St Louis

I am not going to even take credit for predicting this earlier in the week because the move was so blatantly obvious.

Jeff Suppan, who was recently released by the Milwaukee Brewers, signed with the St. Louis Cardinals Thursday.

When a Cy Young Award candidate hangs a curveball and a sixth position hitter is there to see it, does it make a run? 

Well, not usually. But at PETCO Park Tuesday night, the San Diego Padres nabbed a win from one of baseball's finest starters when Jerry Hairston Jr. turned a pitch by Adam Wainwright into a solo home run and a 1-0 win for the NL West Division leaders.

Lost in the very oddly played, sometimes head-scratching 20-inning marathon on Saturday between the New York Mets and St. Louis Cardinals was the starting performance turned in by LHP Jaime Garcia.

The Cardinals’ rookie was very good on Saturday.

Garcia matched Mets ace Johan Santana pitch for pitch, giving up just one hit (a blooper by Angel Pagan), walking two, and striking out five in seven innings. He now has an 0.69 ERA in two starts (13 IP) this season.

The St. Louis Cardinals seem to be practicing the old fantasy baseball strategy of “Studs and Duds.”

In this strategy, a team uses a very large amount of its auction dollars on a few superstars and then fills in the rest of its lineup with a lot of $1 and $2 players.

The idea is that the studs will pile up enough quality stats to allow the duds to fill in a little and put your team over the top.

Unfortunately, this strategy rarely works, and it looks like it will only work in St. Louis this season due to such a weak division.

After an off-season full of speculation surrounding infielder Felipe Lopez signing with the St. Louis Cardinals, the deal finally became official on Friday.

The club agreed with Lopez on a one-year, $2 million contract with incentives on Friday, despite recent reports that the Cardinals weren’t looking to add another infielder before Spring Training.

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, things looked pretty good for the St. Louis Cardinals. After all, it looked as if they were about to tie up the division series with the L.A. Dodgers.

Since free agency began in November, Matt Holliday and Jason Bay have been the consensus two best hitters on the free agent market.

The general thought seems to be that while Bay is a great hitter, Holliday was the more desirable free agent for several reasons:

* Age: Holliday is almost 30 years old and should be entering his prime years. In contrast, Bay will be 32 years old this season.

First off, it is officially Christmas now, at least where I live. So, Merry Christmas to all you readers!

Okay, happy junk out of the way and onto business. This one will be short, as getting up early for Christmas Mass puts a damper on the college lifestyle of sleeping in.

All I hear about is how signing free agent Matt Holliday to a long-term deal will be detrimental to the signing team.

Let's look at that, shall we?

What we know right now is that there is one team pursuing Matt Holliday.

Despite Scott Boras' best antics, everyone that follows baseball knows only the St. Louis Cardinals are in the running for Holliday.

Why hasn't Holliday signed yet?

Boras.

Boras won't let Holliday sign until they have exhausted every option and gotten the offer they want from the Cardinals. In other words, he wants to prolong this until he gets his way.

The St. Louis Cardinals enter the offseason in a frustrated, yet excited state.

They were just swept out of the playoffs. Matt Holliday, Mark DeRosa, Joel Pineiro, Rick Ankiel, and John Smoltz enter free agency. Tony La Russa and the entire coaching staff are free agents.

But, the Cardinals did make the playoffs for the first time since 2006, and have a great base of young talent brewing.

Decisions, decisions.

What should the Cardinals do?

I am here to help.