['Hamas' Jenkins]

The Cardinals have eight legitimate ML starters. Some I hate, but they are legitimate starters, or will be:

Waino, Wacha, Miller, Lynn, Garcia*, Rosenthal, Martinez, and Kelly.

And guys like Lyons and Gast can give the team the 120 innings of bull**** that Jake Westbrook provided this year.

The team was counting on innings from Garcia this year and the mother****er broke down. Same with Westbrook. It was hoping for innings from Carp and got none. Moreover, Furcal never played a game, the closer never threw a single pitch, the set-up man imploded so spectacularly that he got traded for the equivalent of a warm Keystone Light, Craig missed the last month with a serious injury, Freese, Kozma, and Jay were far worse than could have been imagined, strategic managing was poor, no one could hit the ball out of the park, and the team still won 97 games.

Perhaps a meteor will hit Jupiter next March, but aside from that, we've proven we can win with significant injuries.

This team needs to do the following:

Significantly improve its ability to hit LHP
Improve its defense

You can do both by trading for Tulowitzki. He's a better defensive SS than Kozma, and he allows you to move Carpenter to 3B, absorbing the loss in his surplus offense by gaining defense and speed from Wong. And if Wong flops the team could still plug Freese in at third and keep Carpenter at 2B or try out Greg Garcia there.

Honestly, the team should do everything it can to keep Craig at 1B. He's had two serious lower body injuries now, both of which likely affect his mobility, but at this point he's the team's most consistent hitter.

Oddly, his injury makes Adams more expendable because it makes Craig less versatile, but unless he learns to hit LHP, Adams is the kind of guy that just kills teams in the postseason. He'll be a white Ryan Howard vs. Rzepczynski for the next half decade in those situations.