The ‘Feel Good’ St. Louis Cardinals

The St. Louis Cardinals feel good about themselves as a ballclub.  Rightfully so.  St. Louis won 97 games in 2013, pitched their asses off against the Pittsburgh Pirates, fell a couple wins short of being the Champions of the World and then attacked the off season like Justin Beiber did his neighbors house.

I think for the past three years straight years the Cardinals have been in the NLCS.  Two out of the past three years the team has been in the World Series somebody said.  It’s like a mini-dynasty or some shit.

As we described in detail a while back, the charity driven Cardinals Winter Warm-Up (it raised $700K last year) is in full swing with this yummy quote we heard this weekend from Cardinals Chairman Bill DeWitt, Jr.

"“You’re never comfortable but we feel good about our position because of the depth we have.”"

Umm, Bill, that sounds pretty comfortable.  Can we bring you a cigar and a glass of stout?

The Cardinals do the yearly fan gathering better than any team in baseball.  Just ask them.  Past Cardinals Winter Warmups have been rather enjoyable.  Back in 2010, the best baseball town on Earth nearly blew up with what was called the Riot at the Hyatt.   Of course, this season the Cardinals fans can’t really riot about anything except coming up just a bit short and dreaming about what might be.

Injuries?  Nah, not really. Aging veterans.  Nah.  Outside of Molina, every position has a freaking continingency plan that’s actually pretty decent.  Yeh, this article sucks the more I think of the Cardinals. Holes in their lineup?  Nope.  Even after Carlos Beltran left town.  The only thing the Cardinals fans are worrying about is payday for Wacha, Wacha.

Hell the Cards have depth in center and second–some damn good depth too, but you already knew that.  The one thing that has caused the Cardinals difficulty (or more precisely–what should have caused them difficulty) is staying healthy–big, alarming injuries too.  We ain’t talking turf-toe Travis Snider here.

The injury bug takes giant chunks of flesh out of the Cardinals and they just turn into some super zombie and come back for more.  Adam Wainwright in 2011.  Chris Carpenter in 2012 and 13.  Jason Motte.  Rafael Furcal–which gave us that damn Bucco killer Pete Kozma whatever.

Yeh, the Cardinals

suck.

overcome.  Year.  After year.  After year.

The team is deep again and seemed prepared for nearly every possible scenario.  The Bucs can’t say this.  If Pedro Alvarez goes down.  Andrew McCutchen…?  Gerrit Cole?  Yeh.  You get the point.  The Pirates don’t have serious depth like the Cardinals do.  Remember Joe Kelly?  He might not even be in the starting five for St. Louis.

Think about that for a minute.

But the Pirates have one thing on the Cards, even if it’s it just Baseball America’s opinion.  Yeh, it’s not much but its the future and that’s all that matters.  Maybe we should start on our Gerrit Cole, Jameson Taillon, Nick Kingham photoshop.