Junior Spivey hasn't been able to hit anything this spring. He's been a black hole of not hitting, which means that there's a good chance the Cardinals spent $1.2 million on nothing. The alternatives, however, aren't very exciting: Aaron Miles, who has hit but isn't a full-time option, or Hector Luna, who also hasn't been spectacular in Spring Training, to the point that he's made some outfield starts.

There are a few 2Bs available, with Brandon Phillips of the Indians available. He's struggled, but that's a factor of being brought up early and then scuffling for a while before getting benched and demoted. He's young, cheap and can probably be a better hitter than Spivey.

Shifting gears to the pitching staff, Anthony Reyes has been the center of a lot of discussion over the past couple of weeks. He lost the battle to be the fifth starter to Sidney Ponson, and he's been arguing with TLR and Dave Duncan about adding a sinker to his arsenal. Reyes has the stuff to be a #2 starter, but there's a belief in the organization that he has to add something with some sink on it to be effective at the ML level, especially since he tends to be a flyball pitcher.

Juan Encarnacion is going to be hitting #2 and playing right every day, which scares me because he's got an awful OBP and strikes out like some unholy union of Mark Bellhorn and Alfonso Soriano. Batting him ahead of Pujols means that Albert is probably going to be facing a lot of 1 out, 1 on situations and will most likely be leading off innings late, which hurts the Cards' chances of winning close games.