One of the St. Louis Cardinals’ biggest questions marks during the offseason was how the team would fill the middle infield positions, and the answers the Cardinals found could end up making those positions of strength throughout the season.

The Cardinals had planned to have Rafael Furcal be their starting shortstop on opening day, as he had been last season. But Furcal’s torn right elbow ligament didn’t heal in the offseason and he had to undergo surgery during spring training.

That left Pete Kozma, the player who hit .333 in 26 games for the Cardinals last season, as the man to fill one of the most important positions on the field. However, the Cardinals still didn’t have much confidence in Kozma because they still had bad memories of him being the organization’s first-round pick in 2007 that had a .236 batting average in six minor-league seasons.

But shortstop was only one half of the uncertainty surrounding second base for the Cardinals during spring training.

Daniel Descalso played 143 games for the Cardinals in 2012 and played stellar defense whether he was at second base, shortstop or third base, but he also hit just .227. The Cardinals didn’t think they could survive another season with a second baseman who hit under .230 so they asked Matt Carpenter work on learning the position during the offseason so he could potentially take over second base in 2013.

Carpenter did his work and won the job in spring training, but that still meant the Cardinals planned to enter the season with a rookie at shortstop and a former utility player who hadn’t had more than 300 at-bats in a single season.

That combined inexperience justifiably sent shivers down the spines of many Cardinals fans, and for good reason.

The Cardinals had tried to patch holes in the middle infield before with limited success. They traded for Furcal only when Brendan Ryan and Tyler Greene proved they weren’t going to be good enough at shortstop. Also, the Skip Schumaker experiment at second base lasted for a couple of years, but he was replaced by the .227-hitting Descalso last season.

So for better or worse, the Cardinals ended up with Kozma and Carpenter as the middle infield combination for 2013, but early results show this concoction could not only work, but it could work pretty well.

Carpenter hasn’t played second base yet because he’s been over at third base while David Freese recovers from an injury, but he and Kozma have already made an impact one series into the season.

Carpenter had three doubles in the team’s first three games, and he played solid-to-great defense at third base. Kozma hit .308 in the opening series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, including a double and a homerun.

Granted, that is an incredibly small sample size. Both players could eventually be exposed throughout the course of the season and consistently take terrible at-bats. But at this point, each has looked confident at the plate and in the field, and they are both getting results.

If that continues, the Cardinals might win a lot of games because of a middle infield composed of two players who the team didn’t even consider good enough to start until circumstances forced them into the lineup.

Sometimes the unexpected gifts are the best of all.

The St. Louis Cardinals will send nine players on to the field Monday at Chase Field in Phoenix for their season opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks, but they won’t have many replacement options if one, or more, of those players can’t play the entire game.

The team will have a dugout full of bench players, of course, but recent injuries have suddenly taken a lot of talent that would be on the bench and put it into the starting lineup.

The Cardinals already had limited depth at the middle-infield positions once Rafael Furcal found out at the beginning of spring training he couldn’t throw and would need elbow surgery. Pete Kozma suddenly became the team’s first option at shortstop with Ronny Cedeno as the back-up.

But then the team released Cedeno on March 19 after he hit .290 in 16 games with the club.

That left the Cardinals with three middle infielders: Kozma, Matt Carpenter and Daniel Descalso.

Carpenter had all but wrapped up the starting job at second base, but third baseman David Freese eventually succumbed to a sore back that had plagued him much of the spring. Freese will now start the season on the disabled list, and Carpenter will have to take over the third base job in the meantime.

As the game of musical chairs goes, Descalso will fill in at second base, and Ryan Jackson will take the spot on the bench as the team’s back-up middle infielder. However, Jackson has hit .136 so far in spring training and hit .118 in 13 games with the big-league club in 2012.

Granted, that is a very small sample size, and the Cardinals have seen with players such as Kozma how past struggles don’t predict a bad future. Kozma hit .236 in more than five years in the minor leagues before helping spark a late-season surge by the Cardinals in 2012 with a .333 batting average in 26 games.

