Add new comment

I mean, I was advocating kicking the tires on trading something to the Cards for Matt Carpenter as he's got a great eye, a knack for walks, decent power (but nothing more than Seager, likely) and Zack Cox should be the 3B of the future in St. Loius.  But he's not a good defender either, and totally unproven in the bigs.  Which is why he might be gettable.
There aren't a lot of 3B who are any better than Seager, though, and can be had cheaply. If you just mean "get a good player who's cheap and under club control at ANY position" and not at 3B, I'd argue that we've done about all of that we really can in the "seriously cheap" dept.  For a few dollars more, I've mentioned Butler or Gordon, but Gordon's already talking extension with KC unfortunately.  I was hoping he'd hold a grudge against them for bouncing him around and he might be available.   We could look into Josh Reddick but I don't think he or (especially) Matt Joyce or others in that vein are gonna be gettable.
I think we're looking at trading for a hitter with a year or two left on his deal and extending him.  That's the Butler/Gordon/Zimmerman/Kemp/Ethier/Wright/etc zone.
I'm with you, I'd rather just spend cash and keep the prospects for us or trade for a cheaper, longer-term option.  If neither of those things is possible, though...
Who is worth paying for in dollars, years and prospects?
This is why Fielder just sounds better all the time to me - if Boras doesn't start at 10 years/200 million, I guess.  But if we can max out our current lineup of kids until the prospects are overflowing the positions AND have productive hitters in the primes of their careers holding down the important lineup spots, we can effect better trades and keep the pressure on the current lineup to produce.
We'll see what our strategy to compete in 2012 is.  Maybe it's "play all the kids, lose a few more games and get ready for 2013 to REALLY compete."  Maybe "add two good free agents or one great one and see what happens." Or maybe we decide to trade some of our collected assets for a more-expensive but still-productive 3-5 WAR bat under 30.
As much as I like Smoak and Ackley, and how glad I am to see Carp and co making an impact, I dunno that I want to see us just play all the kids and hope for the best.
~G