St. Louis Cardinals: 3 Players Who Will Make First All-Star Appearance in 2012

When the St. Louis Cardinals take the field on April 4th against the Miami Marlins, the team will begin the difficult quest of trying to defend their 2011 World Series championship.

The Cardinals had an eventful offseason, to say the least, in 2011. Manager Tony La Russa retired after managing the Cards for the past 15 years. Pitching coach Dave Duncan then took a leave of absence from the team to be with his wife, Jeanine, who is recuperating from brain surgery. Then if things were not eventful enough, the Cardinals lost their iconic player, Albert Pujols, to free agency. Pujols went on to sign a lucrative deal with the Los Angeles Angels. The Cardinals then brought in slugger Carlos Beltran to help fill the void left by Pujols.

The Cardinals now have tons of new faces around the clubhouse, especially in management positions. The biggest new face is manager Mike Matheney. Matheney, a former Cardinal catcher, is expected to be a great leader for this team for years to come.

Okay, now that your caught up to speed we can continue.

I mentioned the void that the departure of Pujols left in St. Louis. The Cardinals did in fact bring in Beltran to help fill that void, but the key word is help. One player can not replace Albert Pujols. Pujols could likely go down as the greatest player the game of baseball has ever seen, and the talent he brought to the field night in and night out can not be replaced by one person.

It will take a combination of players for the Cardinals to fill the void that Pujols left in St. Louis, and I believe the Cardinals have that combination.

Through a mix of veterans like Beltran, Lance Berkman, Matt Holliday, Chris Carpenter and Yadier Molina, and through a mix of young talent like David Freese, Jaime Garcia, Jon Jay, Tyler Greene and Jason Motte, I believe the Cardinals will be able to once again be a World Series contender in 2012.

Here are three players I believe will greatly help the Cardinals this season, by having breakout years, which ultimately lead each of them to their first All-Star appearance.

Jason Motte

Jason Motte went on lockdown mode in 2011. Tony La Russa was never willing to give the role of closer to Jason Motte, but late in the season everyone knew that when the ninth inning came around, Motte was the man.

Motte was an unstoppable force down the stretch in 2011. There are many statistics that show how good Motte was, but I will give you one stat to show how amazing he was—from June 26 until September 14, Jason Motte made 39 appearances for St. Louis. In that span, Motte threw 32.1 innings for the Cardinals. Over that stretch Jason Motte allowed one earned run. Ok, that took awhile to get to the stat, but here it is. That comes out to an ERA of .28 over that span of games. Total domination of hitters is the only way to describe that.

If you do not follow the Cardinals a lot, you are probably wondering, why wasn't Motte an All-Star last year if he was so good?

The reason Motte has never made an All-Star Game before is because he has frankly been horrible. Everyone in St. Louis knew Motte had the potential to be an All-Star closer, but many people thought Motte was thrown in the fire too early.

On Opening Day 2009, Motte blew a save against the Pittsburgh Pirates that really seemed to rattle his confidence. The development of Motte has been a long, and at times, very frustrating process, but Motte has finally turned into the closer the Cardinals have been waiting for.

Motte showed in October that his development into an All-Star closer is complete. Now it is time for him to go out and show that consistency on a daily basis. If he can do this, which I think he will, Motte will find himself in the bullpen at the All-Star game.

Jaime Garcia

This one may be a little bit of a shocker, but I am here to tell you that Jaime Garcia is an All-Star caliber pitcher.

Recall back to April and May of last season. If you looked at the MLB leaderboards for pitching you would find the name Jaime Garcia written all over them. Garcia was dominating lineups each time he took the mound, and there was not a team that could do anything about it until the Cardinals entered Colorado on May 28.

In that game Garcia allowed 12 runs over the course of 3.1 innings pitched, and he never fully recovered since then. Garcia still was a solid pitcher for St. Louis, and he ended up with a great year, but he was never the same dominant force on the mound.

I expect Garcia to be back in full force come the start of 2012. I think a lot of the pressure got to Jaime in 2011, mainly because he had to become the ace of the staff. With Wainwright out and Carpenter struggling early on in the season, it was Garcia's responsibility to lead the rotation.

This year I think Garcia will have a lot of the pressure off of him. Carpenter and Wainwright will likely be the No. 1 and No. 2 starters in some order, and that will allow Jaime to continue to grow as the No. 3 starter.

With the pressure off him, I expect Garcia to thrive again in 2012. An All-Star game could be a little too high of an expectation for him, but it would not be the craziest thing baseball fans have ever seen.

David Freese

If you still do not believe what you saw in Game 6 of the World Series, don't feel bad, because you certainly are not the only one.

In fact, the performance of David Freese throughout the entire 2011 postseason was unbelievable. Freese hit for a .397 average, hit five home runs, drove in 21 RBI, scored 12 times and I could go on for an entire page about what he did, but I think you get the picture. David Freese, NLCS MVP and World Series MVP, was amazing in the 2011 playoffs.

Now, St. Louis needs him to translate his success over into the regular season.

Freese has missed significant time during the course of his short career due to injuries, and it has inhibited his ability to help the Cardinals out during the regular season. During his time on the field before the postseason, we saw flashes of brilliance from Freese, but things never all came together for him.

I expect things to come together for him in 2012, as do many Cardinals fans. Now let's not go crazy over Freese. Is he going to hit for nearly a .400 average throughout the season and hit walk off home runs every night? I guess he could, and I sure hope he does, but it would be highly unlikely.

If Freese can display the power he had in the postseason, along with his ability to drive in runs and get timely hits, then we should have an All-Star third baseman in St. Louis this year. Injuries are also another concern for David, and hopefully he can have a healthy 2012.

You never know, maybe the World Series MVP could become the NL MVP this year. I guess we will soon find out.