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Viva El Birdos

A St. Louis Cardinals Fan Community

Latest Entries

Let’s play bad contract swaps featuring Arenado and Gray

When I looked at the trade value of both Nolan Arenado and Sonny Gray, I said I may return to them, but look at potential bad contract swaps. After researching the potential swaps…. I would be pretty surprised if this happens. There really aren’t many potential swaps. Which makes sense if you really think about […]

Moves to make in a theoretical, competitive offseason

The St. Louis Cardinals are expected to have some activity this offseason, a welcoming change from the dormant winter of last year when they invested a whopping $2 million into the major league roster. However, that activity will likely take the team in the opposite direction of contention as Chaim Bloom puts the foundation on […]

The St. Louis Cardinals’ minor league system is ranked #1 in MLB now

Back in August, I did a quick look at the Cardinals minor league system here, done after the 2025 trade deadline. That article attempted to capture all the new players the Cardinals had just brought in via trading and drafting and what impact they would have on prospect depth. It was a before-after comparison using […]

Cardinals legend Albert Pujols may be in some hot water

By now, I think almost everybody knows what’s going on with the Angels and the trial of Eric Kay, who is serving 22 years in prison for allegedly supplying a fentanyl-laced pill that resulted in left-hander Tyler Skaggs’ death in 2019. The shocking incident took place just a week after the Cardinals had finished a […]

Best movies every year the Cards made World Series *that I’ve seen

I don’t want to talk about the offseason. Not today anyway. For whatever reason, when I sat down to think of what to write, I wanted to make a fun post. I actually wanted to list my five favorite baseball movies, but I don’t have five favorite baseball movies. I have three very clear favorites. […]

Awards Season ‘25

It’s not a long season, but it’s certainly a part of the MLB calendar and tradition. The finalists have been announced for the major awards, and the gold glove winners have already been set in stone. Our own Masyn Winn deservedly won the Gold Glove for 2025, so I will move on from that category, […]

MLB

“Batter Up!”

Assessing how far behind the Cardinals offense is from the best offenses in the playoffs and identifying a few diamond in the rough candidates for 2026. The World Series concluded on Saturday, and despite the result, it was still a spirited battle between two incredibly fun offenses to watch. What were some takeaways from these […]

The Viva El Birdos podcast: Episode 41 Interview with Josh Jacobs

This week, Jake goes one-on-one with the co-host of the “dealin’ the Cards” podcast, Josh Jacobs! We talk about Josh’s early impressions of Chaim Bloom, what his influence has been in investing in the infrastructure of the organization and bringing in new names like Jacob Buffa from Houston and Joe Douglas from Pittsburgh, as well […]

Looking at past Chaim Bloom offseasons

The offseason has officially begun, although one could argue it really begins on November 6, because that’s when teams can officially sign free agents. Right now there’s a five day period designed for teams to have a chance to sign their impending free agents. For example, the Kansas City Royals signed Michael Wacha to a […]

Sell High or Cash Out? The Rebuild Question

A couple weeks ago, I discussed the four lefty bats since they were brought up by Katie Woo as a group who is likely to interest on the trade market. The quartet of Brendan Donovan, Alec Burleson, Lars Nootbaar, and Nolan Gorman are seen as expendable pieces as the Cardinals work towards their rebuild, but […]

The final Game Thread of the 2025 Season

Can’t let a Game 7 escape without a Game Thread. I apologize if this ends up being redundant. Game starts 7p CDT. Don’t forget to set clocks back tonight. Ohtani opens for Dodgers. Scherzer opens for Blue Jays. For all the folks predicting the ruination of baseball, I bet the ratings on this game will […]

The St. Louis Cardinals face challenges with their 40-man Roster, v2

The 2025 season is done. It is time to start looking ahead. Hope replaces disappointment. The off-season has not really started yet, although the talking about the off-season is well underway. Lots of people have lots of ideas about how to improve this roster.  Of course, the only people who really count in this are […]

The St. Louis Cardinals face challenges with their 40-man Roster

The 2025 season is done. It is time to start looking ahead. Hope replaces disappointment. The off-season has not really started yet, although the talking about the off-season is well underway. Lots of people have lots of ideas about how to improve this roster.  Of course, the only people who really count in this are […]

A Hunt and Peck: Happy Halloween

Elsewhere in MLB… The 2025 Major League Baseball season could come to an end tonight as the Toronto Blue Jays are on the precipice of a World Series. The Jays took two out of three in Los Angeles and have a 3-2 series lead over the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, with first pitch for […]

The championship honeymoon

When I was listening to the radio yesterday, something that has long fascinated me came to my attention. You see, they were not talking about the Cardinals, they were talking about the Blues. The Blues had recently called up a prospect, a former top 10 pick who recently turned 20. They called up Dalibor Dovorsky. […]

Let’s Trade Brendan Donovan! or not

Ok, admittedly I have been planning on writing this since last week’s article about solutions to the outfield conundrum/dilemma/failure. But just before writing this I found a link to an mlb trade rumors article talking about the same deal! So now it’s time to compare my limited ideas with whatever mlb trade rumors is talking […]

MLB

(Somewhat) Bold Offseason predictions – 2026 edition

I’ve now been with VEB for 1 year! Time has truly flown by, and I’ve had a blast being afforded the opportunities I’ve had since joining the team and continuing the great history of this website. Bringing you great readers’ insights, information, and interacting in general has been (mostly) enjoyable. But, enough about me, let’s […]

The Viva El Birdos Podcast: Episode 40 October Monthly Reader Mailbag featuring Rob Cerfolio

Cardinals Assistant General Manager and Head of Player Performance, Rob Cerfolio, joined me on Friday and answered your questions! Thank you to The_Hoff_STL, cardinal511, CRThrelkeld, Schmidthead, country stuff, jdog55, and districtofcardinals for your questions! Rob had a lot of fun answering and provided a lot of great insight on the provided topics! Next week, we […]

What does a Sonny Gray trade look like?

Last week, I tried to take a peek into what would be necessary to trade Nolan Arenado, and as expected, the conclusion was that the Cardinals would have to include more than half of his salary and also not really get anything back. I may revisit Arenado trade possibilities by looking into bad contract swaps […]