Up until Friday night rumors about the St. Louis Cardinals signing Roy Oswalt have been mostly theoretical—the Boston Red Sox seemingly traded Marco Scutaro specifically to afford him, and the Cardinals have all five starters under solid-sized contracts, right down to the underperforming Jake Westbrook. Then Jim Duquette suggested the Cardinals were the clear frontrunners, with the Houston Astros a bizarre addition to the usual mixture.
↵The Red Sox make perfect sense, and the Cardinals, whose offer was supposedly in the $5 million-ish range when it was leaked a few days ago, would presumably find something better to do with Jake Westbrook if the time came, but the Astros—well, if I were Oswalt, fresh off my stint as the fourth and final ace in the Philadelphia Phillies' World-Series-contention rotation and still on a borderline Hall of Fame path with a few more good years, I'm not sure I'd want to take my chances with a potential 100-loss team and another midseason trade.
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