The St. Louis Cardinals are about to screw up yet another offseason

The St. Louis Cardinals call it patience. But to fans, what they’ve done this offseason looks more like a high stakes game of chicken.

The Cardinals have stiff-armed their former left fielder, Marcell Ozuna, for two month as they apparently looked for better options. As they settled on Colorado Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado, we’ve watched former American League Most Valuable Player Award winner Josh Donaldson go bye bye as well as the guy who manned the hot corner for the World Series Champion Washington Nationals, Anthony Rendon.

So, a team without an experienced middle of the order compliment for Paul Goldschmidt has pretty much put all its eggs in one basket. But what if they can’t agree on a trade package with Colorado, a team notorious for driving a hard bargain on the trading block? What if Arenado decides not to waive his no-trade clause? What if the Rockies decide not to trade the face of their franchise at all?

Do the Cardinals slink back to Ozuna and begrudgingly pay him what he’s asking for?

Ozuna put the Cardinals on blast last week, saying publicly that they’re his first choice when it comes to his future — but that St. Louis will have to step up to land him. As the 2019 season would to a close, some prognosticators thought Ozuna was going to command $100 million or more over five years. I said it in October and I’ll say it now, at that price or anything close to it, the Cardinals ought to pass.

While it would hurt to lose a valuable bat on a team that under-performed at the plate last year, my biggest fear for this offseason is that the Cardinals will make another Mike Leake or Dexter Fowler move. St. Louis spent all winter a few years back trying to sign former Tampa Bay Rays ace David Price who, by all accounts, preferred to play for St. Louis. When the Boston Red Sox swooped in and topped the offer from the Cardinals in the 11th hour, John Mozeliak and crew overreacted and gave mediocre former Cincinnati Reds fourth starter a lucrative multi-year contract that still haunts them to this day. The Cardinals overpaid Fowler when the former Chicago Cubs outfielder had reservations about defecting to St. Louis. Afraid to give the over 30 outfielder a five-year deal, St. Louis relented to get the deal done and then went on to immediately regret it.

One of the reasons the Cardinals have been unable to find that game changing piece the last couple of years is because they have too much money tied up in mediocre players including Leake, Fowler, Brett Cecil, Luke Gregerson and the declining Matt Carpenter. They could have added Rendon or another superstar this winter and saved their prospects if they wouldn’t have been so reckless with the checkbook in the past.

If the Cardinals miss out on Arenado and Ozuna wants to come back on a one-year deal to try to re-establish his value, great. But two years and $30 million is the end of the world, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to bidding on a player who seems to be a distant second on their winter priority list. After years of being bogged down by bad contracts, the Cardinals are two years away from freeing themselves from their self-imposed albatross. Don’t restart the clock in a moment of desperation.

Hopefully, St. Louis can get the Arenado deal done and then we won’t have to worry about Plan B.

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.