Still, a player who hasn’t hit above .150 as a major leaguer isn’t much of an insurance plan to open the regular season.

The Cardinals made Freese’s move to the disabled list retroactive to March 22 so he will be eligible to play in the team’s home opener April 8 against the Cincinnati Reds.

So if all goes well, the Cardinals should have their starting third baseman back within the first week of the regular season, which would allow Carpenter to move back to second base and Descalso could become the utility infielder that provides solid production when the starters need a day off.

Right now the Cardinals can’t afford for their starters to take a day off.

And that could be something to keep in mind late in the season when Kozma and Carpenter, who have started a combined 95 games in two seasons, start to feel the fatigue of a full Major League Baseball schedule.

The same could be said for the Cardinals pitching staff, as well. Closer Jason Motte’s injury had a ripple effect through the bullpen and the starting rotation.

Mitchell Boggs will have to fill Motte’s spot at the back of the bullpen, but Motte’s injury also made Joe Kelly more valuable in a relief role instead of the fifth and final spot in the rotation, which went to Shelby Miller, who the Cardinals have groomed to be a starter throughout his minor-league career.

Kelly at least pitched out of the bullpen in college and made 15 appearances as a reliever last season for the Cardinals in the regular season and playoffs combined.

The Cardinals have remarkably sustained success through a multitude of injuries in the 2011 and 2012 seasons.

They’ll have to maintain that resiliency again in 2013, but this time there is no Carpenter, Descalso, Jon Jay or Allen Craig to insert into a key situation late in the game. Those players now must be the team’s foundation instead of its accessories.

The St. Louis Cardinals have seen their share of injuries this off-season.  The one that appears to have the most impact currently will be at shortstop.

Rafael Furcal, the Cardinals starting shortstop, is out for the season after requiring Tommy John surgery to repair an elbow injury that dates back to late last season.  An offseason and Spring of market investigation for a replacement has yielded no results to date, leaving general manager John Mozeliak and manager Mike Matheny to react the same way they did last season, with Pete Kozma.

Kozma, an enigma of a ballplayer, had all but been given up on due to his (lack of) performance at the minor league level.  A first round draft pick that seemed to be a bust, Kozma was the reason that Furcal arrived in St. Louis in the first place.  But when Furcal went down last season, the Cardinals were left with very little choice and handed the position to the struggling prospect.

What happened was something no one expected: he succeeded.  Kozma found a glimpse of his potential on the biggest stage possible and performed well during the final month of the season and in the post-season for the Cardinals.  As the Cardinals prepare to break camp, Kozma is prepared to be the starting shortstop once again.

Friend of the site Sam Feldman helped i70baseball immortalize Kozma and the feelings surrounding him with a t-shirt that is now available on TeeSpring.com.  The shirt, which embodies both the spirit of the fans that have an extreme feeling of support for the young shortstop as well as a sarcastic feel for those that feel the hype is a bit too high, is available for a limited time at the price of $15 per shirt.

Kozmamania has hit St. Louis.  Get your shirt today.

In four years Jason Motte went from a hard-throwing catcher to a pitcher who closed out a World Series championship and became a linchpin in the St. Louis Cardinals bullpen but, as is the case for many closers, now it is his turn to land on the disabled list with arm problems.

The Cardinals announced Saturday that Motte has a right elbow strain and will likely start the season on the disabled list. The team has a viable back-up in Mitchell Boggs, but Boggs could end up being the Cardinals closer for most, if not all, of 2013.

Although Motte technically has a sprained elbow, he underwent an MRI on Friday that found a tear in one of the ligaments. That sounds an awful lot like what shortstop Rafael Furcal experienced when he tore an elbow ligament Aug. 30. Furcal didn’t play the rest of the season and will now miss the 2013 season after he finally had Tommy John surgery.

That’s not to say Motte is headed toward Tommy John surgery and will be out for the year, but a tear in an elbow ligament doesn’t usually heal itself, at least not quickly.

