St. Louis Cardinals: Five Burning Questions

If you were picking Fantasy Baseball players and needed three Cards, who gets your votes?

Question from Bill Ivie(I70baseball.com)-You have to draft three Cardinals and keep them in your starting lineup for the entire season. No exceptions – doesn’t matter if they are hurt, under-performing or playing against an opponent that kills them, those three players are starting for you all year long.

Which three Cardinals are you confident enough in their production this coming season to rely on them in your fantasy league?

My Take-Which three players do I take from the 2016 Cardinals if I was doing fantasy baseball and they would have to be starters:

1.) Easy choice. Matt Carpenter. Extra base hit machine. Recently fell in love with homers. Gets on base at an insane clip. Consistent. People worried about him last year(myself included) and his OPS was .871. Easy pick.

2.) Second choice. Matt Holliday. Forget the home runs and take the overall OPS. Holliday gets on base, cranks doubles, scores runs, collects hits and is quite angry about only appearing in 73 games last year. He’s got a lot to prove and did I mention he is rocking the beard still? Holliday doesn’t guarantee 30 HR/120 RBI but he can still be good for 22 HR/95 RBI with 35-40 doubles.

If he sees more protection from guys behind him(not Peralta or Adams), he may see more pitches to hit. He’s consistent and fantasy owners need that. Holliday won’t be ridiculous(sorry Matheny) but he will be back to his 2012-14 self.

3.) Third choice. Trevor Rosenthal. Sure he may get hurt, but you may get hurt walking your dog so I’ll take the odds. Rosenthal improved greatly last year in keeping the leadoff man off base, accumulating strikeouts, and racking up saves. With the Cards getting there offense and Mike Matheny’s need to use him, I think Rosie has a nice season. Not “Adam Wainwright bought me a golf cart” nice but pretty solid.

Those are the three I’d take.Wainwright was right there but I went with Rosenthal because he can pitch more than once a week. Grichuk and Piscotty weren’t straight up NO’s but they don’t offer enough evidence or consistency to place them above the three.

Next: Piscotty or Grichuk?