Not A Good Weekend

Not for me, not for my sports teams. Arizona lost to Pittsburgh, 25-13. No Big Ben, and Vick got knocked out partway through the game, and Arizona still lost because they couldn't hold onto the fucking ball. So much for spending the week in West Virginia to stay on Eastern time.

Look, it's all well and good to beat the everlovin' shit out of crappy teams, but at some point they will need to actually beat some teams that aren't inept. But this week they play the Ravens, so maybe they can wait another week or two until facing that challenge again. Thankfully the Rams didn't play, and the Seahawks lost to Carolina, so Arizona's still in first place. For now.

And the St. Louis Cardinals lost three in a row to the Cubs and were bounced from the playoffs. And now the Cubs are about to get swept by the fucking Mets. This postseason in general was going to be a disaster for me anyway, just because 75% of the teams in the LCS are ones I would be sad to see win a World Series. And Toronto's about to get bounced, so I'm better off just waiting for the offseason to start.

As for the Cardinals, there are decisions to be made. Jason Heyward is the big one, and I don't know what to do. The Cardinals have a ton of outfielders under contract next year - Grichuk, Holliday, Jay, Moss, Pham, Piscotty - but none of them are as good as Heyward (Pham is the one who comes closest to approximating Heyward's all around game, but not as good, and older). But is the gain in production they get from Heyward over say Piscotty, worth the 20 times more they'd be spending on him?

I guess the question is whether they can make an equally significant or greater improvement somewhere else with that money. A lot of Cardinals' fans are dreaming of a trade to acquire Paul Goldschmidt to play first, but a) I don't know if the Diamondbacks are even thinking of trading him, and b) what they'd demand if he is. It would take a move like that to compensate, but if you add Goldschmidt but Heyward walks and they had to trade Piscotty among who knows who else to get him, is it worth it? Holliday's on the downslope, so's Jay, I don't really care much for Moss, and I think Grichuk's lack of plate discipline is always going to limit him. But then again, so much of Heyward's value is tied up in his defense and speed, and I can't imagine he's going to maintain those as he ages.

Beyond that, there's the likelihood of Bourjos being gone, the question of what to do with Lackey, a farewell to Randy Choate, hopefully a search for someone they feel comfortable sitting Molina to play occasionally. There's probably some other things, so we'll see what pops up.