I had Dexter Fowler as the second-best free agent in this winter’s class behind only Yoenis Cespedes, but he would have been No. 1 if we were talking specifically about the Cardinals’ needs.

St. Louis had few spots on their roster where they could clearly use an upgrade and gain a couple of wins just by one move, and centerfield was the most obvious one, with no true center fielder on the roster and a rather glaring need for another high-OBP bat in the lineup.

Only four Cardinals hitters managed to top a .330 OBP last year, and one, Aledmys Diaz, is probably going to regress at the plate from his 2016 performance. Fowler’s .393 OBP was a career high and it’s reasonable to expect him to regress as well, but even his subpar .346 on-base percentage from 2015 would be a boost to this lineup over the .290 the Cards got from center fielders this past season.

Fowler’s defense has been a topic of conversation this winter as he posted his best defensive performance ever by UZR and dRS, a change he has credited to improved positioning, including playing deeper because he’s better coming in on balls in front of him than going back on balls hit over his head. I would be more skeptical of a one-year spike in defensive numbers without this explanation, because skill levels do change but rarely to this extent in a player’s age-30 season.

Fowler may not be in center field when this contract ends as he’ll be 35 and will likely have slowed down enough to be below-average there, but I think there’s a 75 percent chance he’s average there in the first two years of the deal. I think this is at least a two-win boost for the Cardinals, with a chance for it to be more in the earlier years of the contract.

The signing doesn’t displace anyone from the Cardinals’ expected lineup: Either Randal Grichuk or Stephen Piscotty moves to left field, with the other in right, although Grichuk’s 2016 offensive performance won’t profile well in a corner, and he’ll have to do better than a .240/.277/.477 line against right-handed pitching to keep his job.

The Cardinals do have one near-term outfield prospect in Harrison Bader, a corner outfielder who hit well in double-A this year at age 22 before hitting a wall in just 49 games in Triple-A. He has an outside chance to be a regular in a corner and could be a valuable trade piece for St. Louis this summer if he hits better in a second go-round for Memphis.

The Cardinals signing Fowler really hampers the Blue Jays, who should have been in this market given the price, which was less than the four years, $90 million I thought Fowler might get heading into the offseason. Fowler fit Toronto’s needs almost as well as he fit the Cardinals’. The Jays get no offense from their elite fielder in center, Kevin Pillar, and they really don’t have a true everyday outfielder in any of their three spots, with more part-timers on the depth chart than they can likely carry into the season.

They seem disinclined to reunite with either Edwin Encarnacion or Jose Bautista, which I can understand given those players’ ages and desires for long-term contracts into their late 30s, but with Fowler off the market there isn’t another free agent who can address their outfield problem. At this point, they’d be better off sitting it out and hoping a trade possibility emerges.