St. Louis Cardinals Offseason: Cleaning the Roster

As you probably know by now, the Cardinals decided not to tender contracts to three players—Aaron Miles, Tyler Johnson, and Randy Flores.  Instead of three wise men showing up to find their goal, these three will have to follow their star elsewhere.

Or will they?  Last year's round with Miles showed us that just because a player is non-tendered doesn't mean he won't be on the roster come opening day.  I think everyone will admit that re-signing Miles worked out much better than we expected, which is probably the reason the Cardinals didn't want to risk going to arbitration with him. 

I don't think it'd be too surprising to see him reprise last offseason and return.  If he doesn't, there's not a lot of great choices for the backup middle infielder role.

As for the other two, we can safely say that Flores will no longer pitch in a Redbird uniform.  At least, not a major league one.  I don't rule out management signing him to a minor league contract, but I do think he'll be elsewhere next season. 

Johnson is an interesting case.  If they think he'll be ready for next year, they may make a push to re-sign him.  If not, he'll find someone else willing to take a chance on him.

Apparently nothing new on the Brian Fuentes front.  There's definitely some merit to the "just get it done already" school of thought.  I'm still not a fan of the whole idea, but it's starting to get to the point where something needs to be done for the pitching staff.  Odds are, though, it won't get done until the New Year.

After the rush of last week's winter meetings, I figure that things will be pretty slow for the next couple of weeks.  Some free agents will start signing to get it done before Christmas, but I expect that there won't be any major changes to the Cardinal roster in 2008.  We'll just have to wait and see.