Winners and losers from the Giancarlo Stanton fallout

3. St. Louis Cardinals

Two teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants, made strong offers that the Marlins were prepared to accept. Stanton, it turns out, was not prepared to accept them. He wanted to go to a team that was set up to win immediately. That’s not the Giants, but it could have been the Cardinals.

St. Louis has now missed the playoffs two years in a row, but would have been set up to challenge the Cubs for the NL Central title with Stanton’s power. A true threat in the middle of the lineup is the one thing the otherwise very solid St. Louis roster is missing. The Cardinals already have the rotation and supporting cast. Stanton would have put them over the top.

That Stanton would turn down the Cardinals shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering his roots in Miami and Los Angeles. There’s nothing glamorous about the city of St. Louis and the middle of the country. It was Stanton’s right to determine his fate, and he steered himself from the party scene in Miami to the biggest media market in the United States. The Cardinals franchise has a bit of mystique (in their fans’ minds, anyway), but that was hardly enough to sell Stanton.

Losing out on Stanton leaves the Cardinals in a difficult position. They need J.D. Martinez’s bat and have the money to pay him, but without the DH in the National League, signing him is difficult. Martinez is a defensive liability and has had trouble staying on the field the past two years. Eric Hosmer is another logical option, but Matt Carpenter’s presence at first base complicates things.