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This could go in one of many different threads. I put it here because the writer talks a lot about how a vaccine could impact payroll.
Vaccine News is Good News for Everyone (Including the Cardinals)
The Cardinals are mired in uncertainty, but good news about a vaccine could help bring needed clarity to payroll and roster decisions. https://t.co/lRZ0O8GNcS
— viva el birdos (@vivaelbirdos) November 12, 2020
DeWitt Jr. to Goold:
“We’ve always made every attempt to be competitive, year after year.”
But “competitive” for what in 2021? Wild Card, Division, World Series? How many wins? 81, 85, 90, 95?
“It’s not like we have a hard and fast budget. It’s fluid.”
If Goold asked him to confirm the payroll would be down year-to-year, as Mo said, there is no evidence of it. I guess we still assume that is the case.
Not a direct quote, but Goold’s summary:
DeWitt said his baseball operations group has the green light to sign a free agent. Indeed, the team continues to talk with Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright about their returns. But the preference is to avoid substantial commitments, such long-term offers.
Taking Goold’s wording at face value, it suggests to me they could sign one of Waino or Yadi and that is it for now.
What makes a “substantial commitment” in money and years? Specifically, would two years for Yadi be “substantial”? I have so many follow on questions…
How do you see it? What do you take from this?
That article doesn’t answer many questions but my guess is that the Cardinals will find the money to bring Yadi and Waino back and will scour the non-tender aisle for a bargain.
VEB breaks down the potentially large amount of financial flexibility the Cardinals should have next winter, which we have discussed frequently here.
The Cardinals have a lot of money coming off the books after the 2021 season. I try to figure out exactly what their 2022 payroll currently looks like. https://t.co/GSPBGpKMld pic.twitter.com/inHsc3wrQU
— viva el birdos (@vivaelbirdos) November 16, 2020
Not every team is cutting their budget in 2021.
Arte Moreno: Angels' Payroll "Not Going Down" In 2021 https://t.co/z799EQ9te2 pic.twitter.com/BUWdohzf8s
— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) November 17, 2020
To those who criticize the Cardinals for their bad contracts, here is a reminder of what else is going on around baseball…
That was a Dave Dombrowksi special. Some say he should be in the HOF but he does the same thing every time. He spends a ton of money, guts the farm system, wins a championship, then bails or is fired so someone else can come in and clean up the mess. Poor Chaim Bloom is left to pick up the pieces in Boston now.
Is the FO done reducing budget commitments? Six arb players are coming up on the Wednesday, Dec. 2nd deadline. Will all be tendered?
Flaherty, Hicks and Reyes are locks to be tendered for me. What about Brebbia, Gant and Bader? Is there a non-tender or two in the bunch?
Maybe a trade in the final week before the deadline?
None of our arb eligible players will be very expensive this year so you would think all six would be offered. Then again, many of us were surprised that Wong’s option wasn’t picked up so the Cardinals may be willing to purge every penny they can or at least open up more room on the 40 man.
I would rank the six in order of most likely to be non-tendered to least likely.
Brebbia
Gant
Bader
Reyes
Hicks
FlahertyI put this here because it is a reminder that despite a team’s payroll capacity building from within is always the cornerstone. I really believe the Cardinals can emulate the Dodgers even if on a smaller scale.
"They're the model."
How the Dodgers built a player development machine envied by the rest of baseball 👇https://t.co/M5fbRT7bfE pic.twitter.com/e2F7egqxZH
— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) November 29, 2020
With that TV deal and the best attendance in the league regularly, the Dodgers can use their money any way they wish and still have money left over to burn. It’s an enviable position. The Cards did many of the things the Dodgers did well from about 2008-2015, then have tailed off recently. Makes you wonder what has changed.
The relative ranking of the Cardinals farm system based on my consensus tabulation of the major national raters has always been in the narrow band between no. 13 and no. 17 for the six years since 2015. In the six years prior to that, it was a wild fluctuation almost every year from as low as no. 29 to a high of no. 1.
In other words, what has changed recently is perception, mostly driven by a few high-profile trades that did not work out well out of the gates, IMO. That is what seems to have so many upset. The rankings actually indicate that drafting and development have been pretty consistent.
