Baseball Twitter during the early offseason is like a threeway with way too much eye contact - awkward, but you still have to get through it. The dented trash cans from the Astros' dugout haven't even been replaced yet, and there's already far too much talk of Mookie Betts becoming a Cardinal, Anthony Rendon becoming a Cardinal, and Yadier Molina remaining an active Cardinal in perpetuity.
Only one of these things sounds truly appealing, and it's not Rendon or Molina. That leaves Betts and a threeway, and if forced to choose between the two, I'd abstain from the latter in favor of the former.
Rendon would be a wonderful addition for sure, and his price tag does not include talent being sent elsewhere. Unfortunately, he's an expensive position-limited guy that does not match up well with a team that already has an expensive position-limited guy in the form of what may be gently described as a decline phase Matt Carpenter.
When I think #Yadi4Life, I think of him spending his entire career in St. Louis with that career ending after this coming season. Anything beyond that, and there's significant risk of another Carson Kelly thing happening. Explain it however you like, but don't tell me that Kelly didn't have a better 2019 season than Molina did. Sure, Yadi could have a bit of a bounce back year, but that's not often the case for catchers with 400,000+ innings behind the plate.
Betts is a completely different story. The asking price could/should be ridiculously high, but that has to be somewhat tempered by lack of cost certainty moving forward. Nobody really knows how many billions it will take to sign him through his age 55 season.
It's hard to imagine a BOS-STL trade scenario in which the Red Sox wouldn't ask for Flaherty or Hudson as part of the deal. It's even more difficult to imagine the Cardinals saying "yes" to parting with either one. I'm not saying it's smart, reasonable, or worth really considering. I'm just saying it would be cool to build an outfield around Mookie Betts for the next 7+ years in much the same way it would be cool to be an astronaut - awesome but completely unnecessary and best left in its rightful place somewhere on the dancing unicorns side of your wildest dreams.
Granted, building around Betts is probably a better recipe for sustained offensive success than building a team around a perennial All-Star 1B on the wrong side of 30 with a big long-term contract.
But we're not hear to talk about Pujols or Goldschmidt.....
(we're just here to use "threeway" as much as possible because of @kyler416)
-#dennis
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