The Northern Cardinal, for many of us, is that first blaze of color after a long winter.

They begin to sing in the late winter, early spring, and you see that male cardinal dashing

across your yard to take up a post and sing its brilliant whistled song.

Good morning, and welcome to episode 407 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from

Baseball Prospectus, presented by the BaseballReference.com Playindex.

I am Ben Lindberg, joined by Sam Miller.

I always think of 407 as the batting average Ted Williams wasn't good enough for.

Today, we resume our season preview podcast series, going from the bottom to the top of

Fakota's projected standings. We're getting pretty close to the top here, so we have come to

the St. Louis Cardinals, and later in the show, Nick will be talking to Kevin Wheeler of 101 ESPN

St. Louis. Right now, we will be talking to another completely impartial member of the press,

a man who has covered Cardinals' playoff games from the press box without emitting so much as a

strangled yelp. He is Will Leech. Hey, Will. Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming on. Well, first off, before we get going, I've listened to the whole series.

I'm a big fan of you guys. I listened to all the shows. From Sochi. I was checking the

download stats, so I know that it was the worst. But I have to say, this is earlier than I thought

we would be doing the Cardinals on this podcast. Yes. I think, yes, Sam and I would agree that if

this were our personal ranking, we would probably be doing the Cardinals next week. But we have to

go by what the system says. So I was looking at the Cardinals' depth chart as I do before we do

these things. And I try to pick out a weak spot that I can ask about. So I'm still looking for it.

I'm going to come up with it pretty soon. Back up catcher. They've had some pretty lousy backup

catcher lately. We're worried about the eighth starter possibly. Is there anything on this

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