Adam Wainwright made his first “start” in what could be a year full of both starts and stops. Of course he’s still over a month away from his first meaningful appearance of the year, but these days, not much he says or does is without meaning.

With the high stakes nature of his ongoing contract negotiations hanging over his 6’7” frame, the comparison machine is going crazy in a wild attempt to get a grasp on what a long-term extension for the Cardinals’ ace would look like. Would it be a rather short-term, balanced money deal in the nature of the one Yadier Molina received last spring? Or would it be an extensive, full career (and then some) style deal, such as the one Albert Pujols ultimately received…elsewhere?

The expectation that the pact would be the largest team history isn’t a far fetched idea. In reality, it’s very much a fact. And the best comparison possible is one that is drawn from the terms that the current holder of that distinction agreed to: Matt Holliday.

Holliday turned 29 just days before signing his seven-year, $120 million deal back in 2009. This is was a mid prime deal for him that also would carry him likely through the remainder of his career. It also became the winter’s biggest deal, despite him likely passing on more lucrative offers from the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox. It also came during a time when there was rapid contract growth around him, with Jason Bay, Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez all recently receiving long-term deals.

This is nearly the exact scenario that Wainwright is placed in right now. He is 31 years old right now, and would be 32 by the end of the year. Yet, the starting pitching position is the middle of a massive salary push, with large scale deals going out to Matt Cain, Cole Hamels, Zack Greinke and Felix Hernandez over the past year. If he was to hit the free agent market, he would instantly become among the most sought after free agents available. He stacks up very well in a class that features Matt Garza, Josh Johnson and Tim Lincecum, each of which will also be over 30 years old by the winter. Basically, Wainwright is running out of contractual obligation at a perfect time for his causes.

But what does the organization have to consider? There is much to be considered in how the team has approached its recent dealing, but also many parallels to pull away as well. The differences from the Pujols deal are numerous. In Pujols’ case, he had been playing a far lower rate than his performance would indicate for many years. And while he entered the market a similar age, his value took on historic connotation, not a superb prime for a top-tier performer, which is what Wainwright is, much like Holliday was. In the case of Molina, he took a shorter term extension, which will carry him into his late 30’s. Yet he still didn’t push for every dollar that he could have on the open market, and likely would have earned if he waited a few months.

The differences between the Pujols and Molina deals are clear, but there some similarities as well. All indications are leaning towards Wainwright wants a guarantee on the length of the deal, which was something they balked at with Pujols. The Cardinals have taken a pretty strong stance against signing over the low-to-late 30’s bridge. It was a balk in their offer to Pujols, and both Molina and Holliday’s deals would expire at ages 35 and 37, respectively. If Wainwright is seeking a deal that is comparable in length to either Cain or Hamels, the balance in length would be six years. This would carry him to his 38^th birthday, and most likely into a scenario where is paid past his prime and into his decline years. The ability to avoid doing this; and have been able to sign many players to their exact prime years and escaping the decline as it approaches. This is a primary factor for what has kept the small market Cardinals with the ability to field the financially flexible roster it has for so many years.

It doesn’t seem that Wainwright would push to hamstring the financial competitiveness of the team, but he has acknowledged that a lowered value deal isn’t likely. In comparison to his last deal he signed at age 26, his focus has changed, “I’m in a different place from last deal. My family is set up, and I’m looking at different things,” he stated last month regarding his desires for this contract. These are the words of a man that is looking towards the future, his own.

And as always, the organization will do what’s best for its future as well, financially and competitively. Both sides will be forced to concede a portion of their absolute interests to find a deal here. While the Cardinals have proven to be resistant to extreme concession (as the Pujols dealings showed), and prefer shorter term commitment (as they proved with Molina) they also have shown that when the situation requires it, as proved with Holliday, they will throw caution to the wind and compete over the long term.

In a spring training that has included worries about contract negotiations and the health of starting pitchers, the stability of a right elbow ligament for a position player could be the St. Louis Cardinals’ biggest problem as games get underway.

