St Louis Cardinals

It's the classic dilemma in sports: What do you do when all of your options result in a no-win situation? Well, I don't claim to have the answer, but that is what is facing the Cardinals with Albert Pujols.

Look, no matter what they do, they lose. If they fail to sign Albert, St. Louis fans will revolt and may come to the park brandishing weapons.

Yet if they trade The Machine, no matter how good the bounty received, there will be many fans and media around the nation criticizing the deal.

Spring Training is like Jesse James at this point- nobody wants it around.

A mere 2 weeks from Opening Day and I think we’ve all seen enough fake baseball for the year. We don’t want to watch fake baseball, the players don’t want to play fake baseball, and the announcers don’t want to announce fake baseball. It’s the dog days of spring training.

But now that we’re officially into spring we can look forward to real baseball in days. Bad for veteran pitcher X’s golf game, but good for the rest of us.

Opening Day in St.

The St. Louis Cardinals are having internal discussions about trading pitcher Rich Hill to the Philadelphia Phillies for Roy Halladay, according to sportswriter extraordinaire, Evan Bruschini .

High-ranking members of the Cardinals’ front office told Bruschini that the team is putting together an offer centering around lefty Hill and right-handed Halladay, but are first making sure that such a deal would truly improve the team.

The St. Louis Cardinals seem to be practicing the old fantasy baseball strategy of “Studs and Duds.”

In this strategy, a team uses a very large amount of its auction dollars on a few superstars and then fills in the rest of its lineup with a lot of $1 and $2 players.

The idea is that the studs will pile up enough quality stats to allow the duds to fill in a little and put your team over the top.

Unfortunately, this strategy rarely works, and it looks like it will only work in St. Louis this season due to such a weak division.

Immediate shock waves rippled through Philadelphia and Saint Louis on Sunday when Buster Olney of ESPN.com wrote that the Phillies have "kicked around" the notion of trading slugger Ryan Howard for regular MVP contender Albert Pujols.

"No way would (insert either team) do that!" cry emotionally attached fans in their respective home towns.  However, such a deal would make sense for both teams.

News broke on Sunday that the Phillies organization has discussed the idea of trying to use slugger Ryan Howard to pry Albert Pujols from the Cardinals.

Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro flatly denied the rumors, saying, "I don't know who you're talking to, but that's a lie."

Amaro may be denying it, but the idea makes a lot more sense than you would think.

Barring an injury that keeps Albert Pujols out of the line-up for any significant amount of time, the St. Louis Cardinals are the prohibited favorites to win the NL Central again this year.

Entering the 2010 season, the Cardinals top the division in several important factors. They have the best player (Pujols), the best catcher (Yadier Molina), the best manager (Tony LaRussa), the best starting rotation, and the best fans.

What would it take to pry Albert Pujols away from the St. Louis Cardinals?

Cardinals fans, put away your pitchforks and disband the angry mob. I am not in any way suggesting that Pujols, could, would, or should be traded. Such a deal would be monumentally stupid for St. Louis; in addition to being the team's best player since Stan Musial, Pujols is a fan favorite and a hometown hero.

But if the circumstances suddenly shifted? What if Pujols went on a Milton Bradley-esque rant about his hatred for the city of St.

This article is a mere excerpt. If you would like to see the article in its full entirety, you can find it here at the BEV.

You would think that a guy who hit .310 with nine home runs and an .810 OPS in 2009, wouldn’t have a hard time finding a job in 2010, but that was the case with second baseman Felipe Lopez.

And before we go any further, I am talking about Felipe Lopez the baseball player here, not Felipe Lopez the basketball player, who was a massive bust at St. Johns University. I don’t know why, but I was compelled to mention that.

Now we can move on.