No one should be surprised that the St. Louis Cardinals did nothing at trade deadline

I see and hear a lot of venom from St. Louis Cardinals fans after the trade deadline. But anyone who expected thing to pan out differently than they did hasn’t been paying attention for the last five years, much less the past six months.

The Cardinals rarely make a big splash at the deadline. That doesn’t necessarily upset me because, typically, talent is vastly overpriced when teams are desperate to land the piece or two they think will put them over the top in the playoff hunt. What grinds my gears is that the Cardinals have done little over the winter to build their team for the upcoming season, claiming that they’re trying to preserve their ubiquitous “dry powder” for a mid-season move.

We know you’re not going to make a Matt Holliday type trade at the deadline. And you know you’re not going to, either. So just stop jerking us around. Cardinals fans are tired of waiting for the tomorrow that never comes. Put together a team that can compete from the start, don’t count on fixing it on the fly.

As I said before the deadline, I think the Cardinals are better off hanging onto their prospects than trying to come up with a band-aid solution int he midst off the oddest season in the history of Major League Baseball. I’d rather see a team that was put together for a window of three or four seasons than putting all your chips on a one-time bet, especially when the club is hovering around the .500 mark so far.

I’ve said repeatedly over the past three years that I’m stunned by the long leash this front office has when it seems to have drastically fallen short of its mission to build a World Series contender from within. The Cardinals haven’t developed a superstar prospect since Yadier Molina came on the scene 16 years ago. Meanwhile, the club has a nightmarish record when it comes to free agent spending. The Cardinals won’t go out and sign a guy like Max Scherzer, Bryce Harper or Anthony Rendon because it’s too risky to plunk down big bucks on a guy with a proven track record as a difference maker. But they WILL spend $18 million a year on Matt Carpenter despite obvious signs of decline, $16.5 million a year over five seasons on Dexter Fowler, $12.5 million a year on Andrew Miller for two years and $7 million a season on Brett Cecil. That’s $54 million a year, or about one-third of the payroll, tied up on two guys who are hanging around the “average” level of play and two pitchers who have been almost completely ineffective. That’s not even bringing up the bad contracts of Mike Leake and Luke Gregerson.

The Paul Goldschmidt trade was a good one for the Cardinals

I applaud the Paul Goldschmidt move. He’s pricey, but he’s one of the 20 best power hitters in baseball. But he can’t do things by himself. If the Cardinals spent $30 million a year on Rendon and Harper, they would have a killer middle of the batting order — and they’d have about $24 million to address other areas of need. They could go out and get ANOTHER elite player if they wanted. Imagine it, for the price of Carpenter, Fowler, Miller and Cecil, St. Louis could have had a lineup that included Rendon, Goldschmidt and Harper batting 3-4-5 and still had a supporting cast that included Kolten Wong, Paul DeJong, and Tommy Edman. Sounds a lot better than the offense this team has put up the past three or four years.

Goldschmidt is hitting near the .350 mark and has an on-base percentage near .500, which is absolutely fantastic on his part. But one of the reasons his walk total is climbing so rapidly is because opposing hurlers are starting to avoid him. Whitey Herzog had a philosophy that you never pitch to the big money guy when you’ve got a guy making one-twentieth of that amount hitting behind him. So, it’s a no-brainer for opposing hurlers to throw four wide ones to see if they can trick Goldschmidt into getting himself out and, if he doesn’t, they’ll take their chances with journeyman Brad Miller.

Are the Cardinals cheap?

The Cardinals have created an image that they’re cheap. But it’s not that they refuse to spend money. It’s that they spend themselves into a corner and then claim they can’t afford the premium players when they’re available because they’ve tied their own hands by signing guys like Leake and Cecil.

The other problem this St. Louis front office has is that it seems to vastly over-value its prospects. The Cardinals can’t make trades because other teams rarely seem impressed with what the St. Louis farm system has to offer. When those players arrive at Busch Stadium, they rarely seem to live up to the advance billing. Harrison Bader was going to be a superstar. Then he got here and, while fans love his hustle, speed and defense, he has a heck of a time maintaining a reasonable batting average.

When will this front office figure out that wasting money on mediocre ballplayers isn’t solving anything. It’s not that I think I’m smarter than them. I just think they forgot what made them successful in the past. They used to have three big-money players in the middle surrounded by a more affordable supporting cast. Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen. You can fill in the other spots with guys like Jon Jay and David Freese that come through the system. It’s much harder to develop your own stars and, when you do, you have to be proactive and get them signed before they get away.

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.