St. Louis Cardinals gamble Nolan Arenado is enough

The St. Louis Cardinals are essentially bringing back the same team with the addition of Nolan Arenado. Is that enough to win the NL Central?

Spring training is a time when a fan’s mood can swing back and forth between boundless hope and deep despair. The following is a debate between the optimistic me and the pessimistic me regarding the 2021 St. Louis Cardinals.

Opti-me: The Cardinals went out and got Nolan Arenado. Nobody else in the entire NL Central did anything. That alone ought to make the Cardinals the clear favorites to win the division, probably comfortably.

Getting Arenado is a big deal because it solidifies both the team’s offense and its defense. Even in a bad year, he still hit seven points above the league average with an OPS that was 150 points above the league average. And that was in a bad year. Give St. Louis even an average Arenado season and you’re looking at 35 homers and 115 RBIs.

Defensively this guy’s worth 15 to 20 runs per season at third base. In 2020 third base was a nothing position for the Cardinals; it will be an elite position in 2021.

Pessi-me:  It will be interesting to see how Arenado reacts to playing in St. Louis and vice versa. The team’s fans are famous for putting out the welcome mat. That may happen with Arenado, too.

On the other hand, this guy was a head case in Colorado. He signed a nine-year, $275 million contract, then within three years wanted out because so much of the team’s money was tied up in him that they couldn’t sign any other good players. That’s bizarre logic.

So the question is this: If he gets off to a bad start in St. Louis, or if the fans don’t warm to him the way he expects to be warmed to, will he become a clubhouse problem at Busch, too? Don’t say it can’t happen; he has the track record.

Opti-me: It can’t happen. The St. Louis Cardinals and their fans have a long history of melding players who were unhappy elsewhere into their culture. You can go back to Mark McGwire, to Scott Rolen, to Larry Walker, to Matt Holiday to Carlos Beltran; they all came to St. Louis with problems and they all helped build winners.

And it isn’t just Arenado. Watch out for this Dylan Carlson kid out in right field. He got his baptism out of the way in 2020 and he’s ready to step up full time. This is a kid who showed power at Double-A and hit .361 at Triple-A. He’s a star in the making.

Pessi-me: He better be because the team’s offense needs help big-time. St. Louis was 13th in the NL in both runs per game and OPS in 2020, and the only reason they managed to win half their games was because the only worse offenses were all in their own division.

How much longer can Yadier Molina hold up? If he starts 100 games in 2021 he’ll rank fourth all time for starts behind the plate. He’s caught 1,700 innings, which is a couple lifetimes worth of wear and tear.  His defensive numbers have basically been average since 2017, and his OPS has fallen each of the past four years.

If I concede that the guy’s had a Hall of Fame career, will you concede that he is becoming a liability?

Opti-me: Not in the slightest. Molina does things nobody’s ever measured, like provide leadership to the pitching staff. He’s one of the big reasons why the Cardinals had the league’s lowest ERA and also allowed the fewest runs per game in 2020. He and Adam Wainwright…good to have him back, too.

Pessi-me: The biggest reason why you had the league’s best ERA was because you played in the NL Central. The Cardinals were 12th in batting average last year. The only teams with worse averages were the Cubs, Pirates, Reds and Brewers…basically your 2020 schedule.

What saved your pitching stats last year was signing Kwang Hyun Kim. Flaherty had a bad year, Dakota Hudson’s out with Tommy John surgery, and Adam Wainwright’s older than Molina. He’s over 2,000 innings for his career, and while he had a good 2021 that can’t go on forever.

That leaves you counting on a comeback from Miles Mikolas plus more consistency from Daniel Ponce de Leon. Good luck with those dice rolls. Mikolas missed all of 2020 with arm problems, and he’s already been shut down at least temporarily this spring with shoulder pain.

Opti-me: Even If the pitching isn’t as good as it as in 2020 – and it will be – the offense will be better. Arenado joins Paul Goldschmidt in the center of the lineup. That’s 60 home runs between them. Paul DeJong is an All-Star candidate at shortstop, and Tommy Edman – who will open at second – will show why the Cardinals have worked so hard to find him a regular place to play.

Pessi-me: The Cardinals are likely to get nothing at all from their outfield. The projected starters are Tyler O’Neill, Harrison Bader and Carlson, who we’ve already talked about. The other two are confirmed part-timers with no power who combined to bat .196 last season.

The NL Central is so bad that it’s not possible to utterly rule the Cardinals out of contention. But the Arenado trade needs to be looked at for the gamble that it is; it might make or break this team. If the latter, the Cardinals will by August look like an old ballclub with no offense and declining chemistry.

Opti-me: Or Arenado could do what Arenado generally does, in which case the St. Louis Cardinals breeze through the NL Central and dethrone the Dodgers in the postseason. Take a tip: Bet on the latter.