Here are the 5 moves Cardinals fans voted should happen this offseason

Cardinals' 2024 Opening Day Roster after the fans' voted offseason

After an eventful offseason that included three free agent signings and two trades, here is how this offseason voted for by Cardinals' fans would stack up on paper for Opening Day.

Starting Lineup
LF Lars Nootbaar
1B Paul Goldschmidt
2B Nolan Gorman
3B Nolan Arenado
C Willson Contreras
RF Jordan Walker
DH Brendan Donovan
CF Tommy Edman
SS Masyn Winn

Bench
OF Dylan Carlson
2B/OF Richie Palacios
C Ivan Herrera
1B/DH Luken Baker

Rotation
1. RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto
2. RHP Sonny Gray
3. RHP Edward Cabrera
4. LHP Steven Matz
5. RHP Miles Mikolas

Bullpen
RHP Ryan Helsley
LHP Yuki Matsui
RHP Giovanny Gallegos
RHP James Karinchak
LHP JoJo Romero
RHP Wilking Rodriguez
RHP Andre Pallante
LHP Zack Thompson

I'm really happy with this offseason if I'm the Cardinals. You went out and got the best-starting pitcher available in Yamamoto, a guy who may be able to go toe to toe with anyone in baseball in the near future. Although it was a massive deal, he's just 25 years old, so you're paying him with the assumption that he can be an ace for the next seven years. That's an excellent move in both the short-term and long-term.

Gray provides the Cardinals with a really good number two starter here, and on a short-term deal so they are not pot committed to that $23 million annual salary for a long time. The con with this scenario here is you're putting a lot of pressure on both Gray and Edward Cabrera to fill their roles well, as there is not a lot of wiggle room here. I trust Gray to do so, but Cabrera really is a wild card. He could pitch even better than Gray, or he could fall back in the rotation as more of a number five type starter.

The Cardinals also do well here with their bullpen acquisitions, not spending a ton of money while also only giving up Tyler O'Neill in the process. Now, St. Louis has five guys that they should feel confident in late in ballgames. This is huge, as injuries and down seasons are unpredictable out of the bullpen, so they should be able to weather that storm in the first half and add to the bullpen at the deadline as necessary.

The fact that this was all accomplished without giving up Nolan Gorman, Brendan Donovan, Masyn Winn, Lars Nootbaar, or Jordan Walker is a huge win for the Cardinals. All of these trades and contracts are just projections, so it's hard to know how realistic they'll end up being in a vacuum, but it feels like the Cardinals capitalized on the money they had to spend and the depth pieces that had value with other organizations.

This is the kind of aggressive offseason the Cardinals need. Even if it's not this path, I expect the Cardinals to go all out this winter to rebuild this pitching staff. Cardinals' fans gave them a pretty good blueprint, now we'll see if they can do something similar.