Shortstop Rafael Furcal received an anti-inflammatory shot in his injured elbow Friday to help ease discomfort created by a bone spur, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Furcal tore a ligament in the elbow Aug. 30 in a game against the Washington Nationals, and he chose to forego surgery in favor of rehab during the offseason. But that decision could come back to haunt Furcal and the Cardinals for the 2013 season.

Furcal has yet to throw or take lefthanded at-bats during camp, and he didn’t sound optimistic about his condition Thursday.

“It still hurts, a lot, when I’m throwing,” Furcal said.

That is very bad news for a Cardinals team that doesn’t have a solid backup option at shortstop.

Pete Kozma played well at the end of last season, but that was a flash of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre career spent languishing in the minor leagues, and the Cardinals have been reluctant to put much faith in Kozma as a major part of the solution at shortstop.

But other than Kozma, the Cardinals are in a world of hurt in one of the most important positions on the field. They signed Ronny Cedeno during the offseason, but he has a career batting average of .247 and hasn’t been able to stick even with bad teams such as the Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners, Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Mets.

The Cardinals looked at making a move for a shortstop during the offseason and reportedly inquired about trading for Cleveland Indians shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera.

Cabrera would be an excellent fit with the Cardinals and would fill a position of need, but other teams know the Cardinals are loaded with good, young pitching, and their asking prices are very high.

The Cardinals understandably don’t want to park with their treasure trove of pitching. Pitching and defense are what generally win championships, and decent hitters are usually easier to find than pitchers who can provide productive innings.

But because Furcal didn’t undergo surgery when he first injured his elbow, the Cardinals are in quite a bind just a month before the regular season begins.

Obviously, the decision to have surgery is ultimately that of the player, and the team likely has significant input, but right now the decision to try and rehab rather than have surgery is creating some anxious moments in spring training camp as Furcal struggles to heal enough to play.

Furcal also has a history of injuries that threatened to derail his career. He was an all-star-caliber shortstop with the Atlanta Braves during the first six years of his career, but he has not played more than 100 games in three of the last five years because of various injuries.

The Cardinals knew they were getting a fragile player when they traded for Furcal at the 2011 trading deadline, and they got quite a bit of production from him before the injury. Furcal has been a .259 hitter with 176 hits in 171 games played in the year and a half he’s been a Cardinals player, but the elbow injury is looking like it could be a problem longer than just the next couple of weeks.

So if Furcal can’t start the season, the Cardinals will have to make a decision just as important as Furcal’s decision about having surgery. They will have to make a deal to get a shortstop, which likely would cost highly regarded pitching prospects, or they’ll have to hope a Kozma-Cedeno platoon at shortstop is good enough to make the playoffs.

Otherwise, the Cardinals could have another one of those incredibly frustrating situations when they count on a player to eventually get healthy, and he never does.

That has happened repeatedly with Cardinals pitchers throughout the years, and it usually results in a not-so-great season because the team didn’t make necessary changes while hoping the injured player would return.

Hopefully, shortstop isn’t the Cardinals’ downfall this year, but it is already the position that will cause the most anxiety this spring.

The day pitchers and catchers report is always a special day in the baseball community. It marks the symbolic end to the offseason, but another special day approaches this weekend to mark another step toward the birth of another baseball season.

The St. Louis Cardinals will open their exhibition schedule at 12:05 p.m. Saturday against the Miami Marlins at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida.  That will officially mark the beginning of spring training that more fans can follow, rather than breathlessly waiting on reports of how a second baseman looked while fielding ground balls or how a pitcher looked during a bullpen session.

Admittedly, spring training games aren’t a huge step up from regular spring training workouts. Pitchers will each throw just a few innings and batters who will eventually fill the regular-season lineup will take only one or two at bats, if at all. This year’s Cardinals roster is relatively set for Opening Day, but these will still be baseball games that will gloriously fill the afternoons throughout the rest of February and March.

Some fanatics will surely try to analyze these early games and try to draw conclusions about how a pitcher such as Shelby Miller will perform this season based on a two-inning performance in the first week of March. That outing won’t mean anything in the grand scheme of a season, but hey, it gives fans something to talk about that isn’t contract negotiations or performance-enhancing drugs.

