St. Louis ? The St. Louis Cardinals have tasted postseason success, and they likely will have to pay for it now.

St. Louis general manager Walt Jocketty’s biggest challenge this offseason will be keeping the World Series champions on top while facing budget constraints. Some of his biggest decisions will deal with his starting rotation, beginning with postseason standouts Jeff Weaver and Jeff Suppan – two free agents who could be looking for more money after strong playoff runs.

Jocketty believes it’s unwise to judge potential free agents on what they do in October, and that philosophy may be tested after Weaver and Suppan played key roles in the franchise’s first World Series championship in 24 years.

“I’m sure an agent will try to sell that aspect,” Jocketty said. “But you’ve got to judge a guy on his career, you’ve got to judge him on the entire year.

“You can’t do it on a couple of short series, or you shouldn’t anyhow.”

Weaver was plucked from the junk yard after going 3-10 with the Angels and getting released to make room for kid brother Jered in the rotation, and even though he was 5-4 with the Cardinals his overall earned-run average was 5.76. Last year he had a one-year, $8.25 million contract.

Weaver resurrected his career in the postseason with a victory in each round, and he dominated for eight innings in the Game 5 clincher against the Detroit Tigers. He wants to stay, noting the Cardinals have made it to the postseason in six of the last seven seasons.

“Why wouldn’t you if you have the opportunity to have the chance to do this each and every year?” Weaver said. “This is what we play for, to have the chance to win, and we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

Suppan generally has been regarded as a middle to back-end pitcher in the rotation, even after consecutive 16-win seasons in 2004 and ’05. He won 12 games this season with a strong second half, and rose to prominence for the first time in his career with the NL championship series MVP award. He made $4 million in the final year of his deal.

St. Louis pitcher Jeff Weaver celebrates with fans after the Cardinals defeated the Detroit Tigers in Game 5 of the World Series. The Cards won, 4-2, on Friday night in St. Louis.

Those are just two of the many decisions facing the Cardinals after a run-of-the-mill regular season. Their 83-78 record was the worst record by a World Series winner.

The Cardinals survived a pair of eight-game losing streaks, then lost seven in a row during a 3-9 near-meltdown at the end of the season. There was plenty of doubt.

“You kind of prepare for the worst and you hope for the best,” manager Tony La Russa said. “There were many times that things just didn’t seem like they were falling into place for us.”

In October, they were reborn. They took out the Padres in four games and outlasted the Mets in seven before capping off their unlikely season.

“It just shows you this is the best game in the world because you can’t predict it,” Series MVP David Eckstein said. “You get a bunch of guys that are on a mission, that are going out there playing as hard as they can, as smart as they can, until the game ends, anything is possible.”

The other big choice: whether to pick up a $10 million option on Jim Edmonds’ contract.

Edmonds, 36, had an injury-plagued year with post-

concussion syndrome sidelining him for a month, a sore left foot requiring daily pain-killing injections to get him through the postseason and a shoulder likely to require offseason surgery. Then he led the team with 10 RBIs in a resurgent postseason.

Does second baseman Ronnie Belliard, the top trade deadline acquisition, make sense as a long-term fit? Belliard was prized for his bat when he was acquired from the Indians but has been streaky offensively, impressing most on defense.

Preston Wilson was the primary left fielder in the postseason after being cast aside by the Astros.

“In this game, some teams might feel like you’re not the right fit for them, but in other clubs you are,” Wilson said. “In this clubhouse, we welcome everybody.”

Change is inevitable. This year’s team had only 10 holdovers from the 2004 team that got swept in the World Series by the Boston Red Sox.

“We really haven’t sat down and figured it out,” Jocketty said before the Series began. “We’ve thought about it, but we haven’t sat down and said this is our plan for next year.

“I would hope we could keep some of them around.”