St. Louis Cardinals: Take a Deep Breath and Remain Calm

This is a message to the St. Louis Cardinals, and their new GM John Mozeliak, who in my opinion has done a bang-up job in his first year at that post.

Don't follow the Brewers and Cubs down this rabbit hole of "win now, care about the future when it comes" mode.

The Cubs are doing whatever they can to win the World Series on the 100th anniversary of their last World Series title, and the Brewers know that this is their best year to win.

Milwaukee will not have the ability to re-sign both Ben Sheets and CC Sabathia this coming offseason, and will probably be out bid for both players.

The Cubs have given up four young players, one with fairly good upside, for a guy with a great arm who has made 26 starts the last three seasons; hello Mark Prior version 2.0.

So looking at the two teams who have certainly made themselves better in the short term, but worse in the long term, the Cardinals need to take a deep breath look at the expectations prior to this season, and not make any rash decisions that will end in trading away prospects for proven players that might not have a future with the team.

I know he is starting tonight, but an example to learn from is the Mark Mulder for Dan Haren trade. If the Birds still had Haren, the imminent comeback of Adam Wainwright would solidify this rotation for this season and beyond.

Mozeliak seems to be content with the youth movement that this team is going for, and with the 2006 World Championship, which I attended, I am fine with a few years of watching exciting young talent develop into a team that will go on a playoff run much like the one we saw from 2001-2006 which included multiple division titles, two World Series appearances and one World Series victory.

I want to see the young prospects start to make their way to the majors. Colby Rasmus, the blue-chip center fielder, is a habitual slow starter, so I would like to see him get his stroke now, in order to be ready to lead off for this team in 2009.

The young arms need to come up as well. If Mulder's start does not go well today, all signs point to him getting shelled, then we need to bring up Jamie Garcia, as well as Mitchell Boggs, who I feel did not get a fair shake in the majors after pitching well, including a win, with great run support, in Boston.

Along with getting the young players ready, in the offseason the Cardinals will drop a lot of salary space, meaning that they can go out and get a power-hitting middle infielder, or another starter if the young guns do not pan out during the rest of this season.

This has been a great season to watch. All of the Cardinals have played their asses off; however, we can't sacrifice young, promising, low-cost players in order to try to make the playoffs in a season in which we had no business being in the race.