MLB Rumors: 4 teams who should ‘patiently wait’ for Blake Snell

1. The St. Louis Cardinals should 'patiently wait' for Blake Snell

The St. Louis Cardinals were aggressive when it came to improving their biggest need, signing three starting pitchers including AL Cy Young runner-up Sonny Gray to contracts. Gray, Lance Lynn, and Kyle Gibson will join veterans Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz in the oldest and weirdest rotation in the majors.

There should be plenty of innings delivered by those five starters but with the exception of Gray, the question is how quality will those innings be? While they threw tons of innings, Mikolas, Gibson, and Lynn all had ERAs approaching or over 5.00. The Cardinals have a lineup capable of scoring a lot of runs and have improved their bullpen as well, but their rotation still feels like it needs another piece.

One issue teams likely have with Snell is his inability to pitch deep into games. Even this past season when he won a Cy Young he only threw 180 innings and past the six-inning mark three times. A team that won't have an issue getting length out of the rest of their rotation is the Cardinals, so the bullpen should be rested to pitch their three or four innings when Snell takes the ball.

It's unlikely that the Cardinals will spend an exorbitant amount of money to lure Snell to St. Louis, but depending on how low his price actually goes, Snell becomes more and more of an appealing option for a Cardinals team that should be trying to win now with Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado not getting any younger.