St Louis Cardinals: No Arbitration for Free Agents? None at All?

So the Cardinals decided not to offer arbitration to any of their free agents.  As we discussed yesterday, the only options were Springer and Looper, really. 

The case against Springer stems from his age and the fact that the right side of the bullpen has a lot of in-house options.  If they really thought Springer would accept the offer, then I can see why they didn't offer.

There really did seem to be no downside on offering Looper, though.  Do you really think he's not going to get multi-year offers somewhere else?  Even if he accepts, would it be such a bad thing to have a starter/reliever combo in the same person? 

Right now, you have Wainwright, Lohse, Wellemeyer and Pineiro in the rotation.  Your own pitching coach doesn't think we'll see Carpenter in '09, at least as a regular rotation member.

Does Mozeliak really have plans that will come to fruition this week for the rotation, making the offer to Looper such a huge risk?  Is the market really that slow for him?

It just seems like we've heard so much about building up the minors and gaining strength from the draft, so when the team turns down the opportunity to get more draft picks, it's a little strange.

It also looks like the Trever Miller saga is not coming to an end, either.  Apparently something showed up on the physical that they didn't like.  As always, when it comes to the Cardinals and injuries, it's a murky path.

I was talking to cards4life from Redbird Ramblings last night and the question was posed that, if two weeks from now the Cardinals are in the same situation, with no signings or trades, do you start getting restless, and where does the blame lie?

He leaned toward DeWitt, which a sizable portion of the fanbase would, while I thought the blame would probably rest on Mozeliak.

Hopefully it's a moot point, though.  I still have a feeling that the Cards will be signing Renteria pretty soon, and you'd think activity would pick up now that the arbitration deadline has passed and the Winter Meetings are next week.  Something's going to happen...right?

My schedule has me out of the office the rest of the week (though that's always subject to change), so if I don't get a chance, I wanted to mention again the next UCB show.  There should be plenty of discussion about the arbitration decisions and what comes next.  Should be a great night!