But this isn’t doomsday for the Cardinals. They can still compete for a playoff spot or even win a World Series championship without Motte. Other teams have experienced this type of situation with their closer, and whether they got lucky to have a good fill-in closer or they simply had a deep bullpen, they still won a lot of baseball games.

For example, the 2012 World Series champion San Francisco Giants lost their closer, Brian Wilson, at the beginning of the season. But they eventually gave Sergio Romo the job and he finished game after game all the way to a four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers in the World Series.

The Cardinals are even a step ahead of the Giants because they have a back-up closer ready before the season starts. The Giants had a closer-by-committee situation early in the season as pitchers such as Santiago Casilla tried to finish games before they settle on Romo.

The Cardinals already have Boggs ready to make a relatively easy transition from eighth-inning setup reliever to closer. Boggs led the Cardinals with 78 appearances in 2012 and had a National League-best 34 holds.

Plus, the team has a loaded bullpen that should be able to fill in any open spots without much trouble. Flamethrowing righthanded reliever Trevor Rosenthal has the stuff to shut down hitters for one inning, and the Cardinals have a bevy of righthanded relievers such as Fernando Salas and Edward Mujica who can continue to work the middle innings.

Motte’s injury also might affect the battle between Shelby Miller and Joe Kelly for the fifth and final spot in the starting rotation. The Cardinals could decide to give the rookie Miller the starting job and put Kelly in the bullpen since he worked eight games for the Cardinals in relief last season.

In any case, the Cardinals certainly won’t get the type of consistency from the closer’s role they had in 2012. Motte had all 42 saves for the Cardinals last season and tied with Atlanta Braves closer Craig Kimbrel for the league lead.

That’s a bit much to expect out of Boggs, who hadn’t had an earned-run average below 3.50 until he broke through last year and posted a 2.21 ERA.

But the Cardinals do have a deep enough team to survive an injury to their closer. This isn’t an obituary for their season, but the words to describe Motte’s 2013 season might already be chiseled in stone.

The St. Louis Cardinals sent home one unproductive veteran player Tuesday in their latest round of cuts, and they need to do the same with another, even if it costs the team a relatively large amount of money.

The Cardinals brought Ronny Cedeno in to spring training as an insurance policy at the shortstop position since Rafael Furcal did not recover from an elbow injury he suffered last season, and the team had yet to believe Pete Kozma would be good enough to handle the position full time.

But the Cardinals realized they would not be in good hands with Cedeno, a career .247 hitter, as their primary option at shortstop. Kozma burst out of offseason to hit .429 in the first 10 days of exhibition games while Cedeno struggled to raise his batting average above .167.

Cedeno eventually picked up the pace to finish with a .290 average, and Kozma predictably didn’t hit above .400 the entire spring (he fell to .318), but Kozma showed the Cardinals he could handle the responsibilities of being the starting shortstop. That meant the Cardinals had little need for Cedeno, who had signed for one year and $1.15 million.

Daniel Descalso will now be the Cardinals only backup middle infielder, but Cedeno’s release freed up a spot on the bench for more talented hitters such as first baseman prospect Matt Adams.

But that’s only because the Cardinals will likely be hesitant to release the other unproductive veteran free agent they brought to camp: Ty Wigginton.

Wigginton has just four base hits and a .103 batting average with eight strikeouts so far this spring, yet the Cardinals probably won’t release him because they made the poor decision in the offseason to sign the 35-year-old, who hasn’t hit above .250 since 2009, to a two-year, $5 million contract.

Sure, $5 million isn’t an incredible amount of money in the modern world of baseball, but expecting Wigginton to be a productive player at all, much less two years, is almost asking for a miracle to happen.

Maybe Wigginton will run into a late-inning homerun and ends up helping the Cardinals win a game at some point this season, but they have much more talented players who will start the season in the minor leagues.

Future second baseman Kolten Wong, future outfielder Oscar Taveras and even outfielder Adron Chambers provide more potential benefits to the Cardinals that Wigginton, but they aren’t making $5 million across two years and they are young players who the Cardinals don’t want to rot on the bench.

