View from the cheap seats

Glaus vs. Rolen

Former Cardinals third basman Scott Rolen ranks second in the majors in fielding percentage, according to Yahoo! Sports.

The only player he trails in hot corner defense is... drumroll please... current Cardinals third baseman Troy Glaus.

Glaus has a .986 fielding percentage while Rolen's is .984. They are tied with three errors apiece. Rolen does lead major league third sackers in zone rating -- a measurement of how much ground they cover. But Glaus has not been nearly the defensive liability some expected him to be when the Rolen for Glaus trade happened over the winter.

Mozeliak: No short term fixes

Cardinals GM John Mozeliak told mlb.com that the Redbirds are interested in bolstering themselves for a pennant push. But he said the team refuses to part with prospects for a rent-a-player who can become a free agent at the end of the season.

"The answer is fairly simple in terms of any decision we make," Mozeliak is quoted as saying. "We want to make sure it has a positive impact on us, not only this year, but also next year.
"If there was some short-term solution, of course we would look at that, given where we are in the standings. But we're not hearing or seeing anything that really touches on that at this point. We're not going to just do something that a short-term fix."

I can't say that I disagree with the philosophy. But it's hard to find teams that are motivated to give up players that they can control beyond the rest of this season. Especially when parity results in almost all of the teams in baseball being in the race at the 1/3 mark of the season.

V is for vendetta

Anybody besides me a little worried about Walt Jocketty's declaration of a vendetta against the Cardinals?

It is my gut feeling that Jocketty was ultimately let go by the Redbirds because he got tired of being the fall guy for their increased penny pinching over the last three years. He was left powerless to sign the slew of talent that walked out the door to pay for replacements. And when he griped about it, he was given his walking papers.

But now we are going to see for sure.

Jocketty has signed on with a friendly owner who is willing to expand payroll in effort to turn the underachieving Reds into a force in the NL Central.

News Flash - Walt Jocketty hired as GM of the Reds

The Reds pulled the trigger on the long-speculated move that they would fire their embattled GM and replace him with the former leader of the Cardinals front office.

In the last week or two, I started to hear reports from people within the Cardinals front office that Jocketty was recruiting members of his former support staff to come to Cincinnati to work for him. But I had no idea that this was going to happen so quickly. From the sound of it, there is a deep rift between those loyal to Jocketty and those loyal to new GM John Mozeliak, so we should plan on there being defections.

Although Jocketty was something of a mentor to Mozeliak, the latter is nothing close to a carbon copy of the former. Not only does Mozeliak have a much different philosophy when it comes to handling players, but the two have completely different personalities that make people who worked well with Walt not work so well with Mozeliak and vice-versa.

Send away the cavalry

Since even before the season started, the Cardinals and their fans have been counting the days until the reinforcements arrived.

Joel Pineiro, Matt Clement, Mark Mulder, Josh Kinney, Chris Carpenter, Tyler Johnson and Russ Springer are all pitchers who have missed time due to injuries. And I, for one, have been marking off the days on the calendar until they returned. But a funny thing happened when the bell rang. The Cardinals jumped out to their best start in the last 25 years with a ragtag rotation and makeshift bullpen.

So, the off the wall question is, do we really even want our walking wounded back now?

Chris Capuano, meet Tommy John

While Scott Rolen may be on the shelf, it's starting to look like GM John Mozeliak made a pretty good decision to pass on Milwaukee's offer of starting pitcher Chris Capuano for the crabby third sacker who was eventually traded to Toronto for Troy Glaus.

Capuano, who was apparently going to be the odd man out of the Milwaukee rotation anyway, has torn a ligament in his elbow and requires Tommy John surgery. He's out for the season, which means if the Cardinals would have picked him up they would have got absolutely no return on the swap -- at least not in 2008.

Mozeliak says he's done

During the Winter Warm-up, Cardinals GM John Mozeliak said fans shouldn't judge the Cardinals yet because a lot of things could happen between then and the time the team broke camp at the end of March. But on Friday, he told Fox Sports Midwest that he doesn't see the team making any more moves.

