“We’d like to start the habit of winning as much as possible.” – Mike Matheny, new manager of the St. Louis Cardinals

Prior to Tony La Russa, no manager in history had won a World Series in his final season before retirement. As a result, Mike Matheny finds himself in uncharted waters.

The closest situation in recent memory that comes to mind is when Joe Torre walked away from the Yankees after the 2007 season, and New York hired Joe Girardi as his replacement. The Yankees were coming off a season in which they were the AL wild card team, losing to Cleveland in the 1^st round of the postseason, extending a seven-year championship drought for New York. Though they were not the champions that won four World Series in five years between 1996-2000, Torre was at the helm during the Yankees’ rise to baseball’s pinnacle. For over a decade, any conversation involving the best teams in the league had to begin with the Yankees. As far as Girardi was concerned, the shoes he had to fill were larger than Shaquille O’Neal’s.

The obvious commonalities between Girardi and Matheny are that they are former catchers, both known for their defense. Both played for their hall-of-fame predecessor; Girardi played for Torre from 1996-2000 and Matheny played for La Russa from 2000-2004. The former backstops actually competed against each other dozens of times from 2000-2003 when Girardi was with the Cubs. Finally, in 2003 Girardi actually signed with the Cardinals for what would become his final season as a player, and served as Matheny’s backup.

Most of the Matheny-Girardi commonalities are best suited for the trivia game at the sports bar. The one connection that has the most relevance (especially for Cardinals fans) is that they both played catcher. With Torre being the most celebrated of the bunch (deservingly so), former catchers have put together an impressive streak in the manager role. Since 1996, former catchers have won 8 of the 16 World Series. Torre has the aforementioned four, Bob Brenly coached the Diamondbacks past Torre’s Yankees in seven games in 2001, Mike Scioscia won with the Angels in 2002, Joe Girardi won New York’s 27^th championship in 2009, and Bruce Bochy masterfully led the underdog Giants to claim the 2010 Commissioner’s Trophy (yes, that’s what it’s officially called).

A grossly oversimplified way to explain this catcher-to-manager phenomenon is that pitchers try to stay one step ahead of the opposing hitters, and catchers try to stay one step ahead of their pitchers. On average, the player behind the plate knows the game better than any of the other eight guys. Further, a big part of a catcher’s job is to relate to his pitcher. (On a side note, abruptly losing Dave Duncan after 16 years as the pitching coach in St. Louis is mitigated by virtue of Matheny’s firsthand experience in handling a pitching staff.) During the course of a baseball game, there’s really no substantial interaction between teammates… at all. If you had to hire a former player to be your manager, you can base your decision on a player’s reputation in respect to locker room chemistry, or his perceived leadership ability. With a former catcher, at least you can observe how he got along with his pitching staff, whether they trusted and respected him, and if he made them better pitchers and baseball players.

Personally, I am excited about the Matheny hire. He has all the tools and character attributes of Torre, Brenly, Scioscia, Girardi, and Bochy. No, I’m not ready to guarantee that Matheny will join their distinguished club this October. How about we measure Matheny up against the other newly hired managers around the league? Valentine and Guillen would never fit in here. Ventura and Sveum are just as green as Matheny, but for some reason don’t seem as heady – oh yeah, they were 3^rd basemen, not catchers.

Matheny will be fine. La Russa gave the Cards 16 incredible seasons and two World Series titles, setting quite the high standard. If Matheny can live up to his pedigree and his own words, St. Louis will be “winning as much as possible” and picking up right where Tony left off.

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The biggest bat to change teams in the offseason was undoubtedly Albert Pujols, and the Cardinals were on the losing end there. On the other hand, St. Louis might very well be “acquiring” a starting pitcher for 2012 better than Darvish, Wilson, Pineda, or any other starter who recently changed teams. I’m talking of course about Adam Wainwright, the best pitcher in the NL between 2009-10, who missed the entire 2011 season due to Tommy John surgery.

Let’s break down exactly how good Wainwright was in those two years. He won 39 games, topping next best Ubaldo Jimenez by 5 wins. His ERA was lowest at 2.53, better than Chris Carpenter by a quarter of a run, and Tim Lincecum by nearly half a run. Though Wainwright’s WHIP of 1.13 was slightly behind Carpenter at 1.10, Wainwright threw 35 more innings than Carpenter, for a total of 463-1/3 over 2009-10, which was the most in the NL. Finally, his 425 strikeouts were only topped by Lincecum’s 492, but let’s face it, Lincecum is a Freak.

Somehow, Wainwright failed to win a Cy Young award in either 2009 or 2010. In 2009, Carpenter had an extremely efficient season, which in all likelihood split the Cardinals and Midwest vote, allowing Lincecum to Freak off with his 2^nd Cy Young. 2010 was the arrival of Roy Halladay from the AL to the Phillies. While Halladay was a unanimous winner, his numbers were strikingly similar to Wainwright’s line across the board. In fact, in 2010 it was Wainwright who was better than Halladay in two key categories: opponents’ OPS (Wainwright .604 vs. Halladay .645) and strikeouts per 9 innings (Wainwright 8.32 vs. Halladay 7.86). In other words, if the 2010 Cy Young award vote was up to the hitters, the results might still have been unanimous, but for another recipient.

Every way you look at it, Wainwright was an absolute monster on the mound for the Cardinals. Then he encountered the dreaded Tommy John surgery in spring training last year. Ever wondered what Tommy John surgery actually entails? The elbow ligament called the UCL takes the brunt of the damage caused by throwing a baseball 90 MPH, several thousand times in a season. The technical name for Tommy John surgery is simply, UCL reconstruction. The surgeon takes a tendon from the forearm or knee, and weaves it through the elbow to essentially replace the damaged UCL.