So Wigginton will probably make the team no matter how bad he hits. Thankfully, there should still be a spot for Adams, who has hit .304 this spring and is tied for the team lead with 12 RBIs. It would be nice if the Cardinals went with Chambers, who provides speed, or outfielder Shane Robinson, who has had a great spring with a .465 batting average and 12 RBIs, but one will likely be left off the opening day roster.

The Cardinals are chiseling away at their roster for opening day. Unfortunately, they will probably leave one blemish and give Wigginton a job based on what they hope he can do, because he certainly hasn’t shown them anything this spring that makes him worthy to make a Major League Baseball roster.

The St. Louis Cardinals project to have an Opening Day lineup full of players who will regularly get on base and it also features plenty of power to drive them in. The one thing the team will lack, however, is speed.

The Cardinals stole 91 bases in 2012, which tied them with the Texas Rangers for 24^th of 30 teams in Major League Baseball, but players who stole more than a quarter of the Cardinals bases last season are either hurt or no longer with the team.

Shortstop Rafael Furcal stole 12 bases last season but is out for the season with an elbow injury, and fellow shortstop Tyler Greene, who had nine stolen bases, is now with the Houston Astros.

That leaves the Cardinals with about four regular stolen base threats. Slow-footed but incredibly intelligent catcher Yadier Molina stole 12 bases last year and could very well steal another dozen or so this season. Rightfielder Carlos Beltran had 13 stolen bases last year, but he is 35 years old and has slowed down considerably in recent years after various knee injuries.

The other proven stolen-base threat from last year’s team is centerfielder Jon Jay, who had 19 last season. He will likely lead the team again this season unless outfield prospect Oscar Taveras makes the team, but even he hasn’t stolen more than 10 bases in a season during his four seasons in the minor leagues.

Shortstop Pete Kozma stole just two bases during his brief 26-game stint with the Cardinals at the end of 2012, but he once stole 24 bases in 2008 and had 13 in 2010, all in the minor leagues.

Other than those options, the Cardinals will likely enter the season with a pretty slow team, but that’s not necessarily a terrible fault.

The Cardinals won the World Series in 2011 after stealing just 57 bases, which ranked last in the National League, and only the Detroit Tigers had fewer steals with 49 that season. The Cardinals also made it to within one game of the World Series in 2012 while ranking 24^th.

And they aren’t the only team that has found it can win without stealing bases. In fact, just three teams that made the 2012 playoffs ranked in the top half of baseball in stolen bases. The Oakland A’s were ninth, the San Francisco Giants were 10^th and the Washington Nationals were 15^th.

Otherwise, all of the best teams didn’t steal many bases. The World Series-champion Detroit Tigers actually ranked dead last for the second year in a row, but they had great power and great pitching.

Those two factors are also why the Cardinals shouldn’t be too concerned about the number of bases they steal in 2013.

They have a lineup that should easily rank in the top 10 in all three of the Triple Crown categories, batting average, homeruns and runs batted in, and they have a pitching staff that should be more than solid if not for too many injuries.

Sure, Chris Carpenter is no longer an option at the top of the rotation, but the Cardinals have arguably the most young talent on their pitching staff since the days Tony La Russa decided to come to St. Louis because Matt Morris and Alan Benes were on their way to the big leagues.

The Whitey Herzog disciples will forever yearn for the days when Cardinals players of the 1980s slapped the ball into play and ran like the wind around the bases, but those days have long since passed. And they aren’t coming back anytime soon, at least not as long as the Cardinals furnish a lineup with five batters who can hit 20 or more homeruns.

So while the Cardinals style of play might not be terribly exciting on the basepaths, nearly every other aspect of their play is good enough that they will likely once again be playoff contenders come September.

