The St. Louis Cardinals may need some help at first base. Since Matt Adams went down for the year with a quad injury at the end of May, they’ve mainly played Mark Reynolds at first, and watched the strikeout machine do his thing by hitting .229/.312/.391 with nine homers and 89 strikeouts in 86 games.
But help could be coming from within the NL Central from the team that deployed Reynolds at first base last year – the Milwaukee Brewers. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Milwaukee and St. Louis have discussed a deal involving Brewers first baseman Adam Lind.
With the trade deadline arriving Friday, the Cardinals have had conversations recently with Milwaukee, and the Brewers are believed to be willing to trade first baseman Adam Lind.
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The preference, general manager John Mozeliak has said, is to add a short-term contract if the Cardinals are going to acquire offensive help via trade. Lind is signed through 2015, with a team option for 2016 ($8 million salary; $500,000 buyout).
The 32-year old Lind has enjoyed a fantastic year for the Brewers this season, hitting .285/.365/.500 with 16 homers. He’s also managed to stay on the field, an issue for Lind in recent years, playing in 92 of the Brewers 99 games. However, he did miss Sunday’s game in Arizona with a back issue that also caused him to leave Saturday’s game against the Diamondbacks after just one at bat.
Lind would be an interesting acquisition because, as mentioned above, he’s not a *true* rental – he has an $8 million club option for the 2016 season, which the Cardinals would likely buy out for $500,000 because of the expected return of the cheaper Adams, who will be entering his first year of arbitration after the season.
Another potential benefit for acquiring Lind – he slaughters right-handers, which would allow the Cardinals to platoon him with Reynolds. All 16 of Lind’s homers this years have come against righties, and he’s hitting .302/.386/.549 against them (compared to just .213/.273/.295 against lefties). Given the state of the trade market at first base this summer (which is essentially Lind, maybe Chris Davis, and Nick Swisher’s contract), Lind is their best option to upgrade the position from outside of the organization.
