I was thinking about a 2005 preview, but frankly as a team the 2005 Cardinals aren't as interesting to me as the 2004 version. The question marks are pretty obvious (health for the Big Three, midde infield defense for a groundball-heavy staff, and whether the pitching can repeat its solid non-domination), the competition in the NL Central doesn't look nearly as intense, the other contenders aren't built so completely differently from the Cardinals and, oh, yeah, the Cards are generally favorites rather than underdogs.

So I started to think of it from the perspective of the individual players. This isn't so much a preview as an inventory. The Cardinals' roster can be divided into about five parts. There are four Hall of Fame candidates, five starting pitchers with question marks (sorta), seven proven veterans, three projects, and seven extras. This list will have 26 names as Morris is on the DL and technically is not on the 25-man roster.

(1) On The Road To Cooperstown

This is the most interesting group of course. I'm using one number -- career Win Shares -- to evaluate their Hall of Fame credentials, which isn't perfect, but it serves my quick and dirty purposes.

Jim Edmonds has 241 Win Shares and I guess he'll need 375 Win Shares (more than Duke Snider's ~350 without the Duke's peak) to reach the Hall of Fame, which is to say he's made a bit less than two-thirds of the journey. On his 2,800-mile trip from southern California to Cooperstown, that puts Edmonds in St. Louis nicely enough. Another good year would put him in Indianapolis, where he'd spend the long, cold offseason ringing Will Carroll's doorbell and running (no, I haven't done that).

Scott Rolen's starting point would be near Evansville, Indiana, 900 miles from Cooperstown. Rolen currently stands at 214 Win Shares and to reach Cooperstown he'll also need about 375 Win Shares total, a tad better than Darrell Evans and Brooks Robinson. Based on last year though, I'll say Rolen's career will go further than a "low-end HoFer" and fix his current location at Donora, Pennsylvania, hometown of Stan Musial and the Ken Griffeys, 425 miles from Cooperstown. The 4th spot among third basemen, behind Schmidt, Brett and Mathews, looks plausible.

Albert Pujols is from planet Krypton, thus explaining the "S" on his back. Whatever the distance between Krypton and Earth, he's about 40% of the way to Cooperstown.

Larry Walker has a 3,000-mile trip from British Columbia to Cooperstown. He's got 297 career Win Shares, and once again 375 looks like a good benchmark, so he's 80% of the way there, say Columbus, Ohio. The main issue for Walker is that his car keeps breaking down. Maurice Clarett could broker a deal for him.

(2) The Fluke Rotation

Chris Carpenter, Jason Marquis and Jeff Suppan want to prove 2004 wasn't a fluke. Matt Morris and Mark Mulder want to prove it was a fluke. The future is somewhere in-between in all likelihood, and again this isn't a preview, so I'll just say the fun will come from the guys who hit their upside and leave it at that.

While it may be old news to some, I had an epiphany this off-season with regard to starting rotations. You, fair reader, probably have read a lot about the Cardinals' question marks in the rotation. However as Alan Schwarz recently discussed with regard to stats, it's all a matter of context. Every good team has question marks in the rotation. The Yankees are relying on Mussina (old), Brown (older) and Johnson (oldest), not to mention Jaret Wright, whose last four seasons of ERA went like this: 6.52, 15.71, 7.35, 3.28. The Red Sox are counting on Schilling (ankle), Miller (shoulder) and Wells (gut). The Braves will be going with Smoltz, Ramirez (shoulder) and Hampton. The A's will be relying on inexperienced pitchers like Haren, Meyer and Blanton. The Dodgers have Penny (more severe version of the same injury as Carpenter), Lowe (led majors in runs allowed in 2004) and, er, Scott Erickson in their rotation. Hmm, the Dodgers may not be a good team. The Cubs' #1 and #3 starters could be headed to the DL before the season even starts, their #2 starter is a test case for Pitcher Abuse Points, their #4 starter is 39 years old and gave up 35 homers last year (OK, he's also a HoFer), and their #5 starter has an ERA+ progression of 89, 85, 68 and 131.

If your pitching staff doesn't have question marks, that's probably because everybody knows it will suck. When Jeff "I Beat Roger Clemens In A Game 7" Suppan and his career 99 ERA+ is considered your fifth starter, you've got a solid rotation. Add my favorite pitching prospect Anthony Reyes (Tony, the bill's in the mail) to the mix, and Walt Jocketty can sleep well at nights.

