I'm not going to complain about the identity of the random Cardinal fan, but I am going to complain about this:

"unless you count rising prospect Anthony Reyes, and you really don’t want to count on him"

It says something about the Cardinals that prospects like Reyes and Wainwright don't get a lot of love, and I think that "something" is actually good.

I think the comment about not wanting to count on Reyes is more about not wanting to get into a situation in which you need to depend on your only real stud pitching prospect to give the team quality starts at the major-league level before the organization is convinced he's ready.

A guy like that, you want to bring him in on your own terms, as part of a plan over a normal course of development---not as an emergency rotation fill-in after a couple shoulders have blown out in the thick of a pennant race.

I could be very wrong, butI don't buy it. The descriptions I'm reading and hearing say Reyes doesn't have a lot to learn in the minors. If Bobby Bonilla, er, Matt Morris suffers a setback, then I doubt the Cards will be that upset about pushing Reyes.

I don't understand how guys like Brownlie and Guzman are considered more ready than Wainwright and Reyes, which is what Nate Silver recently claimed.

Don't want to play Devil's Advocate, but I hardly think you can call a team that lost the World Series, and by all accounts "checked" their hand this winter, the best team in baseball.

If you had said Best Team in the NL Central, I might have been on board, but I'd still be knocking on Kerry Wood.

Show me.

How do the Cardinals stack up against the leaders in the NL? What about the MLB?

Right now, I see them as being somewhere between the 5th and 10th seeds in all of baseball.

I like Mulder and all, and I hope Eckstein and Grud are BETTER than E-Rent and T-Dub, but I don't honestly think that Marquis, Suppan and Carpenter will repeat or near last year. If they do, and Matty Mo wins 10 games, I will prostrate myself in front of Dave Duncan's house every Sunday.

Don't want to play Devil's Advocate, but I hardly think you can call a team that lost the World Series, and by all accounts "checked" their hand this winter, the best team in baseball.

If you had said Best Team in the NL Central, I might have been on board, but I'd still be knocking on Kerry Wood.

Show me.

How do the Cardinals stack up against the leaders in the NL? What about the MLB?

Right now, I see them as being somewhere between the 5th and 10th seeds in all of baseball.

I like Mulder and all, and I hope Eckstein and Grud are BETTER than E-Rent and T-Dub, but I don't honestly think that Marquis, Suppan and Carpenter will repeat or near last year. If they do, and Matty Mo wins 10 games, I will prostrate myself in front of Dave Duncan's house every Sunday.

4 teams better than the Cards? I'd like to hear who those teams are.

Boston lost Pedro and has Schilling hurt to start the year.

New York has the big unit, but they're older all over the board.

Who else is there that has a shot at a dominant team?

The Mets spent a bunch of money, but they're not deep enough to be a huge threat.

The Cardinals gained Mulder (which is not a check) and will get a full year of larry walker instead of the platoon they ran out last year. Renteria wasn't that great last year, ditto womack. The core of this team (Pujols/Rolen/Edmonds) is likely to perform about the same (Edmonds is the only risk).

The Cardinals were very close to the Red Sox last year, they just picked a terrible time to play bad baseball.