The 2018 season may be the most pivotal of the past 20 years of St. Louis Cardinals baseball.
After missing the playoffs in two consecutive years -- doing so a third straight time would mark the longest drought this century -- the Cardinals spent the offseason making dramatic changes, albeit not quite as dramatic as some of their increasingly disgruntled fans might have preferred. They traded for Marcell Ozuna, one of the best hitters in the sport, brought in a smattering of new bullpen arms and signed a starting pitcher who sparkled in Japan, but whom no one in America has seen in three years.