Improving the Cards rotation: A Trade Proposal

 

I was thinking about this a couple of days ago, I had nothing to do and was wondering how the cards can improve their rotation.

Can they do it through free agency, sure but all the mid-range pitchers are gone and so are the cream of this year’s pitchers. Schmidt, suppan, meche, lilly and now zito.

Zito has signed with the giants for something utterly ridiculous, 7 years and 126 million dollars! That is just plain wrong. The guy only plays one out of every five days. Throughout his career, his has been completely healthy. I don’t think he has missed a start, so I think he is due for a big injury; maybe miss a half a season or a whole one because of a major injury. These things just happen.

Back to the cards. All the middle of the pack starters are gone and so are the big names. Some of the people left are: weaver, mulder, armas jr., peniero, etc.

Mulder is not going to be available until midseason and scott boras is going to drag the saga of jeff weaver until early February. I don’t know if the cards are willing to wait that long.

Walt should make a trade for jon lieber of the Philadelphia phillies. After dealing for freddy Garcia, they have a surplus of starting pitching. Lieber is the oldest of the bunch and I believe he makes the most money. He has one year left on his deal and he will be making 7.5 million next season.

The phillies don’t need an outfielder or starting pitching, but they do need some arms for the bullpen. Maybe giving the phillies a righthander and a lefthander would do the job; such as josh hancock/brad Thompson and randy flores/Ricardo Rincon.

I say the cards give the phillies a couple of bullpen arms because of the surplus and add a midlevel prospect and call it a deal. Lieber will be making something like 8 million next season.

I think that would be the perfect deal. If the deal does happen, the rotation would look like this: carpenter, reyes, lieber, wainwright, and wells. I think that would be a pretty solid rotation.

Here are some recent rumors about jon lieber from mlb4u.com:

Phils are shopping him. The brewers had discussed a Kevin Mench for Lieber swap with the Phillies, but now they are working on a Kevin Mench, Damian Miller and Derrick Turnbow swap for Lieber. Pirates and Rangers are also interested. The Red Sox, Twins, Blue Jays, Reds and Cardinals expressed interest in him at the trading deadline. Talks with the Pirates have cooled because they are unwilling to deal Salomon Torres or Mike Gonzalez for Lieber.

Source: Chicago Tribune 

One last thing, this might be a couple of days early, but Happy New Year!