(3) The Proven Veterans

Reggie Sanders looks like a neo-sabermetric player: While he doesn't draw enough walks, he'll hit for a decent average, hit for power, play good defense, run the bases well and apparently won't cause problems in the clubhouse. As a Cardinal fan I want to see a great season from Sanders, but as a puritanical stathead I'd loathe hearing about that even-odd year thing. Mark Grudzielanek relies a lot on batting average, which is scary for a player his age. Every time a ball's hit to David Eckstein I'll be doing signs of the crosses and at the plate he has virtually no power, but he's managed to get 2500 plate appearances with a 350 on-base percentage. In spite of looking like a batboy, he's a Proven Veteran. Although I have no medical pretensions whatsoever, the lack of attention for Proven Closer Jason Isringhausen's offseason hip surgery reminds me a little bit of Andy Benes and his knee surgery in 2001. Throw in differently shaped Proven Middle Relievers Ray King and Julian Tavarez to round out this group. It's probably not a good thing that the surest of the Proven Veterans are middle relievers.

I've got one more: Yadier Molina. My perception is skewed since I've been following his career since seeing him at rookie ball way back when (Johnson City in 2001 was like "Field of Dreams" with Rick Ankiel as Joe Jackson). However Molina's already well-regarded for his defense and pitcher handling, and since those skills are so tough to evaluate, he probably won't lose that rep even if he hits like Matheny. Yadi's technically not a Proven Veteran, but he'll enjoy many of the same perks.

(4) The Projects

Four years after his last major league pitch, Bill Pulsipher's hoping to make the conversion Cal Eldred made, while Eldred's wondering if he could sleep on his right side if he had converted to relief at the age of 26 like Isringhausen did. An argument could be made for putting Eldred in the previous group and from what I've read he fits the bill in the clubhouse. Of course I don't have access to the clubhouse and those first impressions of him on the mound in April 2003 die hard. For all the concern about Walker or Sanders going down with an injury, I could see a 275/375/400 season from outfield project Roger Cedeno -- he did do it in 1999 and 2000 after all. There's a huge gulf between "I could see" and "I expect", but I assume that possibility is why Cedeno's still on the team. Based on expectations alone Cedeno should be at AAA or in the indy leagues.

Last season when the Cardinals had projects like Lankford, Womack and Simontacchi on the roster I wondered if that was a function of the Cardinals' lackluster farm system. Then Glendon Rusch, Ryan Dempster, Rey Ordonez and Neifi Perez showed up on the Cubs roster even though we've been hearing about the great Cubs farm system for a few years now. Again, it's about context. Some teams like the A's don't seem to mess with projects at the big league level, so it's still an interesting question to me. I just need to figure out a statistical definition of re-tread.

(5) Just Happy To Be Here

Does Jayson Stark know that the Cardinals were 23-21 before John Mabry was called up in 2004 and 82-36 after? Mabry claimed playing everyday at AAA helped him refine his swing, which is something to consider with Hector Luna. Then again, Luna's 25 and has been playing pro ball for six years, so he's nearing WYSIWYG territory (no, I don't know how far WYSIWYG territory is from Cooperstown). Abraham O. Nunez has a career OPS of 622 and Einar Diaz has a career OPS of 656 and they also have career earnings of about $2.5 million and $6.5 million respectively. Not that they didn't deserve it, but Marvin Miller is my idol. Looking at the stats, it's hard to understand why Al Reyes couldn't get a major league job while Kevin Jarvis got paid millions. Maybe it's the facial hair and a fear of Star Trek fans' complaints about the improper upside-down display of a sacred Bajoran symbol.

Considering his history, Reyes may be my favorite "minor" player with Edmonds my favorite "major" player. Randy Flores has a goofy photo with Sports Forecaster, and his numbers are a reminder that the bullpen won't be as strong in 2005 as it was in 2004. There's a significant disconnect between So Taguchi's career major league numbers (290/339/440) and his AAA numbers (258/306/350). The Cardinals insisted in 2004 that he's a different player from his 2002 days, when half of those AAA at-bats were compiled, and this offseason they put their money where their mouth is. We'll see.

I don't want to come off as disparaging this group as all of them are legit major league ballplayers. It's that context thing again. There aren't sixty men on the planet who can play MLB-caliber shortstop defense while hitting for a 700 OPS. Same goes for catchers and it's probably not much better for center fielders. That won't stop me from pining away for John Gall or Scott Seabol whenever Nunez or Diaz bats in the ninth inning of a one-run game however.