Fans also get a bonus this year because the games will start about a week earlier than normal because the World Baseball Classic will take place during the first half of March, and teams needed some extra time with their players who would be gone for a couple of weeks because of the tournament.

The Cardinals will lose catcher Yadier Molina, rightfielder Carlos Beltran and reliever Mitchell Boggs to the World Baseball Classic, but those three already have defined roles that would only change if they got hurt, which is a whole other issue that comes with the World Baseball Classic.

Otherwise, minor leaguers will fill the field for much of the spring games, but this year fans will likely recognize several of the names in those box scores.

Outfielder Oscar Taveras is one of the Cardinals most highly touted prospects. He hit .321 with 23 homeruns and 94 RBIs with the AA-affiliate Springfield Cardinals last year, and MLB Network recently ranked him as the third-best prospect in all of baseball. In fact, the Cardinals had six players make MLB Network’s list of the top 100 prospects.

Miller came in at 25th, and he will be a strong contender for the fifth spot in the Cardinals starting rotation this year. Trevor Rosenthal ranked 43rd, and he figures to be an important part of the Cardinals pitching staff in 2013.

The other three Cardinals players on the list are unlikely to make the team, but the spring training games should give fans a chance to see second baseman Kolten Wong, as well as pitchers Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha, for the first time.

Folks have talked about those prospects for more than a year, and this year’s exhibition schedule should allow fans their first chance to see how excited they should be about the Cardinals No. 1-ranked minor league system.

Miller, Rosenthal and Joe Kelly will compete for the fifth and final rotation spot, and Daniel Descalso and Matt Carpenter will battle for the second base job. Otherwise, not much of what takes place during the 32-game schedule will have much of an effect on the Cardinals’ 2013 season.

And that’s OK. The Cardinals will be playing actual baseball games.

While temperatures in St. Louis remain in the 30s and 40s, that is good enough for now.

St. Louis Cardinals players reported to Jupiter, Fla., last week to kick off spring training 2013, but that first week was full of contract talk instead of baseball talk, an unfortunate situation that has become the norm at Cardinals camp in recent years.

The Cardinals even went bigger than usual in the first week this year by having three contract announcements, but at least two of those were positive announcements. The organization picked up the option on manager Mike Matheny’s contract for the 2014 season, and it signed general manager John Mozeliak to a three-year extension.

The other announcement wasn’t so joyful. Adam Wainwright and the team said contract negotiations with the pitcher are not active at the moment, and there is not a timetable for when that situation will be put to rest.

All of these are necessary procedures for a Major League Baseball organization, but it takes away from the excitement of spring training and shifts the focus away from what we all want to enjoy: players on the field preparing for the upcoming season.

Unfortunately, early spring training workouts have been an afterthought in the past three seasons.

In 2010, Albert Pujols arrived at spring training camp in much the same situation Wainwright walked into camp this year. Pujols was headed into the final year of his contract with the Cardinals, and people spent an incredible amount of time talking and analyzing Pujols’ situation, nevermind the team was actually preparing for a season that would end with a World Series championship.

Spring training in 2011 wasn’t as bad, but that’s more because the result turned out much better for the Cardinals. Pujols had left the Cardinals and signed with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in December 2010, but the Cardinals had another important part of their team heading into the dreaded final year of a contract.

That important player was Yadier Molina. People were already speculating about him joining Pujols in Anaheim after his contract expired at the end of the year, but Molina and the Cardinals squashed that talk early in spring training when he signed a five-year, $75-million extension to stay with the club.

Then came this year, and the Cardinals are again stuck in contract negotiations with a star player. It’s anybody’s guess how Wainwrights contract situation will play out, but that’s what keeps people talking about it even though we are less than a week away from the start of actual spring training games.

Understandably, high-profile contract negotiations are part of the way of life for Major League Baseball teams these days as salaries rise to the next astronomical amount and the performance-enhancing drugs topic refuses to go away.

However, the quality of life for teams, players and their fans might be better if people spent more time talking about exciting new players or position battles instead of off-the-field issues.

Spring training is a seemingly magical time of year when teams go to the tropics to work on aspects of their game so they are ready to debut for an excited fan base when they return home for Opening Day.

