[The United Cardinal Bloggers offseason roundtable discussion has begun. Bill Ivie led of I70 Baseball off with the following question.]

Albert Pujols is no longer a Cardinal and has moved on to greener (see what I did there?) pastures.  Put your General Manager hat on for me and tell me what moves you feel need to be made if the team desires to be competitive in 2012.  Is there a key free agent or specific position that Mo should attempt to upgrade?  Should he stand pat?  Anything other than reacquiring Pujols is on the table.

Part of the wisdom of re-signing Lance Berkman was to provide insurance for just this scenario, so the pieces rotate into place: Berkman plays first, Allen Craig goes to right field. That of course still leaves a firepower gap for the offense, which was the team’s strong suit in 2011. Happily, for whatever productivity loss the team incurs with Craig, it gains in payroll, so the Cardinals could afford to buy some offense.

The open spots then are shortstop and second base, with the possibility of centerfield. The rotation of Wainwright, Carpenter, Garcia, Lohse and Westbrook has some high highs and low lows, but overall is actually set up better than 2011’s was. We’re not convinced that a secondary LOOGy should be high on the shopping list, given their relatively low replacement value (for example, take Arthur Rhodes — please!).

Going outside the organization, the Cardinals might end their shortstop revolving door by bucking up for Jose Reyes, though his 2011 OBP of .384 belies his .341 career average. The price tag obviously matters here. Maybe it’s the former Mets fan in me, but Reyes would revive some of that top-of-the-lineup thrill from the Herzog years. And if Cardinal fans can embrace lifetime Astro Lance Berkman, surely they can warmly receive Reyes, right? Otherwise, we agree with Malcolm that Drew would make lot of sense at shortstop, but clearly Arizona, who extended his contract earlier this year,  thinks so too. We’re not sure Mozeliak has any more high-talent ne’er-do-wells to offer in trade. Thinking outside the box a bit, Carlos Beltran (yes, the hated Beltran and another ex-Met) would be a fascinating late-career short-timer (had the fourth-highest WAR among RFs last year). The only problem would be positional, since he probably couldn’t return to center.

Certainly finding a new manager is a important, but the pool of would-be managers isn’t as scarce as top players, so we would actually deprioritize it. And given that the team likely wouldn’t need to spend as much on its manager as it did La Russa (~$5 million), they could use the extra payroll on the field.

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, October 31st, 2011 at 8:44 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.