The most talked about issue for the St. Louis Cardinals is what is going on at shortstop. The loss of Rafael Furcal to elbow surgery has hastened the future of the lone position on the organization’s map where there is no ideal succession plan in place. It was an issue that was on thin ice all winter, and could be a focus throughout the summer and into next winter as well. The options at shortstop include more questions than answers, and addressing the issue start both at the bottom of the organization all the way to the top of it.

Majors: The injury to Furcal set everything in a different direction than hoped for. While there was always a cautious optimism regarding his status, if not a given assumption that it would be a multiple man job this season. The worst came to be with Furcal never even making it to a spring lineup, and simultaneously activating every backup scenario possible at once for a replacement.

The initial answer to the question will be Pete Kozma, incumbent replacement for Furcal when the injury ended his season last fall. Kozma has been making a statement for his fitness for the spot, hitting .419, through 10 games, but due to his inconsistent past since being made the team’s first round pick in 2007, questions will continue to surround his performance. Defense will continue to be a work in progress for him, but the idea is that his only job is to keep the position stable for the time being.

Behind him, is a mixture of utility men in Ronny Cedeno and Ryan Jackson. Cedeno was brought in to be a support option in case Furcal wasn’t ready, and he has remained in that capacity behind Kozma. He has struggled in the spring, which has gone very noticed by GM John Mozeliak. Despite having a partially guaranteed Major League contract, prolonged struggles could make him this season’s J.C. Romero. Jackson was the first promotion to fill in for Furcal last year, due to his similar range to Furcal in the field, but his greatest advantage with the glove has been offset severely by his limitations at the plate.

High Minors: The minor league ranks have begun to blend with the Major Leagues as of late. Jackson could very well be the odd man out in the chase for a spot in St. Louis, and would be left to continue on in Memphis. He’s got the best glove of any shortstop in the system, but has shown no bat at all in brief stint last season (.118 in 18 at-bats) or this spring (.143 through 10 games). But he did manage to hit over .270 for three seasons while he rose from the Single to Triple A levels, so there’s some medium for him to improve upon…if he regains the chance to do so, due to a new teammate this year.

Greg Garcia is looming as perhaps the best current fit for the long-term picture up the middle. He played the entire season at Double-A Springfield, and hit .284 with 20 doubles and 10 home runs, while managing to have an impressive 80 walks vs. 83 strikeouts. He’ll be 23 this season, and will be the starter in Memphis this season. Garcia’s future is probably more of a Descalso (who he profiles quite similarly to thus far in the minors), but an offensive profile of this sort plays much better at shortstop than at second base. He has shown a steady improvement throughout the system, and is perhaps the lone prospect with a chance to actually fill into more potential as he matures.

Cardinals hitting coach John Mabry stated in February at the Cardinals Winter Warm Up that Garcia would see plenty of opportunities to show what he could do this spring, due to the World Baseball Classic’s impact on the spring roster, but the loss of Furcal has now made auditioning Kozma the top priority, and Garcia’s chances thus far have been less than originally anticipated.

The lone issue at hand is how Jackson fits into the picture now, especially with Kolten Wong being the everyday second baseman at Memphis for the time being. Garcia’s improved stock, combined with Kozma’s increased role and the presence of Cedeno, have thrown his role into question.

At Springfield, Jake Lemmerman, who was the return from the Dodgers for Skip Schumaker this winter, could see some opportunity. The 23-year-old hit has hit .285 as a minor leaguer, but has struggled since reaching Double-A, hitting only .233 in 137 games.

Low Minors: There’s no true emerging option at any of the lower levels of the Cardinal system. Many of players that take on shortstop do it in a moonlight capacity, while making most of their impact at second base. Some could find their future at shortstop due to organizational need, but the clearest sign of the team’s need to draft well up the middle is here. The only player that made a majority living at the position was Matt Williams, who played 126 games as short for the Class-A Quad Cities River Bandits.