Now it makes sense why all pitchers have recurring nightmares of Tommy John. My guess is that they wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming about a character named Dr. TJ, who resembles the grim reaper, except he’s dressed in scrubs with an enormous surgical scalpel in his hand.

Besides the minimum 12-month rehab, what scares pitchers about the surgery is that few hurlers are ever the same afterward. Kerry Wood, Darren Dreifort, and AJ Burnett are a few of the bright stars with seemingly perfect physiques for the craft of pitching, yet because of one flawed ligament could never attain their full potential. There are, however, a handful of success stories, including John Smoltz, Brian Wilson, and of course 2011 postseason hero for St. Louis, Chris Carpenter.

In my opinion, Adam Wainwright will rebound from Tommy John surgery in a similar fashion to Marlins righthander Josh Johnson. Both players are 6’-7” tall. Both have excellent curveballs which require tremendous torque on their elbows. Johnson has had great success ever since he returned from going under the knife in 2007. His fastball has kept its velocity, if not gained a few ticks. During the 2010 season and his first nine starts of 2011, he flat-out dominated everyone he faced. Now for the catch: Johnson struggled with arm injuries (mainly in his throwing shoulder) and has not pitched in a game since May of last year.

Wainwright is currently in spring training throwing quite a bit – mostly fastballs. He’s on track to start the season as part of the Cardinals’ starting rotation. He should be near, if not right at the Cy Young-deserving form he showed in 2009 and 2010. That said, his innings and pitch count will be restricted. I expect that he will miss time to injury or rest. A fair projection is 23 starts and 140 innings, while maintaining his sub-3.00 ERA and low WHIP.

Much like my take on the offense, the 2012 Cardinals will rely on better-than-average depth for their starting pitching. Chris Carpenter is the Opening Day starter and will be heavily leaned upon as the staff ace, much like he was last year – especially in the playoffs. Jaime Garcia (yet another Tommy John case) is 25 years old and ready to take the next step. Kyle Lohse and Jake Westbrook are durable innings-eaters, which has almost become cliché, except for the fact that durable innings-eaters have become more valuable than ever. Lastly, there’s the intriguing possibility that super prospect Shelby Miller will make the leap from Double-A to the bigs sometime late this season. As we all observed last year, baseball in St. Louis is all about October. If the rotation can stay healthy enough to get the Cardinals in the (5-teams per league) playoffs, this team has the guns to advance all the way to the World Series once again. Wainwright, vintage 2009-2010, would be a dynamic weapon to have in the Cards’ arsenal.

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The world champion St. Louis Cardinals will defend their title in 2012, having said goodbye to 3-time MVP Albert Pujols.

Even in the worst season of his 11-year career, Pujols posted 37 homeruns, 99 RBI, and an OPS of .907 – all good for top ten in the National League.

The solution for replacing Pujols proposed by GM John Mozeliak is two-pronged. First, there is the signing of Carlos Beltran for 2 years, $26 million. For New York and San Francisco last year, Beltran posted 22 homeruns, 84 RBI, and an OPS of .910. The downside there is, the contract year of 2011 was Beltran’s best year since easily 2008, and best full year in terms of OPS since 2006. In one aspect, because of all the deferred money in Pujols’ new deal with the Angels, he will only cost $2 million more than Beltran through 2013. That means, in the short term the Cardinals saved just $2 million by choosing Beltran, coming off a fluky good year, so his perceived (market) value was somewhat inflated. The Angels acquired Pujols coming off a fluky bad year, when his value on the market was not at its absolute peak, but still decided to pay him top dollar.

My guess is that Beltran will post 20 homeruns, 70 RBI, and a .900 OPS, missing about 40 games due to injury/wear, resulting in a season similar to what Matt Holliday delivered last year.

The 2^nd part of the solution to offset the loss of Pujols is the expected breakout performance from 3^rd baseman David Freese, 2011 World Series MVP. Freese will turn 29 at the start of the season and has never played a full season in the majors. Starting in 2010 through the 2011 playoffs, Freese logged right around 700 plate appearances. In this “full season” sample, Freese hit 19 HR, 112 RBI, with a .828 OPS. He also struck out 148 times, which Pujols usually does in two full seasons.

The bottom line is that neither Beltran nor Freese are anywhere near as good as Pujols in his prime, or even Pujols at his worst, for that matter. I would set Freese’s ceiling at Aramis Ramirez’s 2011 season: 26 HR, 93 RBI, and .871 OPS. If you drop those projections a bit due to Freese’s history of injury, Beltran and Freese combined would be hard-pressed to surpass Pujols’ 2009 season of 47 HR and 135 RBI.

Nevertheless, when you consider the whole lineup, with Beltran in the 3-hole, Holliday hitting cleanup, followed by Berkman 5^th and Freese 6^th, the offensive depth of the Cards becomes apparent. Super utility-man Allen Craig is rehabbing his knee and will join the bunch during the 1^st half of the season. Pujols will be missed, that’s certain. However, the 2012 Cardinals will not suffer the same fate as the 2011 Indianapolis Colts when they lost superstar Peyton Manning to injury, or even the 2007 San Francisco Giants in their first season without Barry Bonds.

After all, hitting is just one part of the game of baseball. We’ll cover pitching, defense, and coaching in the days to come.

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