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The Cardinals would like for Dylan Carlson to rebound and be a factor for them in October, even as their everyday center fielder. They do think he's part of the best defense they can put out there, and part of their better lineup against left-handed pitchers. But the Cardinals see Carlson as a contributing part of their best everyday lineup.

There would have to be injuries ahead of him on the depth chart for Liberatore to have a "critical" role in the Cardinals' postseason.

I'm not so sure. They're pretty aware of the situation they were in that time, and they were in a spot that they needed a cleanup hitter, Ozuna was coming off a strong season, and he hit all the metrics when it came to hitting the ball often, hard, and for power. If anything, they would definitely prefer to have offered the same package and got Yelich in return. That would have given them the left-handed bat they kept trying to find, trying to find, trying to find year after year there for a stretch. But ... would they have Goldschmidt if they did that? That's a real question. 

I don't get the sense that they would mulligan that deal -- but they definitely have looked and think about how urgency drove that deal and whether patience would have resulted better or just different.

I would not dismiss the All-Star break, but there's much more to it than that. He had a blast in LA. That was definitely when so many people saw and gave him positive feedback on how much fun he was having. It was striking the blast he was having there -- and how that brought buoyancy to his at-bats, too. But let's not ignore the significant indicators of what has happened:

-- Health. Pujols has his legs under him. That's not something he had for long stretches in recent years. His foot pain and leg pain gave him less of a base at the plate. There are times where he moves like he is still sore, but he does not appear limited, and he talks about how he has felt good enough to maintain that work ethic in the cage and off the field that he feels is the source of all his success.

-- The Cardinals had that run of games against left-handed starters. Just a good steady look at them. That gave Pujols starts. That gave Pujols success. That gave Pujols rhythm. And that has just snowballed into what we have here. As Adam Wainwright told me in Arizona: When he gets homer happy, he hits them in bunches. Those starts against lefties ignited the homer-happy run of today.

I think you could make the case. You have to take into account the time in which a player played. Albert Pujols is easily the best right-handed hitter the Cardinals have had since Rogers Hornsby. Well, Hornsby played before integration. So isn't Pujols the best right-handed hitter the Cardinals have ever had because he had to go against the best available in the world, not the best permitted to play? Similarly, consider how hard it is to hit these days, how much velocity there, how much tech there is, and the shifts, and everything. It's the hardest era to hit, and here Pujols is ... hitting. Matching some of the greatest records of all times.

He's fourth in homers. He's SECOND in total bases. 

Team sports are difficult to rank Top Fives all-time because there are just so many different roles, so do you consider the role and how they performed in it? Well, that would vault Mariano Rivera into the top five because of how he performed in the role he had compared to others. Or, do we just focus on players. To me, you've got include three players when you're thinking about a top five all-time in baseball: Hank Aaron, of course and likely No. 1; Willie Mays; and Rickey Henderson. Barry Bonds will stir plenty of debate, and then you start going into the Mantle, Williams, Musial, and back to pre-Robinson days in MLB. You start putting Pujols against that group and look at the scope of the numbers he's put up and the era in which he's done it, the time he spent as the best player in the game, the all-around play ... 

Look, it's not far-fetched. Not at all. 

It's not difficult. Paul Goldschmidt's first year with the Cardinals was Marcell Ozuna's last year with the Cardinals. The Cardinals did not discuss an extension with Ozuna. They signed an extension with Goldschmidt. They moved on from Ozuna when he did not accept a one-year offer from them, and they were then able to make a move later for Arenado. Now, consider this change of events if:

-- Cardinals had successfully traded for Stanton and taken on around $200 million of his contract from the Marlins.

-- Or, Cardinals had successfully traded for Yelich and signed him to the same $215-million extension that the Brewers did. That included about $190 million in new money for Yelich's contract. 

All of that would have been done before Goldschmidt became available via trade, and before the Cardinals then offered him a five-year, $130-million extension.

So, tell me again how they're not related? Roster moves rarely happen in a vacuum.

I get this question a lot and I'm not sure what's expected here. The Cardinals have a hitting lab. They do not yet -- again -- have the pitching lab they wanted. They have increased the spending on tech over the past few years to really expand the use through the minors and were even outfitting every hitter in the organization below the majors with individual tech for their training. The infrastructure is much improved. But please keep in mind that places like Driveline exist and the lab in Baton Rouge exist to offer more than teams -- that's how they get business. They push the edge, they push tech, they experiment, and they do things that teams cannot do because of that, again, is how they stay in business.

Teams have hired from Driveline and other places to get that insight and expertise, but there's no need for a team to bring all of that in house any more than a team should buy up all the personal trainers that players use.

Teams, like the Cardinals, encourage players to see out such places. Gorman and Knizner recently went to Baton Rouge so that they could work in the hitting lab there -- and get immediate bats from the manufacturer to see how it worked. Should the Cardinals go into the bat business? Or, should is encouraging their hitters to see out this information the same thing without the overhead? 

Using everything at a player's disposal to improve is what the best players do, and it's what the best team's encourage.

Where the Cardinals have improved and needed for years to improve was with the in-house availability and in-house advocacy of such curiosity. That has changed.