READING TIME, 5 MINUTES:

* One more time now: the most glaring weakness with the 2010 Cardinals is their dull offense. The Cardinals have scored 3 runs or fewer in 40 of 102 games. They have been shutout or held to 1 run in 22 games. There's been so much emphasis on finding a starting pitcher, so much talk about helping the STL rotation, I'm starting to wonder whether I've been watching a different team. The Cardinals have three strong starters in Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright and Jaime Garcia. They had three strong starters last season, too; remember that Joel Pineiro had a career year in 2009. And how did the season end? With the Cardinals scoring six runs in three straight losses to the LA Dodgers in the NLDS. And that offense remains a drag in 2010.

I realize that Jeff Suppan and Blake Hawksworth aren't the greatest pitchers to have at the back end of the rotation. When they've started a game this season the Cardinals are 5-10. And that's misleading. The team's record when Suppan pitches is 3-5, but here's what the Cardinals have scored in those five losses:  2, 2, 2, 1 and 0 runs for a total of 7 runs. The Cardinals are 3-5 when Hawksworth starts, and except for Thursday in New York (a 4-0 loss) he's received better run support than Suppan.

And yes, you'd hope to get more innings than what the Cardinals have received from Suppan and Hawksworth. But here's the deal on the team's 5-10 record with Suppan and Hawksworth starting. It isn't that much different than the team's record, 8-10, when Brad Penny and Kyle Lohse started games.

And there's one thread that runs through all of this: a weak offense. This team has lost 12 games this season in which Wanwright, Carpenter or Garcia have allowed 3 runs or fewer.

The weak offense has been more damaging to this team than spotty starting pitching. 

* As we track the rumors, it's been speculated that the Cardinals have some interest in Colorado's RH starting pitcher, Aaron Cook. He's having a dreadful season, with a 4-7 record and a 5.08 ERA. And that isn't just Coors Field inflation, either; Cook has a 6.17 ERA on the road. But there are some things to like; his ground-ball rate is around 72 percent and remains impressive and intact. His line drive rate isn't up. His contact rate has increased, but not by a dramatic amount. His strikeout rate is a up a tad, but his walk rate is also up, which isn't good. He's had some bad luck, with a .309 batting average against him on balls in play. So what's the problem? In a word, the fastball. According to FanGraphs, the effectiveness of Cook's fastball has dropped substantially this season. In the three seasons coming into this one, Cook's fastball was a plus pitch: 14.4 runs above average in 2007, 12.5 runs above average in 2008, 10.2 runs above average in '09. And this year? It's about even. An average pitch at best. And according to the data at STATS LLC, it seems that Cook throws the fastball way too much. This season he's throwing the fastball 81 percent of the time to RH batters and 86 percent of the time to LH batters. That's remarkably predictable and I don't see how this helps Cook. And his velocity has dropped by about 1 to 2 mph, which is a concern -- especially since Cook wants to throw the pitch so often. Can pitching coach Dave Duncan help this guy? Probably so. But the Cardinals, obviously, aren't going to take a huge financial risk in wagering on that possibility. Cook is owed $3 million for the rest of this season, and $9.25 million next season, and there's a $500,000 buyout for 2012. Cook has also been on the disabled list four times in his career, though only once since the end of the 2007 season. If Colorado wants to absorb much of that contract cost, then Cook would be worth a try.

Cook probably has more upside than Cleveland's Jake Westbrook -- another potential target -- but Cook also carries a lot more money and risk.

* The Houston Astros didn't get enough for No. 1 pitcher Roy Oswalt. When you trade a franchise piece who is still in his prime, don't you have to get a star in return -- or at least someone who has all of the makings of a big star? J.A. Happ can be a good pitcher, yes. But he's already been injured early in his career. And the Astros flipped one of the prospects they received from Philadelphia to acquire DH/1B Brett Wallace, the former Cardinals' prospect. But three teams have traded Wallace in the last year, and that should tell you something. So not only did the Astros fail to acquire elite talent in return for Oswalt, they also helped the Phillies out by agreeing to eat $11 million of the $23 million owed to Oswalt through next season. Unreal. This deal makes such little sense for the Astros, I'm just going to go ahead and assume that the franchise is for sale. And if so, this was a step by owner Drayton McLane to reduce the payroll to save some dollars before he can sell.

* And the Cardinals' stripped-down farm system must be even worse than we thought. Speaking on ESPN's "Mike and Mike" show Friday morning, Astros GM Ed Wade indicated his reluctance to deal Oswalt to the Cardinals. But he also said he would have traded Oswalt inside the NL Central if the Astros got the players they wanted in return.

"It would have been difficult but we were prepared to make a deal there (St. Louis) if the talent fit," Wade said. "As the Mets and everybody else in the division will find out, it's not fun to have Roy Oswalt in your division, facing him as often as you're going to have to face him. And we certainly would have been put in the same position of dealing with him in the division. That said, at the end of the day we had to try and make the deal that made the most sense for the Astros, and from a talent standpoint if we could have matched up with a team in our division whether it's the Cardinals or the Reds or the Cubs or any club that Roy would have been willing to go to, we were prepared to do that."

* Why are so many baseball GMs doing anxious, borderline crazy things? I don't understand why the Twins would trade an elite catching prospect, Wilson Ramos -- plus another prospect! -- to Washington for closer Matt Capps. When you break it down, Capps isn't that much different than Jon Rauch, who was being used as a closer by the Twins. And there's no pressure pitching in Washington. There will be pressure pitching for an AL Central club that's in the middle of a tight race.

* Terrell Owens wasn't going to sign with the Rams unless he had to; Owens and his agent used the Rams' interest to pressure Cincinnati into coming to the table to offer him a contract. I'm confused as to why certain media people are fans are acting like the Rams made a mistake by not bringing T.O. in. Again: he used the Rams as leverage. That's all. he was their last resort. So please wake up. The other silly thing  I've heard/read is that the Rams don't have receivers who can get open the way T.O. can. The Rams wideouts largely are unproven. They're still developing. As of now they do not have a true No. 1. But what's this business about getting open?

Here's the target success rate for pertinent receivers in 2009. The first number represents the passes thrown to a receiver; the second number represents how many of those attempts resulted in a completion; the third # is percentage of targeted passes completed.

Terrell Owens:    109  ... 55 ... 50.5 %

Donnie Avery:     97    ... 47 ... 48.5 %

Keenan Burton:   44    ... 25   ... 56.8 %

Laurent Robinson:  23 ... 13 ... 56.6%

I don't see much difference there. And if anything the Rams had worse problems at QB than the Bills did in 2009. Moreover, the Rams' receivers didn't line up with Lee Evans on the other side of the field, as T.O. did. Look, the big lie on Owens is that he runs great routes, gets open and that he's a reliable receiver. False. He's not effective over the middle, and he drops a lot of passes. Over the past four seasons quarterbacks have thrown 542 passes to T.O. and 290 resulted in completions; that's 53.5 percent. And he's dropped 47 passes over the last four seasons.  What Owens is, still, is someone who is highly capable of doing damage in the vertical passing game. Especially down the right sideline, which is his sweet spot.  Last season he Owens averaged 26.6 yards on 13 completions down the right sideline; 4 went for TDs and 9 gained 25 + yards. So yes, T.O. could have brought an extra dimension to this passing game. But the older ge gets, the more one-dimensional he becomes. But again: the Rams were just a contract gambit for T.O. The Bengals were his choice all along. Let's move on.

Thanks for reading...

-Bernie