Roy Oswalt, Cardinals Linked In Trade Talks

Such is the power of Twitter that a few hours after NBC Sports's Craig Calcaterra mentioned he'd heard that the Cardinals were the new front-runners in the Roy Oswalt sweepstakes that theoretical move had already begun to surpass the earlier Phillies move in the public consciousness. We're fickle, here on the internet. 

As I said in a rare timely Viva El Birdos piece about Oswalt, as much as I like Oswalt—the way he pitches fast, the way he walks nobody, the way he is a constant reminder about the foolishness of pushing every sub-six-foot fireballer into the bullpen at 20—the Cardinals' salary structure is entirely unequipped to deal with paying yet another pitcher more than $10 million a year.

That's a pretty expensive rotation to field in the first year of Pujols's megabucks contract-either that or the Cardinals basically trade Carpenter, whose 2012 contract has a $1 million buyout, for Oswalt, who supposedly is requiring any team that acquires him to trigger his own club option. In 2012 that's $69 million for the five people on this list whose name isn't Albert Pujols.

So either Oswalt defers a lot of money, Kyle Lohse announces he's leaving baseball to join the Peace Corps, Albert Pujols decides $16 million sounds about right after all, or this trade doesn't work financially for the Cardinals. I love Roy Oswalt as a pitcher; he throws hard, he works fast, he's got an array of pitches but always knows when to go back to the fastball. But his contract just doesn't fit.

And that's without bringing the players the Cardinals would trade into the discussion. Shelby Miller's a long way away-he threw five scoreless innings and struck out eight last night-and risky, too, but if you're going to trade Miller you can probably get better players with less-onerous contracts coming back in the deal.