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Dear Ramblers,

Baseball may be out of session at the moment, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to dissect the St. Louis Cardinals and their current 2022 construction. Free agent hot stove discussion carries the current temperature of south city St. Louis: frigid with snow and ice expected. Due to the MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL-IMPOSED LOCKOUT, teams can’t pursue new players much less get into their office at the moment.

Talks are ongoing between the MLB Owners and MLBPA--this week featured back-to-back days of meetings. They won’t get much closer on arbitration cash for young players and certainly won’t budge on time clocks, but we’re reaching a point in this venture when an endpoint must be reached. It’s not “waving the white flag” for the players, or giving too much space for the owners.

Real soon, this lockout will delay actual regular season baseball. That’s just not good; it’s a matter of long-term damage instead of upfront impact. Settling before March 1 still provides a chance for normalcy. Players report, get loose, get games going, and fire up the engines. The executives crunch the market and fill the gaps. By the end of the month, the season starts and the delayed offseason is a distant memory.

As Javier Bardem’s magnetic killer once proclaimed in a severely-overrated Coen Brothers movie, “call it.” Heads or tails, pay the tab and let’s get back to baseball. This ice cold Cardinal Nation Twitter stream lacks the much-needed drama one needs when he’s battling COVID-19.