#OnDeck: Phillies should, unfortunately, follow Cardinals' example

This bustling MLB offseason kicked off one sad little afternoon in mid-November, when the Braves suddenly traded their star right fielder, Jason Heyward, to the Cardinals for Shelby Miller.

As division rivals, it's always good news for the Phillies when skilled players leave the Braves. But for any fan outside St. Louis, it's sickening to yet again watch an All-Star get pulled in at low cost (I mean, Shelby Miller?) and entranced by the baseball phenomenon known as "Cardinals Magic."

It's easy to be dismissive of analysis that attempts to measure the likelihood of players' falling in love, but two months later, the Cardinals and Heyward are already talking about taking this thing to the next level. All it took was a quick flutter of the eyelashes and Heyward was weak in the knees for a team he has yet to play an inning.

"With the contracts for core players Holliday, Adam Wainwright, and Yadier Molina set to expire after 2018 — or earlier — the Cardinals' three-year outlook includes something it hasn't in recent years.

They will be in need of a signature player soon."

--Derrick Goold, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Soon." Soon!

The Cardinals finally needed to start worrying about something… in 2018. And they don't even need to worry about it as much now because they've traded for Jason Heyward and he's ready to sign an extension without ever having met the team's GM in person.

In general, the constant contending, the fertile farm system, and the general smarm and self-congratulating with which the franchise conducts itself tends to make hairs stand up on the back of a lot of necks. Just ask the commissioner of baseball.

They're the bad guys in everybody's story but their own - to the Phillies, they were the antagonists of a moment that has only recently stopped playing on an inifinite loop in their stagnant nightmares.

We are in for another long season of Cardinal-love, a condition that will occasionally sweep through the national media. Symptoms include lavish praise and pupils turning into little hearts when they talk about Yadier Molina. A byproduct of this is known as "jealousy," and it's felt by everyone else, usually manifesting itself in the form of "anger" or "resentment." We know this because the Cardinals have been doing it for years.

In 2007, the Cardinals went 78-84, an uncharacteristically poor end for a team that hadn't finished under .500 since the dawn of the new millenium. Long time franchise player Jim Edmonds was getting older, frustration was forming between Scott Rolen and Tony La Russa (a dynamic not unfamiliar to Phillies fans), and La Russa appeared to go slightly insane by starting to put his pitcher in the eight hole of his lineup in August.

Entering the 2008 offseason, change was inevitable. The general manager of over a decade, Walt Jocketty, was out. The team worked out a trade to send Rolen to Toronto, and Edmonds was traded to San Diego in exchange for a Single-A third baseman. New names populated the lineup; Cesar Izturis replaced David Eckstein, Troy Glaus replaced Rolen, Skip Schumaker replaced Chris Duncan, Rick Ankiel took over for Edmonds in center, and Ryan Ludwick served as an upgrade for Juan Encarcion.

That all it took was a third-place finish (after winning the division three times in a row and the World Series once) for the Cardinals to relaunch is indicative of a different culture than the one installed in Philadelphia.

The 2008 Cardinals wouldn't win the World Series - obviously - in fact, even after improving from a losing team to 10 games over .500, they actually sunk in the NL Central rankings, finishing in fourth. But the next season, they were back, winning the division, despite continuously evolving. By the time they won their next World Series in 2011, the team had been rebuilt in a few quick seasons with the support of pillars like Molina, Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, and Adam Wainwright and plenty of role-players stepping up to fill in the gaps.

Let's put a cherry on it - that Single-A third baseman St. Louis acquired for Jim Edmonds in 2008? David Freese, 2011 World Series MVP. They can't have seen that coming, but it's just so irritatingly Cardinals it would. At least that "pitchers hitting eighth" thing didn't catch on.

This is just one exemplary facet of the Cardinals' apparently cyclical success. And that's the beauty of it; they appear to be a franchise that can pinpoint, target, and neutralize threats, bringing guys up from the rear to serve into frontline roles for which they suddenly seem like they were meant all along, with some of the greatest players the game has ever seen leading the way. A loose culture that welcomes change seems like the way to go, instead of, say, trotting out the same older, injured players and demanding that the entire season hinges on their health.

It's a difficult aspect of the game to nail down, which may be why so many respected analysts will just refer to it as "magic." Ken Rosenthal not only cheekily referred to it as such this past post season, he vehemently encouraged its legitimacy over luck. Which is, of course, insane.

It comes down to the Cardinals' strong base and ability to plan for the future, like bringing in Jason Heyward, who will provide them with spectacular defense in right field, and may even be seduced into signing an extension by a team that understands that they can take advantage of Heyward's skill in the present while planning around it for the realistic future.

But its differences from the Phillies' historical patterns - surviving a few generations of mediocrity or just plain badness for half a decade or so of glory, then repeat - are clear, as are their reactions to short term issues. The Phillies seemed to think they had to deny there was any sort of problems for three years before addressing them, making the glacial pace of a rebuild seem even slower.

It's going to be a slow crawl to 2018, and by comparing the Phillies to teams with a smoother infrastructure, it gets even slower. But I'm just trying to prepare you for the inevitable 2015 NL champion Cardinals, a fate inescapable, since, you know, the Giants won it last year and the National League only has two teams.