Baseball is great when it is little more than those quaint storylines. It’s too bad much of that gets overshadowed by the modern realities of the sport.

As another offseason of eye-poppingly large free-agent contracts begins to wind down, the St. Louis Cardinals find themselves in an unfortunate, yet familiar situation as one of their biggest stars heads into the final year of his contract.

It was Albert Pujols in 2011; it will be Adam Wainwright in 2013.

The Cardinals co-ace is headed into the final year of his six-year, $59.4-million contract. That number is almost laughably low for a  Cy Young Award quality pitcher with a career 80-48 record, 3.15 ERA. In the past year, pitchers with less impressive numbers have signed contracts nearly triple the size of Wainwright’s current deal.

The San Francisco Giants signed Matt Cain in April to a six-year, $127.5-million extension. That was, of course, before he had a career season that included starting the All-Star Game and pitching a perfect game June 13 against the Houston Astros. The Los Angeles Dodgers also recently signed former Cy Young winner Zack Grienke to a six-year, $147-million contract. And those are just the big-name pitchers.

Even mediocre pitchers got paid big bucks this offseason. The Detroit Tigers signed Anibal Sanchez, who has a career 48-51 record and 3.75 ERA, to a five year contract worth $80 million. The Chicago Cubs were in the hunt for Sanchez, but they quickly turned around and gave Edwin Jackson, a 70-71 career pitcher with a 4.40 ERA, a four-year, $52-million deal.

If those types of pitchers are getting around $15 million per year, a pitcher with Wainwright’s record could honestly be looking at the possibility of a contract that pays him closer to $30 million than $20 million per year. That’s one heck of an investment.

The Pujols situation blew up in Spring Training of 2011 when Pujols cut off contract negotiations, and that issue lingered throughout the entire season. Pujols, of course, ended up signing with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for 10 years and $254 millions the following offseason.

The Cardinals avoided a similar situation with catcher Yadier Molina when they gave him a five-year, $75-million contract extension in Spring Training before the 2012 season even began.

If the Cardinals and Wainwright don’t reach a deal before the 2013 season starts, the unrest in St. Louis concerning the team’s best pitcher will build and build whether Wainwright pitches great or pitches poorly.

The Cardinals have plenty of incentives to get a deal done quickly, but Wainwright could play the system and cash in at the end of next season. The Cardinals would likely be able to sign Wainwright at a cheaper price now because no other teams are currently able to offer him contracts, and if Wainwright pitches great in 2013, that will also drive up his price.

The team’s other co-ace, Chris Carpenter, currently holds the record as the highest-paid pitcher in Cardinals history. He signed a five-year, $63-million contract in 2006.

Like it or not, the Cardinals need to be prepared to shatter that record with Wainwright because the price for good starting pitchers continues to skyrocket. It’s not impossible to think Wainwright could sign the largest pitcher’s contract in the history of the game, exceeding the seven-year, $161-million contract the New York Yankees gave CC Sabathia before the 2009 season began.

Otherwise, St. Louis baseball fans might spend next Christmas bemoaning the fact that one of the best pitchers in franchise history moved on to take a huge sum of money somewhere else.

After Pujols’ departure in December 2011, that’s probably a Christmas story few Cardinals fans would want to relive.

Correction: a previous version of this article claimed Adam Wainwright was a former Cy Young Award winner.  That has since been corrected.

After more than a year of anxious anticipation, Kansas City Royals fans finally saw (via an Internet box score) Bubba Starling in action.

Let the hand-wringing begin.

The Royals top-rated prospect and the number one outfield prospect as ranked by mlb.com, fanned three times in five at bats in his first ever game as a pro at rookie league Burlington.  And that after months of contract negotiations, Nebraska Cornhusker football practices, a fall season cut short by injury, and an embarrasing arrest.

A hamstring injury kept him out of the first nine of Burlington’s 68 games, and kept Royals fans in a state of panic that their local phenom would fall short of their lofty expectations.  Any roadblock is not good for Starling. He’s old for a high-school draftee – he’ll be 20 on August 3 – and has a decidedly steep learning curve before him, coming from a Kansas high school.

