Dan Lozano last summer proposed a 10-year, $300 million framework for the Cardinal first baseman’s contract extension. As Strauss notes, “Such a deal would eclipse New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez’s 10-year, $275 million contract signed three years ago as the game’s richest.” Many other observers have linked A-Rod’s contract in discussing Pujols’s value and possible demands.

But is a strategy to compare a new contract to Rodriguez’s wise? The reality is that if anyone attempts to compare Pujols to Rodriguez, the comparison doesn’t reflect well on Pujols. That’s because Rodriguez, being essentially four seasons ahead of Pujols by the time his theoretical extension begins, has provided real data with which to gauge Pujols’s possible next four years. And it doesn’t say “$27.5-million player,” not to mention $30 million. Using Fangraphs.com’s fan projection for Pujols, which estimates that the Cardinal slugger will produce a value of $33.4 million in 2011, his age-31 season, and the actual rate at which Rodriguez has declined, here’s how Pujols stacks up against the player whose contract he’s looking to match (projected/estimated seasons are represented by the dashed line):

If the fans’ projection is accurate and if Pujols declines at the same rate as Rodriguez did from age 31 through 34 — performing at about 75% of each previous season’s value — Pujols won’t produce even $25 million in a season, let alone average that much over the life of the contract.

Granted, the comparison with Rodriguez overlooks some important variables, such as Rodriguez’s known (vs. Pujols’s unknown) use of PEDs and the hip injury that caused him to miss significant time in 2009. But if Pujols is looking to associate himself with A-Rod as he negotiates his next contract, the Cardinals may appreciate the unintended assistance.