Incoming Cards, Outgoing Players

What a terrible world, what a beautiful world. 

Man, the world is upside-down right now, but I suppose there's always time to talk about cards. Fellow Cardinals fan Ray of All Cardinals All The Time (a blog title I could learn a bit from myself) sent over some same team needs for my own collection, including some players who are on their way out of town. It's weird to say goodbye to Matt Holliday, and even though he got quite an emotion sendoff in the final weekend of the season, I'm not quite ready for it. He's fallen into a rather steep decline, so it makes sense to move on and not pick up his option, but a lot of his decline can be attributed to injuries and I'm sure someone will pay him handsomely for his services in the near future.

Someone I'm having less of a hard time with his departure is Brandon Moss. Moss always seemed like a better idea of a player in theory rather than in practice. His low batting average was offset by his power and run production, but it also seemed like when he was off (the second half of 2016 and pretty much all of his time with the Cards in 2015) he looked atrocious. He did a solid job in the field, however, and seems like a nice dude. Best of luck to him.

Allen Craig has been gone awhile, and remains one of the greater mysteries in baseball. He was a late bloomer who could do no wrong at the plate, until one day when he suddenly looked like an actor. Very odd. Again, major injuries never help, but his career still remains a head-scratcher.

One of my favorite card things to receive is regionally issued stuff, having never lived in Cardinals territory. Here's a card for both my team and player collection that I probably would've had a tough time purchasing even over the internet. Carpenter is expected to be moved to 1st on a full-time basis with the departure of Moss, leaving the future of Matt Adams also a bit questionable.

The Cardinals have been incredibly patient with Kolten Wong, and are expected to continue down that path by making him -- once again -- the full-time starting second baseman. I don't mind Wong, really, I don't... though part of me feels like this is a "what could possibly go wrong?!" situation here.

Thanks again to ACATT for the great Cardinals stuff. A long overdue package should be sent back hopefully in the next week or so.