Trade Deadline Dullness

The Cardinals' only deadline deal was to acquire Zach Duke for Charlie Tilson from the White Sox. Tilson probably isn't an enormous loss, there were questions about whether his bat would play at the major league level, and while he has speed and defense chops to play centerfield, it wasn't to any sort of extraordinary degree. I saw him described as Peter Bourjos, but not as good, and we all saw how well things went for Bourjos in StL.

As for Duke, he probably slots into the Randy Choate LOOGY role. He's made over 50 appearances this year, but thrown fewer than 40 innings. One more good lefty out of the bullpen, though it's still contingent on Matheny knowing how to use his bullpen properly.

Not an exciting move, mostly the typical midseason move for the Cardinals. Burn a middling prospect acquiring a middle reliever. Whoo. To be fair, I can see what Mozeliak's reasoning is. The Cardinals' run differential says they should be much better than they are, because they've fucked up so many one-run games this year. And a major culprit in that has been the bullpen (or Rosenthal, specifically). The rotation seems OK (Matheny's idiotic decision to start Garcia on short rest when he had three other options available aside), the offense has remained productive despite injuries, the defense is. . . not atrocious. Shore up the 'pen, and maybe the close game luck swings the other way.

Plus, it's hard to see where you make a major upgrade. The Cards have average to above-average players at most every position, in some cases multiple players like that. So you can't simply get an average player and make a huge upgrade. You have to get someone really damn good, and then you have to clear out the logjam of other players for that position. With Carpenter, Moss, and Peralta all on their way back, just look at the options available:

First base - Adams, Moss, Carpenter, Holliday, Piscotty
Second base - Carpenter, Wong, Gyorko, Garcia
Third - Peralta, Carpenter, Gyorko, Garcia
Shortstop - Diaz (though now he's hurt possibly), peralta, Garcia
Centerfield - Pham, Grichuk, Hazelbaker, Wong (still think that's a stupid move)
Left and Right Field - Piscotty, Holliday, Moss, any of those CFers I listed

And the overall difference in production between a lot of these guys is pretty minimal. But you'd have to move some of them, just to clear space, along with some of the top prospects, to get anyone good enough to make a real difference.

My feeling this season has been for them to just make the playoffs and be healthy when they do, then hope for luck in matchups or other teams' health. I guess they should just keep rolling with that, then see where to go in the offseason.