First off, congratulations to the Yankees.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not a Yankee hater, due to their tradition mainly.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not big on the fact that they spent so much and won, but when you look at how often they spent a ton and lost, you can see that’s not completely the reasoning.\u00c2\u00a0 Besides, it’s been nine years.\u00c2\u00a0 While that’s not that long for a lot of teams, it does mean that there’s been plenty of other winners this decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Interesting that both old Yankee Stadium and the new place were christened with championships.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, only one other team has done that, and we remember it well.<\/p>\n
There have been just a few small items that were Cardinal related in the news lately.\u00c2\u00a0 First, the Blue Jays claimed Jarrett Hoffpauir<\/a> off waivers.\u00c2\u00a0 Hoffpauir continues the interesting “former Cardinal” theme the Jays have had recently.\u00c2\u00a0 (After they got Scott Rolen and David Eckstein, a friend of mine who has family there stated there were shirts proclaiming the “St. Toronto Blue Cardinals.”)\u00c2\u00a0 Hoffpauir’s window effectively closed when Skip Schumaker made an effective transition to second.\u00c2\u00a0 Factor in Julio Lugo being around all year and Hoffpauir wasn’t going to sniff playing time.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d slipped in the prospect rankings anyway, but if he gets a chance in Toronto he might be a servicable backup.<\/p>\n The Pirates are interested in talking to Rick Ankiel<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 We all know that Rick is going to go somewhere else after this season; it’s almost guaranteed.\u00c2\u00a0 A situation like Pittsburgh would actually be a good place for him.\u00c2\u00a0 He could work on being a hitter, probably put up some solid numbers in that park, and not have to worry about carrying a team or being a piece toward a post-season puzzle.\u00c2\u00a0 With him, Andrew McCutchen and Garrett Jones in the outfield, Pittsburgh would have a pretty interesting offense.<\/p>\n Not unexpectedly, the Cardinals released Brad Thompson yesterday<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve noted many times how Thompson’s effectiveness had declined pretty much every year.\u00c2\u00a0 If he can’t get the sinker over and get the ground balls, he gets lit up.\u00c2\u00a0 With the bullpen being pretty defined already, there wasn’t much of a spot for him anyway, and since he was going to be eligible for arbitration, it’s best to get it out of the way now.\u00c2\u00a0 Thompson did have highlights as a Cardinal and he’ll always be remembered, but it was time to part ways.<\/p>\n Finally, Joe Strauss indicated that there have been discussions between the Cardinals and Scott Boras<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It sounds like it was more of a presentation of an initial offer rather than real in-depth negotiations for the rights to Matt Holliday, but it’s a start.<\/p>\n With the World Series over, things should start heating up soon.\u00c2\u00a0 Mark McGwire will probably talk next week, if I was to guess.\u00c2\u00a0 I know that they’d held off making him available to the press until the Series was done.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably early next week, maybe the week after.\u00c2\u00a0 (The cynical would guess the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to minimize some of the talk, but I doubt that’ll happen–or it’d work.)<\/p>\n 15 days from now, the free agents have to file.\u00c2\u00a0 I think we’d all be shocked if the Cards were able to keep Holliday before that time, but it’s something to keep an eye on.\u00c2\u00a0 I know they want to use this exclusive window as much as they possibly can.\u00c2\u00a0 The winter meetings will be held Dec. 7-10 in Indianapolis, so there will probably be a lot of talk leading up to that.<\/p>\n The offseason is here!\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s see what the Cardinals do with it!<\/p>\n Daniel Shoptaw is the founder of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153C70 At The Bat,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d where he regularly writes about his beloved St. Louis Cardinals.\u00c2\u00a0 You can find more of his work here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First off, congratulations to the Yankees.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not a Yankee hater, due to their tradition mainly.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not big on the fact that they spent so much and won, but when you look at how often they spent a ton and lost, you can see that’s not completely the reasoning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":347,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1714\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}