What can the Car­di­nals do in ad­di­tion to ac­quir­ing Nolan Are­nado?

Get ready Car­di­nals fans! We’re in for a wild ride! What be­gan as a slow-mov­ing off­sea­son tran­si­tioned into a very busy one for the St. Louis Car­di­nals. They re­signed legacy play­ers Adam Wain­wright and Yadier Molina even ac­quired All-Star third base­man Nolan Are­nado from the Rock­ies. The Car­di­nals’ most glar­ing weak­ness, which showed it­self in their Wild Card Se­ries loss to the Padres, was the lack of an im­pact bat; a hole that has now been filled. Pres­i­dent of Base­ball Op­er­a­tions John Mozeliak stated that he is “pretty con­fi­dent with the team (they) have go­ing into camp,” but may look for some non­roster in­vi­tee sign­ings. So what more can they do?

Sign a util­ity in­fielder: Der­rick Goold of the St. Louis Post Dis­patch notes that the Car­di­nals still have mid­dle in­field depth on their shop­ping list. With Kolten Wong gone, Tommy Ed­man in­her­its sec­ond base. The Car­di­nals still have ques­tion marks in their out­field, which could po­ten­tially be solved by oc­ca­sion­ally start­ing Ed­man there and hav­ing some­body else start at sec­ond. Matt Car­pen­ter is an op­tion, though his num­bers con­tin­ued to plum­met in 2020 af­ter a dis­ap­point­ing 2019, hit­ting just .186. Other in­ter­nal op­tions in­clude Ed­mundo Sosa and Max Mo­roff, who they signed to a mi­nor league deal this off­sea­son. But both of those guys are un­proven. That’s not to say they can’t prove them­selves, but the Car­di­nals would be best served look­ing out­side the or­ga­ni­za­tion for help. They could po­ten­tially re­unite with fan-fa­vorite Jedd Gy­orko, who played in St. Louis from 2016-2019. Or they could look for some left-handed or switch-hit­ting op­tions. Names like Eric Sog­ard, Neil Walker, and for­mer Car­di­nal Daniel Descalso stand out here. There’s no in­di­ca­tion that the Car­di­nals are in on any of these in­field­ers, but it would be smart for them to look for some­body who could play mul­ti­ple po­si­tions and give them a boost of­fen­sively, sim­i­lar to Brad Miller last year.

Sign an out­fielder: This is un­likely to hap­pen now that the Car­di­nals have ac­quired Are­nado, which makes up for much of the miss­ing pro­duc­tion in their lineup. But the Car­di­nals be­gan the off­sea­son search­ing for in­creased out­field pro­duc­tion from out­side the or­ga­ni­za­tion. They were linked to out­field­ers such as David Per­alta of the Di­a­mond­backs and An­drew Ben­in­tendi, who was re­cently ac­quired by the Roy­als from Boston. They also were in on Joc Ped­er­son, who ul­ti­mately signed a one-year, $7 mil­lion deal with the Cubs. That same day, the Car­di­nals were first ru­mored to be in on Are­nado. It was later re­vealed that they had a com­pet­i­tive of­fer for Ped­er­son while they were work­ing on the Are­nado trade, so it’s still pos­si­ble. Po­ten­tial op­tions in­clude Nick Markakis, Ed­uardo Nunez, and Josh Red­dick, just to name a few cost-ef­fi­cient play­ers. The Car­di­nals could also po­ten­tially look to re­unite with Matt Adams one more time, as he makes St. Louis his home for the off­sea­son. While it’s un­likely that they’ll add an­other out­fielder, es­pe­cially af­ter trad­ing Dex­ter Fowler to the An­gels, the Car­di­nals would be silly to not take a look at some of these names. These are all po­ten­tial play­ers that could even be signed to mi­nor league deals, so it’s not com­pletely out of the realm of pos­si­bil­ity.

Trust the in­ter­nal op­tions: This is the ap­proach the Car­di­nals took last year; an ap­proach that led to them hav­ing one of the least pro­duc­tive out­fields in all of base­ball. This may be the ap­proach they’ll take again in 2021. The dif­fer­ence this year is that the Car­di­nals have added that much-needed mid­dle-of-the-or­der bat in Are­nado, so fans are likely go­ing to be a lit­tle more ac­cept­ing of this idea. They al­ready have a plethora of young out­field­ers, in­clud­ing Dy­lan Carl­son, who showed promise in late Sep­tem­ber. De­spite re­cent strug­gles, Bader and O’Neill have great po­ten­tial and are more than ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing. There’s also Lane Thomas, who saw lim­ited op­por­tu­ni­ties last year due to COVID, but was on a tear in 2019 be­fore his sea­son was cut short af­ter suf­fer­ing a wrist in­jury. Justin Williams and Austin Dean are op­tions as well. It re­mains to be seen if these play­ers will pro­vide enough of­fense to in­crease pro­duc­tion in the out­field, but the Car­di­nals have im­proved their of­fense as a whole by ac­quir­ing Are­nado.

The Car­di­nals are done mak­ing ma­jor moves, and there’s a good chance that af­ter re­sign­ing Molina, they won’t add any more pieces. But it’s not out of the ques­tion that they’ll find some­body and sign them to a mi­nor league deal. “You al­ways have a chance to get bet­ter,” Mozeliak says. No mat­ter what hap­pens, the Car­di­nals got bet­ter with the ad­di­tion of Are­nado and now look like a true World Se­ries con­tender.