"Right now, I think our roster is set, Mozeliak said. Although, he added the team could make a move to fill a hole if needed.

One player who is on the hot seat, according to the first year GM is second baseman Adam Kennedy.

"Clearly, he has worked hard his offseason," Mozeliak said. "We do plan to expect more this season than we got from him last season, however."

The GM said if Kennedy can't cut it, he will have to try to find someone who can play better both at the plate and in the field. I have my doubts, however, about the Cardinals releasing a player with a guaranteed contract for two seasons.

Rolen and Jocketty

Here's a hybrid post on two themes that have been kicked around in this particular corner of the Web the last couple of days: Scott Rolen's trade and a discussion on the career of Walt Jocketty.

While doing a little poking around on the Internet, I discovered a story about a trade proposal between the Phillies and Cardinals during the 2001 season. It seems that Phillies consultant Dallas Green told the club's GM he ought to consider trading Rolen because, despite the player's obvious talent, he seemed to have personality issues that would prevent him from reaching his superstar potential.

So the Phillies called the Cardinals a year before a trade between the teams was actually completed and offered Rolen in exchange for pitcher Bud Smith and a kid in the Cardinals farm system by the name of Albert Pujols.

Yikes.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda

I wonder what the legacy of Walt Jocketty will be.

Jocketty got a lot of credit in his early days with the Cardinals for landing guys like Andy Benes, Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, Todd Stottlemyre and Jason Isringhausen. In the middle part of his tenure, he brought in Will Clark, Larry Walker and Woody Williams. He also took a chance on Chris Carpenter that paid off in spades. But, having a chance to see the whole thing with a little bit of perspective, it seems that he was on a serious downhill slide the last couple of years. And he, more than anyone, may be to blame for the Cardinals current predicament.

He gave up Danny Haren and slugging prospect Daric Barton for a damaged Mark Mulder. He let Edgar Renteria walk away over a couple of million bucks when he probably could have had him for less if he offered a contract the year before he became a free agent. He also passed on a chance to re-up Jeff Suppan before he became a free agent at significantly less and tried to low bid a number of free agents who could have made this team significantly better if they were on board.

He also made horrible the horrible trades of Jack Wilson to Pittsburgh for Jason Christensen, who pitched 29 1/3 innings withe the Redbirds and racked up an ERA of about 5.00 and Coco Crisp to Cleveland for the last 14 starts of Chuck Finley's career.

In short, the last several years of his St. Louis career, Jocketty overpaid for marginal talent (Tino Martinez, a fading Jim Edmonds, Adam Kennedy, to name a few) and hamstrung the team financially when holes developed in the starting rotation and the lineup. He traded away too much from the farm system to temporarily patch those holes. And when that didn't work, he did things like low-balling Mark Grudzielanek until he found more money in Kansas-freaking City. Then he spent more on an inferior cast of replacements (Junior Spivey and Deivi Cruz who never planned an inning for the Cardinals and Ronnie Belliard) than he would have had to fork over to keep Grud.

At this point, the only mitigating factor that I could see to explain Jocketty's sudden loss of his magic touch is the possibility that ownership was pulling the purse strings and forcing him to compromise his plans.

Three cheers for John Mozeliak

Details of the Scott Rolen for Troy Glaus deal are starting to emerge. According to the Toronto press, about $1.8 million dollars will be included in the swap... going from the Blue Jays' bank accounts into the Cardinals.

Regardless of what happens on the field over the next two years, Mozeliak has worked his first masterpiece. He took a player in the middle of a public feud with his manager whom everyone knows had demanded a trade mixed with the baggage of an awful 2007 season punctuated by major shoulder surgery and traded him for a bona fide slugger while getting the other team to kick in some cash, too? Unbelievable.

So much for those who said the Cardinals needed to tear down and rebuild, in part because Rolen would have to be given away for nothing... and that the team would probably have to eat a major chunk of his salary just to get rid of him.