Well, the wait is finally over. Now the scrutiny can begin in earnest. When you’re the number one pick (and a multi-millionaire), you can’t hide in anonymity at the rookie-league level. Starling will have all eyes on him as he sinks or swims as a professional ballplayer.

Starling went into the draft as the darling of the Kansas City area. But he burned some of that collatoral when he and Scott Boras toyed around last summer, wasting time Starling could have put into becoming a better player. The arrest and the injuries have all taken some of the shine off Starling’s star.

Time will tell if he warrants the cash, the rankings, and the anxious attention of Royals fans.

The Royals’ rookie league teams have several youngsters taking the field who are worthy of note. Unfortunately, thus far, Bubba Starling hasn’t been one of them.

The youth movement in KC may not be over. The host of youngsters pumping new life into the Royals ballclub may have company in a few years.

But staring Royals fans in the face, sitting atop the list of their top minor league prospects, is Starling. Long on promise but totally lacking in performance, Starling keeps us all waiting.

After months of contract negotiations, Nebraska Cornhusker football practices, a fall season cut short by injury and marred by an arrest, Starling can finally start proving that the Royals were smart to select him fifth in the 2011 draft.

But a hamstring injury kept him out of the first week of games for the Burlington Royals. The wait, and the drama, is starting to make fans wonder if he’ll ever live up to his billing.

While not headline grabbers, there were other noteworthy unveilings at the rookie ball level of the Royals franchise.

Still to be announced is where first rounder Kyle Zimmer will land. But in the meantime, Idaho Falls and Burlington will bear watching.

Idaho Falls:

Bryan Brickhouse – nowhere to go but up for the third round pick from 2011. Seven runs in 1.2 innings isn’t exactly what he had in mind. He’s now on the Kane County roster. Hope he merits the promotion.
Sam Selman – this season’s second round pick should move quickly because he’s 21 and experienced pitching in the tough SEC. He was good in his 2.2-inning debut.
Adalberto Mondesi – still a month away from his 17^th birthday, bloodlines make the son of Raul Mondesi an interesting shortstop to follow. So far so good, he hit .400 in his first week.
Eliar Hernandez – a big-dollar signee of a year ago finally takes to the field. He didn’t disappoint, hitting .364 with four doubles in his first week. And he’s just 17.

Burlington:

Humberto Arteaga –the 18-year-old Burlington shortstop is highly regarded for his defense.
Cameron Gallager – the Royals thought enough of him to take him in the second round in 2011, all the while grooming Salvador Perez to be their catcher for a long, long while.
Kenneth Diekroeger – the 21-year-old Stanford product will be an interesting case. He was a collegiate star early on, but slipped in production. Some scouts thought the Royals got a steal by taking him in the fourth round.

The St. Louis Cardinals opened camp for pitchers and catchers Feb. 18 and had their first full-squad workout Thursday in Jupiter, Fla. So far there hasn’t been much of note to come from any Spring Training activities, and that’s a good thing.

At this point last year the Cardinals had already grabbed headlines throughout the country for two major reasons. First baseman Albert Pujols showed up to camp after shutting down contract negotiations with the team, and starting pitcher Adam Wainwright blew out his elbow on the first day.

This year everything has been more low-key, which is slightly amazing since the team is the defending World Series champions.

That’s not to say the team’s Spring Training isn’t full of storylines. Catcher Yadier Molina is approaching a contract situation similar to what Pujols experienced last year, and the team has a new manager in Mike Matheny. Both of those situations will get plenty of attention as the season approaches and probably throughout most of the season, but not much is going to happen to either of them anytime soon.

Molina and the Cardinals still have a ways to go in contract talks that have thus far been inconsistent, at best. Although people will be interested in what Matheny does throughout Spring Training, managers don’t often do many noteworthy things until it comes time to make roster decisions late in the spring.

Instead, Cardinals camp has opened quietly and all of the on-field action has been positive. Lance Berkman provided the grandest entrance to Spring Training this side of Pujols when he arrived Thursday with a mustache worthy of professional wrestler Sgt. Slaughter.

We’ve seen teams invent some interesting hairstyles in the name of team loyalty and a late-season push. For example, the Tampa Bay Rays sported Mohawks for their stretch run to the World Series in 2008. If the Cardinals are in a tight battle late in the season, might they grow rally mustaches?