Prognosis: If there is any position that the team could have its hand forced in, either via trade or draft, it is at shortstop. There is 0% chance that Furcal will retained after the season, so the page has been turned in real time for the Cardinals. While there are bodies to fill the space now, the answer over the long-term simply is not there, nor is it on the horizon. Even if Kozma, Jackson or Garcia can become an adequate major leaguer, the need to restock the organization’s depth at the spot is well past due. For a team that is full of succession plans, the lack of one at short has hit a dangerous level and isn’t going to be a quick fix.

Pete Kozma might have gotten sudden public support along with the St. Louis Cardinals starting shortstop job after Rafael Furcal announced Thursday he would have Tommy John surgery and miss the entire 2013 season, but Kozma has deserved some of that respect long before now.

Kozma hit .333 in 26 games for the Cardinals at the end of last season after Furcal injured his elbow Aug. 30 against the Washington Nationals, and he was a big key to the team’s late-season success that got it within one game of the World Series.

But the Cardinals have rarely viewed Kozma in a positive light.

The organization considered releasing Kozma four times while he was in the minor leagues. Granted, the former first-round pick did put up dismal numbers much of his minor-league career, but the Cardinals have continued to treat Kozma as if he is that same minor-league player even after his big-league success.

The club openly solicited trade proposals to find a different shortstop during the offseason. And when a trade never developed because the Cardinals were unwilling to part with their young pitching prospects, they signed Ronny Cedeno as an option in case Furcal wouldn’t be healthy.

“We were looking at just making sure we have protection (and), in essence, if Pete continues to do what he did, he’ll likely be in the big leagues,” Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak said. “We didn’t want to just go into the season and find out that Furcal couldn’t go and find out Kozma was not (going to build on) the six-week period. We had a lot of optimism. It was just shoring up the position.”

But Cedeno has hit just .167 in spring training and played poor defense, at times. That’s probably not where the Cardinals will shore up the shortstop position whether Kozma got the job or not.

Kozma also hasn’t gotten much more respect from Cardinals fans. A forum on stltoday.com Thursday was titled “Is there a worse middle infield in baseball right now?”

There certainly are worse middle infields. Can anyone name the middle infielders for the Miami Marlins, San Diego Padres or Houston Astros?

Plus, Kozma and whoever wins the second base job (Daniel Descalso or Matt Carpenter) are solid fielders who won’t embarrass themselves in the field. Cedeno, on the other hand, might be a liability in the field and at the plate.

Overall, that short period of success is likely a large factor in why people have yet to believe Kozma can handle the Cardinals shortstop position full time in 2013 and beyond. They hadn’t seen that sort of success previously in his career, and they were unwilling to get their hopes up in case Kozma was a one-hit wonder.

Instead, Kozma has excelled during spring training, hitting .429 with five RBIs and two homeruns, and the Cardinals have suddenly started talking him up as someone they really want to have as their starting shortstop this year.

“There’s no doubt given what Kozma did for us in the last six weeks of the season last year we do have a high level of confidence that he can continue to add that energy and be that type of player we saw last year,” Mozeliak said Thursday after the Furcal news broke.

It’s funny how circumstances tend to change those types of feelings.

Kozma would be a huge help to the Cardinals if he can hit for a good batting average and get on base fairly consistently. The Cardinals have enough power in their lineup with Matt Holliday, Carlos Beltran, David Freese and Allen Craig likely to fill the middle of the order, but they’ll need someone on base when they come up.

Kozma would most likely hit in the seventh or eighth spot in the Cardinals lineup, so he won’t face a ton of pressure to be a star at the plate. The Cardinals just need someone who can get on base and hold their own defensively at shortstop this year, and Kozma is a good candidate to fill all of those needs.

He might get his chance this year, but he’ll have done so by overcoming a strong perception by his team that he wasn’t good enough.

For Kozma, that motivation could make 2013 all the more fun.

The St. Louis Cardinals entered spring training with the fifth starter position in the rotation up for grabs.  It appears that the spotlight on that competition will shine bright over the next few days.

Trevor Rosenthal – photo from FoxSportsMidwest

As the spring air was pierced by the sounds of pitchers and catchers warming up and early batting practice taking place, the Cardinals settled in for a competition for the final spot in the rotation.  The guys gearing up for that competition were Lance Lynn, Shelby Miller, Trevor Rosenthal and Joe Kelly.

