So Cards ranked bottom 1/3 in offense. Where will we find upgrades? Carp and Goldy probably do a little better. Wong could regress back to his lifetime averages (hope not). Thr Cards are looking for youth in the outfield to boost offense. Mostly the Cards are looking to Albert to get more out of everybody. Is anybody really confident that the Cardinals will improve to say the top 1/3? I’m not buying that the Cardinals can be done. While I think we can compete for a WC or hope the Cubs stumble , this is not a play-off roster. I give us a generous C+ for the off season so far. Basically we picked up some pitching in KK and a top prospect in Liberatore.
Carpenter literally can't hit worse or he won't be playing. Seeings as he was a top 10 hitter in the league in 2018, I'm willing to bet he's got some kind of bounce back coming. If you took his terrible April and most of May away, Goldschmidt was same old Goldschmidt, so hopefully he can be a little more consistent to start the year.
Wong last year hit exactly as good as he did in 2017, and only slightly better than 2018, he's been a pretty consistent slightly above league average hitter with amazing defense, which is a really good player. Last year was also only the first time since 2015 he got over 500 PAs, because Matheny was an idiot.
Cardinals had the 8th ranked offense in the NL, smack dab in the middle (not bottom 3rd). We saw Carpenter and Goldschmidts downside last year, and theres so much upside in Bader, O'Neill, Carlson, and even DeJong that I highly doubt they'll be anywhere but top 5 in the NL this year. With the amazing defense (which will likely be even better this year) and good pitching, that's a low 90s, easy playoff spot team.