Which St. Louis Cardinals player do you wish stayed healthy?

Which St. Louis Cardinals player do you wish stayed healthy throughout their entire career? Many fans said Chris Carpenter.

On Thursday, in the days before Christmas, a baseball writer named Brandon Warne posed an interesting question on Twitter: “For your Christmas wish, you get one MLB player to have stayed healthy for their entire career. Who are you picking?”

So I posed this question to the Redbird Rants staff. One writer, Kyle Jasper, chose St. Louis Cardinals reliever Alex Reyes while the rest of the staff answered right-handed starting pitcher Chris Carpenter. Matt Graves, the former site expert, opined that J.D. Drew would be a good answer — and having grown up watching his left-handed swing, I would tend to agree.

But let’s focus on Carpenter, who was the consensus answer. Carpenter, now 46, pitched 15 seasons in MLB (nine with the Cardinals) and posted a 3.76 ERA and a 1697/627 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 2219.1 innings. He won the Cy Young Award in 2005 and finished second (2009) and third (2006), respectively, while receiving MVP votes in each of those seasons.

But this is where things become unfortunate, with injuries derailing his career in 2007. He pitched only 21.1 innings from 2007-08 and dealt with multiple injuries that threatened to end his career, including three elbow surgeries, two shoulder surgeries and a rib cage injury that resulted in him missing almost five seasons. To his credit, he came back from those injuries, posting a 2.24 ERA in 192.2 innings in 2009 and pitching at least 235 innings in the two seasons after that.

But if Carpenter never dealt with those injuries, and pitched in those five seasons, how many Cy Young Awards would he have won? Would he have won MVP? Imagine a rotation headlined by Carpenter and Wainwright throughout the last decade. Of course, his career would be over by now, but Wainwright is still pitching at the age of 40. Who says Carpenter would not have been able to do the same had he stayed healthy?

It’s a what-if scenario that will keep the Cardinals and fans wondering for years. But still, Carpenter was dominant when he was healthy and to his credit, defied the odds and came back — and went on to have a wonderful career that has led him to working in the Cardinals and other teams’ front office.