When it comes to building a bullpen, there is truly no winning. A decent majority of Cards fans will see the failures of the high-priced relievers of the past and not want to sign them. A decent majority of Cardinals fans want them to fix the bullpen. A decent majority of fans get mad when the solution to the bullpen is a random guy who wasn’t good last year. Somehow all these things are true. Fix the bullpen, but not with random guys and not with high priced relievers.
The cost of a reliever on the free agent market (or on the trade market) is directly proportional to the upside and risk that they bring.