The Cardinals And The Economy

The Cardinals are one of the surprise stories of the baseball season so far. Even after losing three straight by a combined score of 28-7, St. Louis is just two games behind Milwaukee in the National League Central.

But based on this item in a new column by Scott Miller of CBSSportsLine.com, the Cardinals better hope Tyler Greene is the answer at shortstop and Brad Thompson is able to fill in for Kyle Lohse.

"3. Tony La Russa, Twitter settle dispute: Too bad, too. Because had La Russa won the suit he wound up withdrawing, it probably was going to be the only way St. Louis could secure the money to add another bat to its lineup this summer."

It's an interesting piece less talked about in trade circles. Plenty of teams are assumed to be willing to dump salary once they fall out of the race, with an imperative to do so sooner in this difficult economic climate.

It may be, however, that many of the teams in a position to contend may not be adding salary, due to that very same economy.

In a season when even the Yankees claim they can't add salary, it will be fascinating to see if the glut of players expected to hit the market between now and July 31 fetch huge packages of prospects, if the few teams that can add payroll are bidding against themselves.