These are the days to have fun. This is the first week the team has been together since it won the World Series in October, and they still have another week until actual Spring Training games begin. Once March 5 rolls around and the Cardinals take the field against the Miami Marlins, they should be close to game shape and the ever-interesting position battles will begin in earnest.

Fair or not, that is also when fans will begin evaluating Matheny. Former manager Tony La Russa used the Grapefruit League standings as motivation. He wanted the Cardinals to leave Florida on top. Whether Matheny takes the same approach is yet to be seen, but this is a veteran team with core players who know how to prepare for the regular season.

The Cardinals haven’t had a headline-grabbing Spring Training to this point, but early spring headlines usually aren’t very positive.

There is a saying that a bad Spring Training means a good regular season. That might not be 100 percent the truth, but a Spring Training without many newsworthy events usually means a smooth transition into the regular season for potential playoff contenders such as the Cardinals.

It was supposed to be the free agent rush of the short century: the best player in the game, maybe ever, was available to the highest bidder. No matter where he went, he would make his new team vastly better than they were last season and attract thousands upon thousands of new fans who wanted to get an up-close look at our Babe Ruth.

Yes, teams would fight like sharks in a fishbowl for Albert Pujols and for all the benefits he would bring to their teams with RBI on the field and jersey sales off of it. And after his contract negotiations went awry with the team he had been with for 11 years, many reasoned he wouldn’t return. But now I ask you, who will take him away?

There are only so many teams that can afford to pay Albert the huge contract he is looking for after being underpaid for 11 years now. Look at all of those teams* and tell me which he would go to.

The Yankees are baseball’s richest team and, if they had not signed Mark Teixeira at first base in 2009, would be an almost-certain destination for Albert. But Teixeira is there, and while the Yanks will be in need of a designated hitter come 2012, even they won’t be giving said DH over $200 million to come off the bench four times a night and sit back down.

Besides, New York’s GM, Brian Cashman, ruled out such a signing two weeks ago, saying, “Despite him being fantastic, it’s not an efficient way to allocate our resources. Offense is not an issue here. Our priority this offseason is pitching.”

So, how about the Boston Red Sox, the next-biggest wallet in the Big Leagues? Well, they signed the mighty Adrian Gonzalez to play first base last year, so there’s no room for Albert there either. And again, they wouldn’t give $200 million to a DH, especially with rumors that they will resign the one they have soon.

The big market Dodgers should have the capital needed to go out and get some big time free agents, but the McCourt disaster divorce is impeding that this offseason as the team looks for new ownership. They have enough to re-sign Matt Kemp, but that’s about it.

Next is the Cubs, where every writer needing a good storyline picked him to go. After all, the North-Siders have their new GM, the brilliant Theo Epstein, have plenty of money to spend–and wouldn’t it be something if Pujols went to the rivals of his career team, the Cardinals? It was just too perfect if you were a Cubs fan.

Unfortunately, if you’re a Cubs fan, you will lose here too. Epstein’s focus this year and next will be to get all of the bad contracts off the books that were put there by the old regime. Factor in that Pujols probably doesn’t want to be a loser for the rest of his career and the Chicago Cubs are off the list.

The Mets are in the same boat as the Dodgers in that they are in a prime location, New York, but have mismanaged their finances enough that they cannot even re-sign their star shortstop Jose Reyes, let alone add Albert.

The Phillies are next up and are already spending an exorbitant amount of money this offseason before anyone else, but Ryan Howard is playing first there.

The San Francisco Giants need offense and a first baseman badly, but they are yet to even hit the rumor mill, minus their Chief Executive saying in a curiously-redacted piece in the LA Times, “[Relying on the farm system has] been a winning philosophy. That’s a good template. Don’t interpret that as we wouldn’t go after a premier free agent, but I don’t think we wake up in the morning and say that’s the first choice.” Hardly convincing.

The Rangers were looked at as a likely landing spot, but team owner Nolan Ryan said, “Making a seven-or-eight year deal for [Prince Fielder] or Pujols is not something our organization is prepared to do. I very much expect Mitch Moreland to be our first baseman next year.”

