Could the Cardinals turn into trade-deadline sellers?
A: Well said. The Brewers did. They've taken off like a rocket since trading for Willy Adames in a rare May trade. Now, they're leading the division despite a landslide of injuries to their team. I doubt the trade was easy, but the Brewers got it done. Baseball in general is a hard sport. You hit it three times out of 10 and you're great. So, I don't think the Cardinals are going to get much sympathy by describing how hard trades are at the deadline. Again. For the sixth year in a row. Theyre hard because they cost more at the deadline. The Cardinals are going to have to pay some sort of a tax, because they passed opportunities to get more affordable help at each point along the way that led up to this. A: In a vacuum, no. As a growing body of evidence that suggests something has to change, perhaps. I think those who read into the comments by Edman and DeJong are spot-on. The Cardinals must consider a change there, but it might not be as simple as telling Albert to go. The Cardinals insist he has helped modernize the organization's language about hitting for the way baseball is now and the way it's going, but there seems to be at least some acknowledgement that maybe he is not the best person to be attempting to handle the big picture while also relating it on the ground floor, in the nitty, gritty details players need to digest in the fractions of a second before deciding if they should swing or not. So, perhaps it becomes a reassignment or something if the offense continues to sag. It's a totally fair question, and one I have raised, to wonder why someone who has been in charge of the offense for 2.5 years should continue to lead its direction when the product has not performed. The team has suggested that it's not that simple, and that Albert has resonated with some players just as much as we have heard some distance themselves from him. Different strokes for different folks, or something like that. But at some point if you are labeled as the hitting coach and the team can't hit to a league average level, something has to change. One theory being kicked around is that the Cardinals could benefit from a former major leaguer who resonates with current players in the dugout to help the hitting instruction, someone with recent been-there-done-that advice. I know everyone suggests Jim Edmonds and Matt Holliday, but there's another who might be worth attempting to convince to want the job: David Freese.