• Is the newcomer an improvement over what they can expect from Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty, two youngsters they want to clear early at-bats for, and Brandon Moss? There are officials with the Cardinals who have stressed this winter how they want to see what Grichuk does with the at-bats of a regular.

At this point, the Cardinals have three picks in the top 50, and that’s a conservative estimate. It could be three in the top 40, and so on. Two of those picks come courtesy of the Chicago Cubs, who by signing Jason Heyward and John Lackey this winter forfeited two picks and allowed the Cardinals to gain two in that nebulous area between the first and second rounds. The fall wouldn’t be all that great for the Cardinals from the last pick of the first round to their first comp pick, but the cost would be great in bonus pool. The commissioner’s office affixes a slot value to each pick, and that dollar figure is used to calculate the team’s overall purse for the draft. The more picks, the more money. The higher the picks, the more flexible a team can be with the more money.