Felipe Lopez Finally Finds A Home, Signs With St. Louis Cardinals

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.

Despite having a pretty productive season last year with the Arizona Diamondbacks and Milwaukee Brewers, mediocre second baseman like Adam Kennedy were being signed before Lopez. I think it was pretty clear that Lopez’s reputation as a lazy player hurt him.

One way or another, the St. Louis Cardinals and their fans are going to find out if that rumor is true or not.

As first reported by ESPN.com’s Buster Olney , the Cardinals have signed Lopez to a one-year, $1.75 million contract. Lopez can make additional money by making certain performance metrics.

This will be Lopez’s second tour of duty with the Cardinals. He played in 43 games for them in 2008 after he was released by the Washington Nationals at the end of July.

Lopez hit .385 with four runs in those 43 games, so if the Cardinals can production like that from Lopez, he will be the steal of the century.

I highly doubt Lopez will come close to those numbers over the course of an entire season, but Lopez should do a lot of good things for the Cardinals and give them a lot of flexibility.

Lopez can play second, third, short, and even some outfield if need be. He will also provide the Cardinals insurance if rookie David Freese struggles at third.

The Cardinals are a win now team, so it will be interesting to see how long they stick with Freese if he struggles early now that Lopez is on board. Lopez has a career 2.0 UZR at third, so manager Tony LaRussa wouldn’t hesitate putting him there on a regular basis.

In nine major league seasons, Lopez has a career .269 average with 80 home runs, 115 stolen bases, and a .738 OPS with the Toronto Blue Jays, Cincinnati Reds, Nationals, Cardinals, Diamondbacks, and Brewers.

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