After starting their offseason fix-up campaign briskly by signing left-handed reliever Trever Miller to a one-year deal at $500,000 guaranteed and trading for shortstop Khalil Greene of San Diego, the Cardinals have, like many other clubs, become patient.
"Our approach right now is wait and see," said general manager John Mozeliak. "We were aggressive early and had some things to show for it. We made offers (during the winter meetings) and didn't get much response. We tried those approaches. Now we have an opportunity here to step back -- to step back and see where the market goes next and what makes the most sense for us." The Cardinals tired of waiting for a response to their two-year offer for free agent reliever Brian Fuentes, and it is believed the Cardinals ultimately withdrew that offer. Mozeliak said only that there had been "very little dialogue" with Fuentes' representatives.
Even with the All-Star Game coming to St. Louis in July, the Cardinals are preparing for the fact they might not draw three million fans to Busch Stadium for the first time since it opened in 2006.
Club president Bill DeWitt III, who had suggested the payroll might go higher this year, said of the club's stance, "I would categorize it as a slight shift. We can no longer look at 3.2 (million in attendance) as a lock and a growing payroll as a lock. The economy has gotten a lot worse, and we don't want to be caught unprepared."
Not that the Cardinals haven't tried to make more of a splash. They explored a trade for Colorado All-Star left fielder Matt Holliday, who then went to Oakland.
"We wanted to address our immediate needs," Mozeliak said. "We needed a lefty reliever, and we did that. We needed a shortstop, and we did that. We always want to be as opportunistic as we can be (but) we also want to position ourselves to have some flexibility going into '09. A deal, right now, would have to be compelling, so compelling that we couldn't walk away from it."
