In discussing the 2015 Cardinals we probably spend too much time talking about the players that aren’t there. Adam Wainwright, Matt Holliday, Lance Lynn, Matt Adams, Jordan Walden — that’s 20 percent of the team’s opening-day roster, wiped out by injuries. A baseball missing persons list.
We inspect the St. Louis roster and worry about the shortages of home-run muscle, the thinning layer of depth, the absence of a base-stealing threat. Instead of underlining the names of the many Cardinals who are here and doing a swell job, we search the Internet for trade rumors and desperately pine for other names, obsessing over Cole Hamels.