The Cardinals traded for Paul Goldschmidt because, as president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said, “2019 matters.” The Cardinals were tired of coming down to the wild-card wire, so this team was built to win the division, chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said during Winter Warm-Up. But we were wrong to expect that hopeful division-winner to be meaningfully reinforced along the way by the kind of in-season moves that have helped produce every recent World Series winner. Having a hard time making sense of that? Same here.
• How did Cardinals' decision-makers not pledge to do something, anything, to guarantee help for this rotation?