If the Cardinals acquire Holliday, a an interesting case could be made that the two best outfielders in Rockies history went on to play for the Cardinals - Holliday and Larry Walker.

Remember the last blockbuster the Cardinals made with the A’s? I think everyone wishes Dan Haren was pitching in STL right now. Hopefully the Cardinals will not let Billy Beane burn them again. Ankiel and Ludwick will come around, they’re too good not to. Focus on getting a 3B right now.

Then there is his mediocre minor league slash line: .276/.353/.427. Does not look to hot in over 2600 minor league ABs.

Here is an interesting thought. Say the cardinals do trade for holiday and he bolts at the end of the year for the lucrative free agent market. Wouldn’t the cardinals be rewarded Type A compensation for him? By Type A I mean a highly coveted first round pick. Please enlighten me on my thought process Derrick.

I love Ankiel’s story, but the guy is clearly not as good in CF as Colby and isn’t a legit MLB hitter. If Oakland is interested in him, they should find a way to add some “prospects” and make a deal. Ankiel and Duncan have hit their celings. Holliday would add some protection, then if we don’t resign him, we will get two No. 1 picks. I say do it.

Good chance of a Type A, yes. That is a benefit.

However,a high pick is only useful if you pick a superior player. The Cardinals, much like their ex-STL counterparts, tend to pick players that will not command huge signing bonuses and are not quite as good as top tier amateur players

If the Cardinals couldn’t get this deal done last winter, why would they be able to get it done now? If they didn’t want to give up guys they have under control for a guy they would only have for one season, why would they now want to give them up for a guy they will have for less than one season? Just wondering why anyone thinks the Cards FO will pull this deal off now, when they couldn’t in the offseason.

Worrying about Holliday’s home/road splits is a little like worrying about the boogie man hiding under your bed at night. There is no boogie man, and the Cardinals will never acquire Holliday.

The problem with getting type A compensation is that you first have to offer him arbitration and the danger in the current market - especially since so many people realize that a substantial portion of his appeal was built at Coors - is that HE MIGHT JUST TAKE IT! And then you get to pay him 20% more for the 20% less (or so) you get outside of Coors.

Besides Ludwick is already as good a hitter as Holiday and we have 5 (FIVE) MLB OFs including the one masquerading as a 2B through no fault of his own.

Since 03 LaRussa’s player evaluation skills have been virtually nonexistent, or at least not as effective as they had been before. First he insisted on Tino (when a little thought might have gotten AP to 1B earier and Moises Alou signed in the OF). Second he insisted he needed a #1 after the 04 WS despite having one of those coming off the DL (CC). Of course a 2nd #1 is always good but he believed Mulder was a better acquisition than Hudson and to top it off entirely, he overruled his HoF pitching coach and gave away Haren as part of that deal instead of Reyes.

Then there was his calling out of Rolen in the media despite it being anathema to him after Dallas Green did similarly in Philly and despite always saying that players should deal with him and not the media. Yet TLR the hypocrite deals with the media all the time instead of the player or his boss. Frankly I’d have fired his HoF, truly a godsend to this franchise in 1996, arse just for that alone. Oh and for all you people saying Mo is inept, Rolen is my defense of Mo - he managed to get a roughly equal value in trade despite everyone in the game knowing we had to trade Scott - thanks to TLR’s tirade in the media.

Now we have TLR salivating over holliday despite multitudinous OFs, rather than simply calling up the one hitter that might actually be able to deal with protecting AP (at least mentally - we haven’t seen the physical ability actually happen yet though we can be fairly sure it will) - Brett Wallace. It also would provide a LH between 2 RH which is beneficial to the lineup, more so than TLR’s fixation on needing a RH bat. (BTW am I the only one to notice that no one has 2 better RH bats than AP and Lud? And yet we need another?)

As for the perception that the cards fail against LHs? Well a good portion of that is TLR’s insistence in bringing out the marginal lineup whenever a LHP shows up. True, the doom shrieked to the skies by idiot net fans is seriously overstated but the expectations of a win go way down whenever he does that. I note that even the 09 Nats can manage 30% wins; TLR’s RH AAA/AAAA/MLB lineup is not much better than that. (Not to mention that LHs probably do better against some lefties like glavine and santana whose forte is getting RH out with moving stuff that goes away from them.

My view - bring up wallace and trade at least one and maybe as many as 2 of our OFs for SP and then return skip to the OF with tyler and ryan handling the middle infield and suddenly we will look like winners again. Even though I hasten to note that all the doom and gloom, sky is falling stuff is coming with the cards a mere game out of first.

An OF of lud and ras and skip with an IF of wallace, t greene, ryan and AP would be a joy to watch on and off the field.

Your post makes the most sense. Also how much of Ankiels performance 2 years ago was the result of taking HGH?