Kyle Lohse has 41 million reasons to smile...if that's a smile?  (Bill Greenblatt, UPI) The Cardinals shored up their pitching rotation for the 2009 season by signing pitcher Kyle Lohse to a four year contract worth $41 million, following a surprise 2008 season for Lohse.

I say surprise, because I’m sure not many Cardinal fans expected the results from Lohse who was signed late in spring training.  Lohse went 15-6 with a 3.78 ERA, 119 strikeouts and 49 walks over exactly 200 innings. 

However, pitching coach Dave Duncan really liked Lohse right from the beginning when his agent Scott Boras brought Lohse by for a look at him pitching off the mound.

Many experts had the Cardinals picked to finish well out of the race and while the argument can be made that fourth place and 11.5 games out of first is well out of the race, it wasn’t until the middle of September that this team started to fall out of the Wild Card race.

The experts felt the Cardinals didn’t have the starting pitching.  After Wainwright and Looper, there was Todd Wellemeyer and Joel Pineiro (who had arm fatigue late in spring training) and after that not many answers before Lohse arrived. 

Chris Carpenter was going to be out until early June (which was very optimistic) and the same was said for Mark Mulder (who never really made it back) so Lohse was truly a bright spot for this team.  Had Lohse not pitched the way he did, this team wouldn’t have been around by August.  Lohse could win the MVP of this pitching staff.

For his innings and winning record, Lohse has been awarded.  Now if the Cardinals can just address those bullpen issues…