Should the Cardinals stick a fork in their season and become sellers?
The St. Louis Cardinals have been one of the biggest surprises in the NL this year. As recently as last week the team was just 2 games behind the first place Chicago Cubs and in the lead for the NL Wildcard. However, after suffering a gut wrenching 4-game sweep at the hand of division rival Milwaukee Brewers and watching their bullpen collapse (3 of those losses coming in the Brewers last at bat) the Cards now find themselves 3.5 games out of first at the time of this writing and if the scores hold true will drop to 4 games behind both the Cubs and the Brewers.
The Cardinals do have former Cy Young award winner Chris Carpenter slated to come off the DL possibly as early as Wednesday of next week and fill-in ace Adam Wainwright set to follow close behind. However, if the team drops another two or three games back before then, would the Cardinals switch from buyers to sellers?
Former closer, Jason Isringhausen is in the final year of his contract and could probably be had for the price of a bus ticket out of town if you asked most of the St. Louis fans. However, his performance has been less than inspiring this year and there's not a lot of demand for a closer that constantly blows saves.
Reliever Russ Springer might be retiring after this year but the team has been very considerate of the special circumstances surrounding his family (his autistic son attends a special needs school locally). However, the right hander has compiled a 1.97 ERA and could conceivably be willing to pitch for a few months with a contender.
2nd baseman Adam Kennedy might also interest a few teams as he's rebounded from a down year last year to bat .268 while playing solid defense.
Kyle Lohse is pitching on a one year deal and doing a stellar job of it, going 12-2 but the Cardinals have expressed an interest in resigning the pitcher and he'd likely be a type-A free agent so any package assembled would have to be better than the two compensatory draft picks they'd get by losing him to free agency. It's hard to imagine any team giving up that much for a rental but then again, the Indians got quite a package for Sabathia, so you never know.
What do you think Cardinal Nation? Should the Cardinals become sellers? Who do you think would be made available?
