St. Louis Cardinals: Five bold predictions for 2016

It’s nearly Spring Training for the St. Louis Cardinals, which means it’s the perfect time for speculation

Preseason predictions are always absurd, because no one can know what’s going to happen. Baseball has a way of turning the things you’re most certain of upside down, and thus predictions very frequently  wind up looking absolutely crazy by the end of the season — no matter how reasonable they seem at the beginning of April.

Nonetheless, every year, pundits from around the country throw out their best “bold predictions” for the season and readers flock to read them for both insight and entertainment. Because I enjoy challenges, I’ve decided to start my predictions a little early this season.

Where most writers give themselves the benefit of seeing who’s hot or who’s cold or who’s injured in Spring Training, I’m going to come at this psychic endeavor with a metaphorical blindfold on. Not only can’t I see the future of this season, I won’t even attempt to read the tea leaves I’ll be given in a few short days. So if Kolten Wong breaks his leg or Sam Tuivailala turns into the next Aroldis Chapman this March, my predictions may look even more absurd than they might otherwise.

But that just adds to the fun, in my opinion, so let’s get started with the most ridiculous of beloved blog posts: my bold predictions for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2016.

Next: Is Randal Grichuk the center fielder?

Randal Grichuk will not finish the season as the starting center fielder

That’s right! Although MLB Network’s “Shredder” ranks Randal Grichuk as the eighth best center fielder in baseball heading into 2016, the St. Louis Cardinals won’t finish the season with him patrolling their outfield. Here’s how it’s going to happen.

Grichuk will start in center for the season opener, and he’ll play well. Over the next two months, he’ll hit a respectable .250/.315/.450 and play solid defense, doing more than enough to keep his starting role. Meanwhile, Tommy Pham will fill in for all three outfielders occasionally and hit as well as can be expected — posting a .260/.330/.400 line as a bench player.

Then, on June 26th against the Nationals, Grichuk is going to come up lame with a strained hamstring. Pham will finish the game without much fanfare, going 0-2 with a walk. The news will be that Grichuk needs some rest, but shouldn’t need a trip to the DL, so we expect him to be back in a week or so.

Unfortunately for him, he never gets the chance. Tommy Pham starts to play like he did in AAA in 2014, batting an absurd .390/.450/.600 line over the next two weeks. Although Grichuk gets a spot start here and there, he never does enough to take the job away from the hot hand, and Pham just keeps rolling, finishing the season with a .290/.350/.460 line — one of the top two hitters on the team.

Next: Will Adam Wainwright still be the Cardinals' best pitcher?

Adam Wainwright won’t be the best starting pitcher

There is little doubt that Adam Wainwright is the Cardinals’ ace, and he’ll undoubtedly be the number one starter in the rotation, but that doesn’t inherently mean that he’ll be the best starter that the St. Louis Cardinals have. And I’m betting that he won’t be.

How can I say that? His ERA- has fallen every season since 2012, dropping from 102 to a minuscule 42 last season (even if that was over just 28 innings). What do I see that leads me to believe that Wainwright won’t dominate the field again?

Well, it’s nothing in Wainwright at all, actually, but rather his competition. Last year, Carlos Martinez‘s ERA- was 78, and he’s going to get better. In 2015, Martinez finished the season with a 3.01 ERA, in spite of three games where he gave up over 5 earned runs.

If you take those three starts out of the equation, his ERA was 2.23. That would have ranked 4th in all of baseball.

Let that sink in for a minute.

I’m not saying that he’ll do that this season, because those starts weren’t entirely flukes. But I do think that they were a young pitcher learning how to pitch. So perhaps things even out a little bit and you see a pitcher with a 2.50 or a 2.60 ERA. If Adam Wainwright struggles at all coming off of a season where he didn’t pitch much, it’ll be hard for him to keep up with the young gun. And I predict that he won’t.

Next: Can Matt Carpenter put it all together in 2016?

Matt Carpenter will contend for an MVP award

This isn’t my boldest prediction, especially since Matt Carpenter finished 12th in MVP voting last year, but I still have to make it. To make it more interesting I’ll define the term “contend” as “finishing as one of the top three vote-getters.” This will certainly be a challenge for Marp, but I believe the St. Louis Cardinals’ third baseman is up to the task.

The real fun starts, though, when we start talking about how Carpenter succeeds, and intriguingly I think it has little to do with him. Rather, the umpires and the league will seek to reverse the trend of calling the ball off the plate to lefties a strike.

With Carpenter as the poster child for this sort of thievery, he’ll benefit even more than the average lefty, and will begin to see his strike zone shrink on the outside part of the plate — to the point where pitchers are getting the raw end of the deal.

The result? First, Carpenter takes more walks and posts an OBP over .390 for the first time since 2013. Second, as he learns to lay off more and more borderline pitches outside, he’ll see more pitches inside, and he’ll crush them just like he did last season (graphic courtesy of Brooks Baseball):

At the end of it all, you have a Matt Carpenter who crushes 35 home runs and walks 100 times in the same season, and that is MVP material.

Next: How bad is first base really?

One of the first baseman will surprise us

I’m hedging my bets a little bit with this one, but I think it’s still fairly bold on my part. Really, most don’t seem to expect much out of either Brandon Moss or Matt Adams (although others are more hopeful than I’m willing to be), and I’m betting the St. Louis Cardinals get a good deal of production out of one of them.

In their careers, neither has topped 3 fWAR, but I’m guessing that one of them will in 2016, mashing at least 25 home runs while batting a reasonable .270/.330/.480 in what will be a career season, thus turning an apparent hole in our lineup into a strength.

Which one will it be? If I had to guess, I’d choose Adams and hope for a return to his 2013 form. There’s also the fact that he’s lost some weight and put on some muscle, as Steven McNeil noted a few weeks ago. It’s really not impossible to see him having a nice bounce back season, and it wasn’t that long ago that many thought of Adams as the first baseman of the future.

That said, Moss has shown the ability to be productive more consistently and may actually be the safer bet. It would be a great season for him, but unlike Adams, he actually has hit 25 home runs in a season and a repeat performance is probably more likely than a breakout. Again, neither is terribly likely to put up those numbers, which is what makes this a bold prediction, even though I’ve left myself two ways to be right instead of just one.

Just to clarify, I’m not betting that a combined effort between the two will produce similar numbers — if that happens, my prediction is wrong and you can call me out on it.

Now, on to the final prophecy!

Next: Will Jaime Garcia be the picture of good health?