Shaun Sayer Solves Cardinals Problems
And so the Rafael Furcal era ends in St. Louis.
With the announcement of Tommy John surgery, Furcal is out for 2013. Considering how botched this situation has been since September of last year, the chances of the Cardinals running this back in 2014 fall somewhere between 0% and 0%.
He's a free agent and he'll be more than free to shop around for the best deal he can get.
So as we stand on March 7th, Ronny Cedeno slides into the Opening Day starter role, until Pete Kozma unseats him before April. We've covered Cedeno before and Kozma is a light-hitting minor-leaguer who had a crazy good September/October, but is less than a stable long-term solution.
What do the Cardinals do? WHAT DO THEY DO?
Thankfully they have Shaun Sayer, a guy who follows the Cardinals on The Facebooks and is ready to share the answer:
So there you have it.
Quit "crying poor", Cardinals. And get "Tulowiski" on this team ASAP. It's something I personally hadn't considered, but now that it's been posted online, I totally agree with.
Sarcasm noted, hehe. Seriously though, do you truly believe Cedeno is the assumed starter? I have to hope that's not true.
@bluenotebacker At this point, yes. He's been in the league 8, maybe 9 years. And with a unsettled 2B, I think they'll see him as the starter unless Kozma just makes it impossible to leave him out of the line-up.
They're similar in terms of UZR (Kozma's sample is small and generally this is a better stat after 3 years) and neither of them have a + glove, MLB level or not.
So Kozma will have to win the job. He's got a pretty good shot of doing that, for sure, but if he's gripping a bit at the plate come mid-March when the starters start going deeper into Spring Training games, then Cendeno will be in.
At the very least, this allows everyone to forget about Furcal coming back and using that as a reason to not explore any and all options at SS in 2013.
ATH
@athooks I thought I heard Miklasz saying Pete did have a + glove, but might've been projecting my personal hope that he will be the starter, lol. I know he wasn't good defensively in the minors. Cedeno is *definitely* a minus glove, and if he is their starter I will be very sad, as a fan. No question the whole SS situation has been questionably handled by the team, but offering Cedno as the solution is laughable. It's only my opinion, but all other things considered I think Kozma is at worst a wash defensively w/Cedeno and is an obvious upgrade at the plate. Here's hoping STL decides to go with youth there.