It did not take long for plans to change.  Veteran ace Chris Carpenter broke the news that he would not be able to compete this year and Lance Lynn was all but assured his spot as the number four starter.

Then there were three.

Miller appeared to be the favorite early on based on his performance last year, his off season work, and the perception that the top pitching prospect in the organization was ready to take the next step.  The trio of right handers have seen very little time to this point in the spring and, despite much speculation, the team has not been forthcoming with any news.

Meanwhile, Kelly and Rosenthal had proven that they could handle the pressure of the big leagues down the stretch and repeatedly in the post season last year.  Kelly specifically showed over and over again that he could pitch in the rotation after taking over for Jaime Garcia last season due to injury.

Rumors began swirling on Thursday morning, while the team was dealing with news about shortstop Rafael Furcal, that there had been progress in making a decision in the starter competition.  One report surfaced saying that the Cardinals held a meeting for their starting pitchers, a meeting that Rosenthal did not attend.

Possibly the most telling and interesting part of that case is that minor league starters were in the same meeting.  Signs are pointing to Rosenthal’s fate being decided and he may very well open the season in the bullpen for St. Louis.

Now there are two.

The two pitchers left in the competition will take their cases to the mound on Thursday and Friday with Kelly starting Thursday afternoon and Miller toeing the rubber on Friday.  While it would be surprising if these two starts formed the firm decision in the mind of the Cardinals management, it would seem that the spotlight is shining on the next few games to showcase the talent the Cardinals have available.

The decision could come as soon as this weekend.  It will most likely come sometime around March 15.  Ultimately, the decision is coming soon and it’s down to two young pitchers that have shown they can be successful at the major league level.

Soon, there will be one…

Bill Ivie is the editor here at i70baseball.
You can follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

The St. Louis Cardinals announced today that shortstop Rafael Furcal would require Tommy John surgery, ending his season before it starts.

During the announcement, General Manager John Mozeliak seemed to throw his support behind young Pete Kozma as the immediate solution.  Fans took to Twitter to beg the team to make a trade and acquire someone immediately to fill the void.

Calm down, Cards fans.

Keep in mind that in the grand scheme of things, the Cardinals were not relying on Furcal as much as many fans felt they were.  They signed Ronny Cedeno to be the back up at that position due to the fear that he would not be able to patrol the field.  As Matt Whitener pointed out on last night’s UCB Radio, Cedeno was most likely signed as a back up no matter what.  Furcal’s news does not thrust him into the starting role, it simply means that he will be the backup to someone else.

That someone else, at least for now, is Pete Kozma.  Honestly, doesn’t he deserve the chance?

We all know the Kozma story: first round pick that couldn’t figure out how to hit in the minors, given multiple chances at different levels but never seemed to “click”, then suddenly figured something out on the biggest stage down the stretch in St. Louis last season.

Small sample size aside, those 72 at bats at the major league level last year should, at the very least, earn Kozma the opportunity to prove that it was a fluke.  His defense was suspect last year, but barely below league average, and his offense was suddenly solid with a ..333/.383/.569 slash line.  His strikeouts were high while his walks were low but that is a trend we see with many young players.  Patience comes with experience and experience comes with opportunity.

So far this spring, again small sample size, Kozma has proven that he can hit well, play decent defense, and he is showing an increased level of patience at the plate.  He looks like the first round pick that the Cardinals had so much faith invested in 2007.

Ultimately, we’re talking about the number eight hitter in the Cardinals lineup.  A position that will not be relied on for strong offensive numbers and be looked at to simply handle the position on the field.  The production in this lineup will come from left field, right field, catcher, first base, and third base.

Kozma is showing patience at the plate and the Cardinals are showing that patience with his development might just pay off.  Gaining experience requires an opportunity to present itself.

The opportunity is here.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at i70baseball.
You can follow him on Twitter by clicking here.