you're no adam kennedy

today the cardinals released adam kennedy. the move is pretty shocking considering gm john mozeliak had seemingly committed to at least giving kennedy a chance to platoon, or win the job outright. kennedy's 4 million dollar salary will go down as a sunk cost, but can the cardinals replace his value? it's certainly questionable. kennedy was a plus defender last year, worth nearly 16 runs alone with his glove. the question about him has always been his offense. his plate discipline has been clearly declining as his bb% rate continued a three year slide from 8% to 5.8%. his increasing impatience has also led him to start swinging at worse pitches

outside of the zone swing %
08: 28.5%
07: 26.2%
06: 27%
05: 21.6%

kennedy isn't exactly aging gracefully. his defense was quite a surprise last year after posting mediocre numbers the past two. whether last year was an aberration who knows, but he more than likely was going to slip from last year's performance. i'm not ready to say it's a good move, because it completely depends on the personnel that he's going to be replaced by...and it doesn't exactly look rosy. the in-house candidates to replace him are joe thurston, brendan ryan, jarrett hoffpauir, skip schumaker, tyler greene, and brian barden. replacement level heeeeere we come!!!

there are still a few options left on the market that might be worth pursuing. orlando hudson would be a good fit, but word is the cardinals are out of money and hudson is still waiting out for multiple years. ray durham probably doesn't represent an upgrade over kennedy, but mark grudzielanek is still available.

if the cardinals are indeed serious about giving skip schumaker a shot to win the second base job, a guy like grudzielanek would be an excellent platoon partner. grudz registered two solid seasons defensively in 06 and 07 after slipping last year in an injury shortened year.

my biggest concern is that the cardinals decide to go with some combination of thurston/barden/ryan and it takes 300ab of utter turmoil to realize none of these players are the answer. if they go ahead and are able to sign grudzielanek on the cheap, at worst you have a league average player ready to go if the schumaker experiment doesn't go as planned.

i'm really hoping skip is able to adapt. it still sort of sounds like a pipedream. it's going take game action for anybody to find out if he can actually play, but i really like the move. the main reason is that it will open up a roster spot for colby rasmus, an excellent defender, and allow ankiel and ludwick to slide to positions where they can be pluses defensively. last year the cardinals defense was very good, a team uzr of +30.4 which was good for 6th in all of baseball. there could stand to be significant gains in the outfield if colby is the opening day cf and ankiel and ludwick man the corners. scouting reports have david freese as average to above average at third so he should be able to hold down the fort until glaus returns. khalil greene represents a very minor downgrade from cesar izturis. team defense will be particularly important for the cardinals, who play in a larger ballpark and will have a lot of balls put in play due to a rotation that doesn't miss a whole lot of bats.

grudzielanek certainly isn't a flashy option, but he would be valuable off the bench and a fine insurance policy. replacing the value kennedy provided last year is probably going to be a bigger task than a lot of cardinals fans realize.