As for playing bench players “more”, that is a philosophy which I admire in LaRussa and year in and year out the role players are successful for him because he doesn’t let them rot on the pine.

Players like Miles and Taguchi earned *far* more playing time than they would have for any other team, much to the Cardinals detriment. He pushed for Pedro Feliz before the Cardinals got him, and no one can argue that he wasn’t the primary factor in moving Ray Lankford, Colby Rasmus and Brendan Ryan.

Currently, we only have one lefty on the 25-man squad. We can either recall Valdez, who pitched OK, but not great, and cannot hit 90 on the radar gun, or look elsewhere. The Cards have always liked Rhodes, and it is understandable. Does he have much left in the tank? I dunno. But he was just released by a team that paid heavily to add two other relievers, so his availability wasn’t entirely due to suckitude. You tell me who you would prefer.

How about next year, we just let LaRussa get it all out his system. Just give him a team that consists of Aaron Miles, Arthur Rhodes, So Taguchi, Ryan Theriot, David Eckstein, Randy Winn, Craig Paquette, Pedro Felizand everyone else he comically overvalues. It’s clearly what he wants. He has weird fetish for not very good players. This way, they can lose the 120 games that he clearly is going for, and then the Cardinals can go back to having normal, good teams instead of a bunch of wise-old scrappy veterans that LaRussa can complain about how these no-goodnik kids too.