As is my wont this time of year, time to make some crazy guesses about how the Cardinals opening day roster will look. Here’s my first stab at it:

Rotation

The top four starters are locked in, barring catastrophe or unexpected atrophy. The fifth starter looks to be a race between K-Mac, Mitch Boggs, Rich Hill, and Jaime Garcia. I expect Garcia will get looks but won’t start any games in Spring Training and that the organization would prefer to see him pitch in AAA for a while before calling him up unless he’s undeniably the best of the candidates to help the Cardinals win. I like Mitch more than most Cardinals fans, believing him to have a good fastball (especially out of the pen) and a good slider (neither of which are uncontroversial beliefs), but also to have a good, if underutilized curveball. I like those three weapons enough that I think he can be effective enough in the ‘pen to handle both lefts and rights and am confident he’ll pitch a few meaningful ninth innings this season in the Lou. I’m a K-Mac fan when he’s pitching in middle relief or as fireman. Of those four, I’d be most interested in seeing Hill start.

Rich Hill strikes me as a classic Duncan reclamation project, with plus pitches (especially the curve) and a history of high strikeouts and almost-as-high walk rates. As I’ve argued many times, the Duncan philosophy as I understand it is transparently DIPS-friendly: throw strikes low in the zone with movement away or down from the batters hands (sinkers and cutters) to get ground balls and avoid the home run; and throw them in the zone to avoid walks. Sacrificing the strikeouts that will happen when you pitch somewhat more predictably is worth it if you can lower your walk and home run rates by even smaller rate differentials. Walks and especially home runs are weighted sufficiently more greatly than strikeouts that the strategy works if you can get the pitcher to take something off his fastball in exchange for movement and control to hit the spots.

I guess the rotation will then be:

Carp — Wagonmaker — Penny — Lohse — Hill

Regular starters

Nothing fancy here:
C:  Yadi
1B: el Hombre
2B: Skip
3B: David Freese
SS: B-Ryan
LF: Legolegs
CF: Razzle
RF: Lud

Bench

Here’s where things get interesting. Our starting lineup has two left-handed bats in it, so we need some lefty options on the bench. Preferably two: one a contact hitter who’ll take a walk and one a power bat. We positionally need, at minimum: a catcher, two middle infield utility men, a backup CF, and a corner IF-OF who could legitimately fill in at 3rd for stretches if Freese gets in the doghouse.

Backup catcher is ‘Stache Larue. One of the middle infielders is Julio Lugo, who may serve as Skip’s platoon partner if he struggles against lefties, which makes Skip a possibility for the contact-lefty bench bat in a set of situations.

The real competitions, then, are for the corner IF-OF, the CF, and the other utility infielder. One of these men should bat southpaw with authority.

The best two candidates I see for backup middle infielder are Tyler Greene, a RH SS who hit pretty well in AAA last season and Ruben Gotay, a switch-hitter who led the PCL in OBP last year and who hits far better from the left side. Gotay isn’t quite up to the task of backing up short… But neither was Miles. Gotay is on a minor-league contract with an NRI and Greene has options, so there’s no contract situation to put one over the other. Purely a skill-set call: is Greene’s ability to man short competently more valuable than Gotay’s versatility?

To backup CF, you’d want a good defender, preferably a right handed batter in case Colby Rasmus struggles against left-handed pitching (which I’m fairly unconcerned about). The candidates are Jon Jay, Shane Robinson, and Joey Bombs. Jon Jay’s the best defender by a long shot but is the only of the three to bat lefty. Shane’s scrappy and played well in ST last year in a hilarious call-up from minor league camp (he’s a slight fellow and was wearing a uniform that was several sizes too big in every direction in his first game. But also hit a home run and made a dazzling defensive play in left.) Joey Bombs is a behemoth who didn’t look lost to me in the very small sample I’ve seen him play center. Joe Mather also is recovering from wrist surgery, so his batting may not be quite up to the level expected of a being his stature. My guess would take the competition down to Jay and Mather, and here it comes down to the question of whether Jay’s better defense is more valuable than Mather’s right-handedness to complement Colby.

For the corner utility man (the Spiezio role), the obvious in-house candidate is Allen Craig, who hasn’t OPS’d under .850 since short-season, but whose defensive ability at third-base is in apparent ill-repute. I never had a chance to see him field at third so have no reason to dispute that with any credibility. Joe Mather’s another possibility, perhaps more likely here than as a backup CF, as he arrived at camp last year ready to compete for third base with Glaus out before injuring himself. Another candidate who I think is still a slim possibility and would be a good fit is Eric Hinske, who signed a million dollar contract with the Braves. Hinke fits the role and bats lefty. I don’t see how he fits in with the Braves this year and could see a swap possibly happening. I’ll ignore the possibility henceforth and consider the competition between Mather and Craig.

So here are some possible scenarios, leaving out Lugo and Larue who won’t be contested for contract reasons, barring meltdown:

Mather beats out Craig, Gotay for versatility, Greene for acceptable backup SS
Mather (CF, SPEEZE) — Gotay (IF) — Greene (SS)

Mather beats out Craig, Jay as backup CF
Mather (SPEEZE) — Greene (IF) — Jay (OF)

Craig beats out Mather
Craig (SPEEZE) — Greene (IF) — Jay (OF)

TLR likes switch-hitters
Craig (SPEEZE) — Gotay (IF) — Jay (OF)

I ordered them with respect to how likely I believe each to be: I think Mather’s wrist will need a few more months of healing time, Gotay’s a pretty fine replacement-level pickup who can backup third just fine to push Craig to third-string there, and Rasmus looks comfortable against LHP.

Bullpen

Franklin’s installed as closer and the left-handers are locked in. The rest is somewhat wide open. I’m assuming a 7-man bullpen, which is hopefully what we’ll end up with, which leaves four spots for a number of contenders. As I said before, I’m a fan of Mitch Boggs and think K-Mac will be in the bullpen. That leaves room for a middle-relief right-hander and a long-man (if it’s not McClellan, especially if he stays stretched out to start in a late competition for 5th starter). I’d guess Motte and Hawksworth. Eduardo Sanchez had a great season, but walked AA batters at double the rate K-Mac did before making the leap to the MLB. I expect Garcia to start at AAA to start the year. Charlie Zink would be neat, but won’t put money on the knuckleballer over the fireballer. I expect Ben Jukich to be returned once the starters get stretched out. I’ve always liked the Darren Oliver style lefty long-man and think if Jukich makes the roster at all, it’d be in that fashion. I incidentally think that’s a pretty good way to use a Rule 5 drafted starter, who tends to see plenty of low-leverage innings.

Franklin — Reyes — Miller — Boggs — Kyle — Motte — Hawk

It’ll be pretty exciting to see whether Craig and Jay can perform at the top level as well as many of use have hoped for a long while.