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Coincidentally, VEB is running an article on extension candidates. After a lot of analysis, they think that the timing is best for the player but not for the team, as they would be paying coming off what VEB projects to be his best career season (2022). They don’t recommend a long-term deal right now.
Is there an extension candidate on Cards that makes sense for both the Cardinals and the player? https://t.co/YSM3ahY0nG pic.twitter.com/hIUZW771PR
— viva el birdos (@vivaelbirdos) December 26, 2022
I would not sign Edman long term unless very favorable terms (something like Whit Merrifield’s deal with a low base and club options). Merrifield is an excellent comp for Edman and he’s basically replacement level by now. Little guys whose game is predicated on speed and defense tend to decline early, and Edman fits that bill to a T. We want him here til about 30ish, and then move on.
Incorrect on Eddie IMO. Sign him long-term NOW.
The reason being to be sure we can afford his services in 2026, I assume?
GC,
“IMO”
Opinions supported by your reasoning, can become more than absolutes from the stands, like “incorrect”.
The reality is that Eddie’s overall offensive numbers to date don’t quite add up to Merrifield’s, who led the AL in hits for two consecutive seasons. However, it’s my view that Eddie certainly eclipses him with the glove. At any rate, I agree with the idea of something similar in regards to money and length of a contract for Edman. Three to four years at $6MM to $7MM per with an option on the 4th year. I think that’d be fair.
Depending on how Winn and Gorman shape up, and Donovan, and the outfielder/DHs, Edman could be a bench player after this year. Mo won’t want $6-7 Million sitting on the bench, and the contract might be hard to move. Factoring in that the worst that can happen is he makes arb money for 3 years and moves on or gets traded, and I consider the chance of a long term contract this winter to be zero.
It’d be my guess that Edman will play for another team before he sits on the bench in a Redbird uniform, and wherever he ends up he’ll get at least 500 PA’s.
Its really mind boggling to me how much value is attached to a homer a week. It hardly seems to matter what happens the rest of the time. Edman hits .265 with a dozen and the organization is chomping at the bit to get Winn up here to take over. DeJong hit .230-.240 with a dong a week and they backed a truck up on his lawn and burred him in cash. It truly is deranged, but that’s how it is.
It tells me that people who spend a lot more time studying this than we do, do not value batting average nearly as much as some here do. Just maybe, there is something to be learned rather than disparaged.
To get the facts right, using your metrics, DeJong batted .285 with 25 homers in his rookie year. The world assumed he would get better in year two and beyond, so he got the big money.
FWIW, Edman’s best year offensively by a fair amount was also his rookie season. Two of the three years since then were below MLB average. Of course, his defensive value is high.
It will be interesting to see how Winn does this year. Edman was a .300 hitter in AA and AAA, but he was a more mature player coming from college.
DeJong tatered up 23 times in his rookie season, but that’s beside the point. RBI’s to supplement the taters are the key to offensive production. An extreme example of how taters are no good without the meat of the RBI’s to go with it would be Jedd Gyorko with 30 HR’s and only 59 RBI’s with the Cardinals in ’16. Dejong has never collected more than 78 RBI’s in a season in his career and that was during a season in which he tatered-up 30 times. He simply hasn’t ever hit with runners aboard.
I don’t see any reason to extend any position players at this time. A more likely place would be the starting rotation considering that Matz and Hudson are the only current starters locked up in 2024. Mikolas and Montgomery would be the likely extension candidates, but as the article above states, both of those would be tricky endeavors.
In my view, the key to Tommy Edman’s offensive value is that he crosses HP. He’s done so 91 and 95 times respectively for the last two seasons. It’ll never happen, but it would be nice if he’d be able to boast like a certain HOF’er who is the all time leader in runs scored with the phrase, “When Tommy gets on, Tommy scores”…At the end of game, they still count the runs to determine the victor.
Carpenter broke the extension model. He signed a 2/39mil extension 4-10-2019 coming off a 4.4bwar season in 2018.
He posted 1.1 war in 2019 and 0.2 bwar in 2020. Now Mo is extension gunshy and the economics are different during and after covid.
Home runs, BA and RBI? Maybe, but that doesn’t explain Flahertys career year pitching and no extension. In fact he was dissatisfied with his arb pay enough to go to arbitration. They didn’t show Jack the money.
O’Neills career year in 2021? Post-covid ownership was shaving back commitments (Wong / Brebbia) everywhere they could.
I’ll take O’Neills career season over PDJ’s debut season, but the economics were different for O’Neill after 2021. PDJ signed March 2018, before the Carp extension April 2019.
Other than BA, DeJong’s best season was ’19. He hit 30 HR’s, collected 78 RBI’s and crossed HP 97 times. At that juncture, it looked like Johnny made the correct call. Things change in a hurry. Since that time he’s had a little over 800 PA’s in which he’s looked as bad or worse than Goldy’s 8 PA’s in the ’22 NLDS.
Correct, while PDJ was putting up 5.3 bwar in his THIRD season, Carp was posting 1.1 bwar. The economic environment (and Carp) has lead to very few extensions.
Bader and Gallegos since? Who else?
Hopefully we are climbing out of those economics because we have Mikolas and Montgomery as free agents-to-be, and they won’t be cheap.
I think the economics is a part of it, but the evaluation and valuation of talent is the bigger part. Not only are they not looking at basic stats like BA, RBI, WAR, etc., but they may not be looking at stats at all. The latest thing is called deep analytics, which is “the application of sophisticated data processing techniques to yield information from unstructured data”. So basically your proprietary algo takes the raw data and tells you the answer. No wRC+, no launch angle or spin rate or K/9 or any of the stuff we haven’t even heard of. We have no idea how a guy will look in that kind of baseball dystopia. Maybe Mikolas stinks. How would we know?
I don’t think the Cardinals intend to sign both of them. Obviously the ’23 season will influence their decision, but at this stage, my guess would be their focus is placed more on Montgomery than Mikolas.
Players score runs at times by hitting into fc or errors. This love affair with Edman is just weird.
Well, you first have to reach base to score on a FC or an E. I’m also sorry that what you view as a “love affair” seemingly bothers you so much, Oliver…Haha!
Well, I’m happy to know it doesn’t bother you. No one enjoys being bothered. Especially by a love affair…
Edman as a controllable player is the type of guy you need to have to win in the big leagues. I’m thankful that we have him.
That said, he’s also the exact type that you typically cut bait on when he gets expensive. He’ll enter free agency at age 30, his age 31 and beyond years being the big buck outlay. He could be good beyond that or he could go the Merrifield route. I hope he’s still playing at high level to make it a choice, but the Cards likely will have equivalent, cheaper options by then.
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