With Marcell Ozuna almost certainly gone, how do the St. Louis Cardinals replace him?

As the St. Louis Cardinals head to the Winter Meetings in San Diego, It appears the team is at a postseason crossroads.

According to reports out of Chicago, the White Sox will soon announce that they have signed Marcell Ozuna. St. Louis can make do without Ozuna’s glove in the outfield where he’s been a disappointment after securing a Gold Glove Award earlier in his career when he was a member of the Miami Marlins. But the Cardinals claim to have little to spend in their budget to fill the hole that Ozuna’s defection will create in the middle of an already inconsistent and disappointing batting order.

On paper right now it would appear that Lane Thomas, Randy Arozarena, Tommy Edman and, eventually, prospect Dylan Carlson figure to fight for the playing time Ozuna will vacate. But all those hitters seem to be more suited to setting the table rather than cleaning it up. Carlson hit 26 homers last year, and he may eventually be a power performer in the big leagues. But 21 of those long balls came in the hitter friendly Class AA Texas League, and it’s an awful lot to ask a kid with 79 plate appearances in Class AAA to parachute right into the big leagues and carry the offense.

Everything the front office has said to this point indicates it plans to count on the crew that couldn’t do the job last year to perform better in 2020 — all without one of its strongest contributors.

Anything is possible, I suppose. But with Matt Carpenter’s downward trend the last two years, the ineffectiveness of Dexter Fowler and the march of time chasing after Yadier Molina, I wouldn’t count on it.

I don’t necessarily blame the Cardinals for passing on Ozuna if it turns out he commanded a 5-year contract in excess of $100 million. While his production was important to the Cardinals, he hasn’t shown himself to be an elite player since he arrived in trade. He’s a .262 hitter with a .327 on base percentage for St. Louis with an average of 26 home runs hit a year. That’s not terrible. But it’s certainly not elite.

The question has always been if not Ozuna, who?

Can DeJong and Goldschmidt improve?

Most likely, I think the Cardinals are going to decide not to directly fill Ozuna’s shoes. They’re probably going to count on Paul DeJong to hit third or fourth, a troubling proposition for a player who strikes out a ton and who is prone to falling into prolonged slumps. He was practically helpless the last month of the 2019 season when he hit .183 with 29 strikeouts in 93 at-bats. DeJong hit only .233 for the season and was a .202 batter in the second half of the season.

While I expect that Paul Goldschmidt, coming off a career worst season his first year with St. Louis, will settle in to produce something close to what we expected from him as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks, I think he’s going to need more help in the middle than what DeJong has to offer. A .233-hitting, 30-homer hitting shortstop batting seventh? That would be fine. But batting second, third or fourth, that’s going to be something of a let down.

St. Louis should sign Josh Donaldson

The second option, which I have mentioned on these virtual pages multiple times lately, is to sign Josh Donaldson to a two-year contract to fill the clean-up role with a player with a proven record of being able to handle the job. That prevents players who aren’t fit for that role from being overexposed, potentially hurting the team and potentially damaging their development. It doesn’t delay the development of Nolan Gorman who is almost certainly at least two years away from threatening to crack the big league roster, and it doesn’t put St. Louis in a position to eat Matt Carpenter’s contract because he’s a terrible third baseman at this point of his career and he’d be much better suited — if you can’t trade him — to move to left field where he played some games earlier in his career.

Could Cardinals and Rockies make a trade?

Finally, the third option is that the Birds could make a big swap at the Winter Meetings to trade some of their surplus of pitching, outfielders and possible some big league talent to land a middle of the order bat. While I would love to see St. Louis trade for Colorado Rockies third baseman Nolan Arendo, a more likely possibility is a trade for his teammate Charlie Blackmon. It would, like Donaldson, be a temporary move for a player moving into his mid-thirties. But, although many would likely dismiss Blackmon as a product of Coors Field, he hit .314 with 34 home runs last year and he could easily slip into left field for St. Louis. If his production slipped 20 percent at Busch Stadium, he’d still be more productive than Ozuna ever was in Cardinals red.

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.