What will the St. Louis Cardinals do this offseason? Hopefully, it’s more than nothing

We know that the St. Louis Cardinals have expressed interest in cutting expenses for the 2021 season because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their revenue stream.

But can the Cardinals afford to pass yet again on an opportunity to improve a lackluster product?

With all of the misguided efforts of the Commissioner’s Office to “improve” baseball, it’s a fact that the best way to put fans in the stands is to put a good product on the field. Specifically, fans line up to buy lots of tickets to see teams that not only win, but do so by scoring lots and lots of runs. Yet here we have the Cardinals putting out a team that barely notches a .500 record each of the past five years while ranking near the top in only a couple of offensive categories: strikeouts and runs left on base.

The Cardinals have taken it for granted for years that they have a special relationship with their fans that earns them plenty of benefit of the doubt. But how much benefit of the doubt it too much? Half a decade of playing second fiddle to the Chicago Cubs ought to do it, I’d guess. It’s pretty tough to buy into the bravado of fandom when your team’s rival is willing to break the bank to get an advantage and your team let’s it’s cleanup hitter walk with no replacement on the roster when he would have taken a modest one-year contract for the opportunity to stay in the fold.

It’s simple business principle that you have to spend money to make money. The Cardinals have let their window of competitiveness slam shut and it’s going to take some investment in the product on the field to get back into the World Series conversation again. When they walk into a restaurant, customers don’t want to hear that the inventory is spoiled and they’re going to have to eat the old stuff before the owner can go out and buy some new stock. They’re going to have to toss the garbage and buy some new supplies on faith that people are going to eat it up when the food is on the table.

No one, likewise, wants to hear the Cardinals cry that they’re spending too much money on Matt Carpenter, Dexter Fowler and Andrew Miller. With the economy in rough shape, it was going to be tough to lure fans back to MLB ballparks in 2021 already. Imagine how difficult it is going to be to convince people to pony up big bucks for tickets to watch a team that can’t score any runs with no fresh players to market.

Not only do the Cardinals face the prospect of alienating their loyal fans with another winter of neglect, I wonder what their refusal to improve their club is doing for the Cardinals’ reputation among players.

St. Louis used to be a go-to destination for guys like Lance Berkman, Carlos Beltran, Will Clark, Mark McGwire and others who wanted a real chance every year to win a World Series ring. When is the last time the Cardinals were seriously mentioned as a team favored to win their own weak division? They’re far more often mentioned by national baseball writers as a team that is an ideal landing spot for a player because of obvious needs, but if the Cardinals are in the conversation for the player in question at all, they’re usually a distant second or third place in the bidding. Do they really think guys are going to take less to come play for them, or are they hoping to make an offer a player can’t accept, gaining some headlines as a bidder for a top player without ever risking actually adding the athlete to the payroll?

This doesn’t have to be the end of the world. The Cardinals could get creative with their financing and add a player or two this winter who could make a real difference. They could further add flexibility by renegotiating with second baseman Kolten Wong and trying to find someone to take Carlos Martinez’s contract for a bag of balls. There are ways to get the job of improving the roster done. The only thing that is impossible is imagining this team spending another winter doing absolutely nothing.

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.