Yesterday afternoon, while the internet's ostensibly enlightened St. Louis Cardinals fandom continued to bask in the glow of their newly empowered general manager, Derrick Goold sank a knife deep into their collective heart: The Cardinals were planning to not only resign Skip Schumaker, long considered Tony La Russa's scrappy white totem, they were going to sign him to a two-year deal.
↵It's bad enough that they're going to resign Schumaker, a thirtysomething middle infielder who is neither a satisfactory second baseman nor a satisfactory center fielder nor a broadly useful bench bat—they're going to resign him despite having replaced him as starter at both those positions with two separate players who, collectively, form a kind of superior Skip Schumaker Voltron.
↵In center field, Jon Jay is a left-hander with a precariously high average, but he hits for significantly more power and has a better reputation; at second base, Daniel Descalso is a left-handed hitter who might be a middling defender but will hopefully make up for it with an above-average positional bat. That's both of Skip Schumaker's roles.
↵Which means the Cardinals just signed Skip Schumaker to back up two better versions of Skip Schumaker.
↵Which means we can no longer blame Tony La Russa for the Skip Schumaker era. Sorry, internet.
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