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2020 Car­di­nals Post-Mortem: Their strengths, their biggest need (s) for 2021, and who they could tar­get


It’s been just over a month since the Car­di­nals were ousted from the play­offs by the young, up­start San Diego Padres. The 2020-21 off­sea­son is upon us, and there are ques­tions aplenty for the Birds. In an al­ready short­ened sea­son that fea­tured a 17-day lay­off af­ter a COVID out­break, the Car­di­nals came close to ad­vanc­ing on to the NLDS, but ul­ti­mately snatched de­feat out of the jaws of vic­tory and saw their sea­son come to an abrupt end in Game 3 of the NL Wild Card Se­ries. In or­der for the Car­di­nals to re­turn to the post­sea­son for a third straight year, some big changes will need to be made.

The Car­di­nals are com­ing off a sea­son in which they fin­ished in sec­ond place in the com­pet­i­tive NL Cen­tral with a 30-28 record, three games back of the Chicago Cubs, and clinched seed num­ber five in the NL. Com­ing into the year, there were ques­tion marks. The great­est of them all was where would the team get their of­fense from. With such an em­pha­sis on im­prove­ment, the Car­di­nals did next to noth­ing af­ter Mar­cell Ozuna left for the Braves. In­stead they re­lied on in­ter­nal op­tions such as Tyler O’Neill and Lane Thomas, both of whom had mas­sively dis­ap­point­ing sea­sons, while Ozuna put up MVP cal­iber num­bers in At­lanta. They also traded away Randy Arozarena, who earned ALCS MVP hon­ors and broke the sin­gle post­sea­son home run record with the Tampa Bay Rays. Now, head­ing into 2021, three of their biggest of­fen­sive con­trib­u­tors from this year, catcher Yadier Molina, sec­ond base­man Kolten Wong and util­ity in­fielder Brad Miller, are all free agents. So once again, the ques­tion is, how will the Car­di­nals up­grade their of­fense?

Of course, the Car­di­nals are still a good enough team to re­main in post­sea­son con­tention. Their bullpen, as it was in 2019, was elite, de­spite the loss of John Breb­bia and Jor­dan Hicks choos­ing to opt out due to health con­cerns. Their off­sea­son ac­qui­si­tion from 2018-19, An­drew Miller, pitched much more like his old self af­ter a dis­ap­point­ing 2019. Gio­vanny Gal­le­gos also re­mained steady. With Breb­bia and Hicks re­turn­ing in 2021, the bullpen should be the least of their wor­ries. Their start­ing pitch­ing re­mains strong de­spite Adam Wain­wright hit­ting free agency and Dakota Hud­son be­ing forced to miss next year due to Tommy John Surgery. They could po­ten­tially lose Wain­wright, es­pe­cially if Molina does­n’t re­sign, but Miles Miko­las is re­turn­ing af­ter miss­ing 2020. Jack Fla­herty still has a ton of up­side, lefty Kwang-Hyun Kim proved to be an­other hid­den gem found by the Car­di­nals front of­fice, and Austin Gomber took some ma­jor steps for­ward af­ter miss­ing all of 2019. They could still prob­a­bly use a vet­eran starter to an­chor the ro­ta­tion. Their top choice would of course be Wain­wright, as they likely won’t pur­sue Trevor Bauer or Mar­cus Stro­man, but if Wain­wright leaves, Char­lie Mor­ton could be an op­tion. They could also po­ten­tially pur­sue Jake Odor­izzi, who grew up in Breese, IL, just over 40 miles east of St. Louis

What the Car­di­nals re­ally need is an im­pact bat or two. The main rea­son the Car­di­nals barely fin­ished over .500 and did­n’t last long in the play­offs was due to their ane­mic of­fense. If Molina leaves, they’ll need to find a backup catcher, as they be­lieve that An­drew Knizner is Ma­jor League ready. James Mc­Cann would make sense, com­ing off a year in which he hit .289 with 7 homers with the White Sox and some­one who has been an All-Star be­fore. How­ever, it would make more sense to keep Matt Wi­eters. The Car­di­nals will need to find an in­fielder with some pop if Kolten Wong does­n’t re­turn. Brad Miller has ex­pressed in­ter­est in re­turn­ing to St. Louis, so a re­union is­n’t out of the ques­tion, but the Car­di­nals should prob­a­bly look for some­one who can be an every­day player, as Miller is mainly a util­ity man. Names like Didi Gre­go­ri­ous, Mar­cus Semien, and Ce­sar Her­nan­dez stand out. Gre­go­ri­ous would be an at­trac­tive op­tion due to him be­ing a left-handed bat, some­thing the Car­di­nals have searched for many times. They also need to ad­dress the lack of pro­duc­tion they got out of the out­field. Dy­lan Carl­son got hot at the end of the year, so he should help some, but play­ers like Har­ri­son Bader un­der­achieved. Anne Rogers, the Car­di­nals MLB.com beat writer, men­tioned Joc Ped­er­son, Adam Eaton, and Jackie Bradley Jr, all of which would be solid op­tions, but they may go af­ter Michael Brant­ley, some­one they’ve been linked to in the past.

The Car­di­nals al­ready have a solid team that’s ca­pa­ble of at least reach­ing the post­sea­son, but if they want to go far­ther, moves will need to be made. In or­der to get back to the NLCS as they did last year, they need hit­ting, and they need it des­per­ately. If no moves are made, it’s hard to imag­ine the Car­di­nals be­ing the fa­vorites in the ever com­pet­i­tive NL Cen­tral head­ing into 2021. It re­mains to be seen if Wong, Wain­wright, or Molina will re­turn, but the Car­di­nals and their fans should ex­pect a dif­fer­ent look for the 2021 sea­son.

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