At the beginning of the offseason, the Angels were my biggest fear when it came to potential Pujols pilferers, but their new GM, Jerry DiPoto said last week, “You have to be open to the possibility, but it’s not something we’re going to aggressively pursue. I don’t think you’re going to get a financial bargain swimming in that pool.”

That’s about it, really. The Marlins, whose payroll will shoot up with the new stadium this year, made an offer to him on Friday night, but Joe Frisaro reported, “The Marlins certainly would love to add Pujols, but those connected with the club said the first offer probably isn’t close to being enough to lure in the biggest prize on the free agent market.”

The next teams on the list outside the top 10 probably cannot afford him. Besides, the White Sox have Paul Konerko at first, the Twins have Justin Morneau and the Braves have Freddie Freeman.

This brings me to the obvious conclusion: Albert has nowhere else to go. Sure, if he desperately wanted out of St. Louis, which he doesn’t, he could sign a lesser contract with Miami and wear orange the rest of his baseball days. (Or at least until Jeff Loria orders him traded after a few years.) That might be bad news for him once the Cardinals realize this (if they haven’t already) since they know that they are his best option.

*In order based on Forbes’ 2011 team values

Once again I have several thoughts on the Royals, but none of them amount to an entire article. So here it goes:

The Logo: This has been on my mind for a while. Can we go back the crown logo with the R instead of the current crown logo with the KC? I have no real reason except nostalgia. Maybe we can start a twitter movement. Stranger things have happened over a #countrybreakfast.

Classic Royals Logo

The Gangs All Here: With the call up of Johnny Giavotella and Salvador Perez the Royals have placed a player making their MLB debut in 2011 as starters in all of the infield positions. The only one who didn’t get a hit in their first game was Eric Hosmer. He seems to be making up for that. I’m a little worried about Mike Moustakas inability to get over the Mendoza Line. He just looks lost at the plate.

The Royals are now the youngest team in the majors. Remember, sink or swim, this is the youth movement we’ve been waiting for. There will be growing pains. We need to remember that, including myself, when they make boneheaded plays. Especially plays that cost games.

Happy Trails: Many Royals fans have long said as long as Kyle Davies is in the rotation that the front office wasn’t serious about contending. Kyle Davies was released this week. This needs no other explanation. However, I have two questions. Who are the other teams interested in signing or trading for Kyle Davies? I hope one of them was the Wichita Wingnuts. Secondly, As Royals fans who will be our new Wipping Boy? Because…

Hochocinco to Cool Hand Luke: I’ll be honest. Luke Hochevar is not my favorite Royal. I’m not sure why. I would like think it was his holdout, signing bonus, and then subsequent sucktitude in the majors. But that hardly makes him unique to major leaguers. I have more favorable feelings for players that have had similar contract negotiations. At the beginning of the season I vowed that I would call Luke Hochevar, Hochocinco as long as his ERA remained above 5.00, or cinco. Since the All-Star Break Luke Hochevar has pitched like the ace he’s supposed to be. Lowering his ERA to 4.79. Hopefully this will continue. The Royals need as much starting pitching as they can get if they’re going to be competitive in 2012 and open their playoff window. But if it doesn’t, take notice Royals Fan Wipping Boy is currently an unfilled position.

Joakim Soira Ain’t Right: I know, you’re probably thinking, “thanks Captain Obvious.” You don’t have to be a Stathead to know that closers in baseball are like running backs in the NFL. The have short shelf lives. They have a two or three year window of absolute dominance and then they fall back to the pack. Not that they can’t get guys out anymore, but they can’t do it with enough consistency to hold the closers role. I fear we’ve reached that point with Soria. My logical response to this would be to elevate Crow to that position. But do you do that instead of making him a starter. Either way, I hope the front office is looking for another long term closer.

It’s August: And I’m still watching Royals games with interest. It’s the young guys. If you’re going to be a terrible baseball team, you might as well be terrible, young, and interesting. I’ll probably keep this interest up the rest of the season, except when the Chiefs are playing. One game a week verse six takes some precedents…and they’ve already opened their play off window.