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This seems pretty well thought out to me.
https://www.vivaelbirdos.com/2023/10/18/23919991/2024-cardinals-projected-payroll-budget-v1-0
$55 million if they lose O’Neill to a trade or non-tender plus a couple million more for non-tendering Barnes and Woodford which seem fairly likely. Potentially $57 million to invest in 3 starters and 1-2 relievers.
Therefore any free agent is doable, but we limit the budget for other signings if they go after Nola or Yamamoto. I think those 2 contracts end up above DeWitt’s puke point, but anyone else should be in play.
If they’re going to buy their way out of this and truly compete for next year, that’s short. I’m for signing Yammomoto. I see that as a long term investment. Even if it means lesser for the other additions. He will be part of the current young group and future of the team. If you want to truly compete this year, you are looking at 210-220 for 2024. You might get Gray and Yammomoto for that money. But that leaves you a starter and 2 bullpen pieces short. Either that or you trade from your young core for the 3rd pitcher.
When I say you get Gray and Yammomoto for that money, I mean the 200. You need to spend beyond that for the rest of the players.
I will be surprised if we get either, but I agree they are much more realistic targets than Monty and Nola.
Yamamoto and Nola are the 2 most expensive targets because of the posting fee for Yamamoto. Monty is probably going to get the 3rd most.
Like KBC, I’d rather sign Yamamoto as well and play the long game. Many of our offensive guys are young and won’t be at their prime yet in 2024. But signing Yamamoto means we may only get one other mid-tier starter and that the others we sign have to come off the scrap heap or through trades. I’d be ok with that approach. Maybe we could get Yamamoto and Gray and a fill in like a Rich Hill or trade for a solid starter in his last year or two of arbitration.
The reason I would be surprised is like this.
Gray is heading into his age 34 season. At the least, it will take big bucks through his age 38 season, so odds are that would be a losing proposition over the life. A team will have to be willing to pay whatever it takes for a decent chance at a couple dominant injury free years, and be willing to take a beating on the contract after that. And it is quite possible somebody will pay him big through age 39, age 40, who knows. BillMo will have the computers humming and will understand fully what he would be setting himself up for. I don’t see BDW pulling the trigger on that.
As to Yammomoto, it might just come down to who dumps the hugest amount of cash. Why wouldn’t it come down to that? We all know BDW doesn’t win that war. Yammomoto would have to be willing to sign for less with a last place team that exhibited considerable disfunction last year. Why would he do that?
Yammomoto would have to be willing to sign for less with a last place team that exhibited considerable disfunction last year. Why would he
As we’ve seen before, the Cards standing in the division and cohesion or otherwise lack of has little impact on free agent signings. It’s always about the money unless there’s an unusual individual circumstance.
Like others, I’m in the $200M+ or bust crowd. Occasionally, as we saw in the VEB article, the Cards will bump payroll more significantly. If there was ever a time to do so, it’s probably now. There won’t be any big internal paydays coming for a couple of years, plus Goldy will come off the books after next year. If he’s solid they may look for him to finish his career in St Louis, but otherwise that’s a chunk of money.
Irrespective, if the payroll were to be bumped to an adequate level, they could sign two starters, a bullpen arm, make a trade and possibly shore up the bench depth too. Given the need to pump the fans up again, I’d argue that a sizeable salary bump is necessary. Another sub .500 season could set the team back into a true rebuild.
Yamamoto and Nola are the 2 most expensive targets because of the posting fee for Yamamoto. Monty is probably going to get the 3rd most.
I’ll be surprised if Boras doesn’t have Monty come out on top. I’d agree that Nola is actually worth more though. We don’t need to worry about either one. Those are going to be mammoth contracts.
I would really like to see us trade for Clarke Schmidt of the Yankees. He is an innings eater, cheap, and has four years of control remaining. I view him as Mikolas lite but at a fraction of the cost. His true value would be to cheaply eat innings which would free up payroll space to go after two bigger impact starters.
According to BTV a trade of Carlson (5.6), Burleson (6.3), and Graceffo (8.7) for Schmidt (18.4) would just about balance out.
It seems like Schmidt probably would cost less than that, but who knows with trades nowadays. He would be an ok addition, I think. It still looks like Miami or Seattle make sense as trade partners, but it’s hard to figure who would go each way and Miami has some uncertainty in their front office, to say the least.
I have them at $183.6M for next year. That’s 5% more than what the 2023 payroll ended at, which was $175M. They didn’t account for the $8M the Cardinals saved in 2023 with their deadline deals.
So with all arb guys signed, we have $143.5M committed for 2024. That’s $40M to play with.
Breakdown:
One big FA starter, $20M for YR1 (or Glasnow)
One small FA starter, $10M for YR1
One decent FA reliever, $7M for YR1
One small FA reliever, $3M for YR1Then the SP2/3 would come from a trade that likely sends someone out like O’Neil, Edman, Hudson, or Carlson, or they just trade them to balance things.
That’s 3 SPs and 2 RPs, plus using our surplus in the infield/outfield for trades.
If I recall the Yankees supposedly had interest in Carlson at the deadline. Maybe we could revive those talks as part of a Schmidt deal.
Schmidt is a 5 inning guy who answers the bell every 5 days and turns in a .500 record. Exactly what I figure Mo means by innings depth.
Well he is probably a number 4 in the rotation. He gave the Yankees 159 IP this year, which would have ranked second in our rotation (since Monty and Flaherty were traded), is projected to make around $3M in 2024 and won’t be a free agent until 2028. My thought is that it isn’t realistic to think we are going to acquire three high dollar starters so you need to find one on the cheap side who can at least give you some innings and isn’t hurt all of the time.
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