The St. Louis Cardinals braintrust probably remains fixed on Miguel Tejada, but Buster Olney's tweet Saturday opened up another front of the 2010 Hot Stove League rumor war: Juan Uribe, last seen accruing Veteran Magic as a member of the World Series champion San Francisco Giants.
↵Uribe does play third and short, and apparently does both pretty well. He's been a very useful player for the last two years. But I don't see Uribe fitting the Cardinals' gritty ideal any better than Brendan Ryan does, and given the three-year trough in his performance from 2006 to 2008 he seems like little more of a sure thing.
↵Uribe swings from his heels and plays what La Russa would likely consider dumb baseball; he was apparently difficult as a youngster but has now gotten the full Clubhouse Leader treatment, which is nice, but I can't see it lasting in the heat of a La Russa clubhouse.
↵As a replacement for Felipe Lopez Uribe would be ideal, but he carries a lot of the same risks Lopez did. And lest we forget, the Cardinals only ended up with Flip on their roster because nobody was willing to spend more than $1 million on him.