P.S. I respect far more what the Rays have accomplished, for example. As already noted, the teams with the most resources SHOULD do a good job. The bottom line is that the Dodgers have just one title since 1988. All the rest is secondary, as I see it. I will take the Cardinals’ long term success without the peaks and valleys.
I don’t think you will see as many peaks and valleys with the Dodgers under Friedman as you did under their previous regimes. Why? Because he knows that building from within is as important, if not more important, than writing checks.
As the article points out, there are other teams with the big TV deals like the Dodgers but they don’t achieve the same success. There has to be a combination of money and intelligence.
The Cardinals can have both too. I still think very highly of the Cardinals drafting and development processes. That is their wheel house. As Brian alluded to, if the Cardinals could get better with free agency and trades the sky would be the limit.
Excellent work as always by Jayson. A very interesting spin on the non-tender numbers. But the analysis goes much further in explaining why teams like the #stlcards will have a down payroll in 2021. https://t.co/JvrVnzQdTR
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) December 4, 2020
As he pointed out it isn’t a surprise that Central teams have been greatly impacted by Covid because they are all small market teams, except the Cubs and Cardinals. The White Sox are technically in a big market but they don’t spend like it and their attendance numbers are usually very average. I think he is also correct in saying that 2020 is probably just a unique outlier.
In this analysis, it looks he has the Cardinals currently pegged at about $130 MM. Is that consistent with what our board members who track this believe?
I took a look at every team's payroll as of right now. I was pretty surprised to see how far down the Cardinals were compared to last season. https://t.co/Vvjz7IQQoe
— Craig Edwards (@craigjedwards) December 8, 2020
GS had us at 126mil on page 3, and the only roster change since has been Brebbia for a minimum guy, basically no change.
Good, thanks.
P.S. On the 2020 being a one-time outlier point made earlier, 2021 is sure shaping up like it will be another abnormal season in terms of finances.
Yep, I currently have us at $126M but arbitration amounts can vary.
Before the pandemic we had a payroll of around $165M for 2020. It will be interesting to see how much of a reduction we have for 2021.
Forget about the name of the player and focus on the concept of borrowing ahead to tap 2022 money to pay for 2021. If this becomes a wide-spread practice around the game, these kinds of moves now could limit the flexibility teams with a lot of money coming off the books will have available in 2022. Definitely something to keep an eye on…
The #SFGiants are deferring half of Anthony DeScalifini's $6 million salary in 2021, paying $3 million of it in the first quarter of 2022, including any of the potential $250,000 in incentives he reaches. The #SFGiants have $53.4 million in contracts coming off books after 2021.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 18, 2020
I don’t think this will impact the Cardinals much. They aren’t going to be signing any expensive free agents this winter so even if they deferred a bit of Yadi and Waino’s salary to 2022 it wouldn’t come close to matching the $62M coming off the books after 2021.
A recap of a lot of the payroll details across baseball in 2020.
AP Exclusive: MLB payrolls dropped nearly $2.5 billion during pandemic-shortened season.
Payroll leaders:
-Dodgers ($98.6 million)
-Yankees ($83.6 million)
-Mets ($83.4 million)Full story: https://t.co/kCbonIqeRw
— AP Sports (@AP_Sports) December 20, 2020
I obviously touched a nerve by having the audacity of comparing the Cardinals to the Dodgers. Why did this touch a nerve? I am not sure really. I would think being compared to them would be considered a compliment but I guess not. I suspect it has to do with folks are assuming that I somehow criticizing Mo and the front office for not achieving the same results as the Dodgers annually, therefore, it is being pointed out to me that my expectations are unreasonable because the Dodgers have too many financial advantages to make the comparison legitimate.
Well that wasn’t my intent at all. I think everyone is getting too hung up on money. What I was trying to compare are the fundamental principles of team building, regardless of money. Those principles are:
1. Great Drafting
2. Great Player Development
3. Great TradesThose aspects are how Friedman builds his teams and I believe the Cardinals follow a similar model and could do so even more because I think MO and our front office have the capability to be very successful at all three of those aspects. You will note that spending big in free agency is not a listed component.
So what about the MONEY??? Well, let’s examine that.
Do the Dodgers have more revenue than the Cardinals? Yes
Do the Dodgers have a larger payroll? Yes
Are the Cardinals a small/mid market team? It depends on how you define it but I am going to maintain the answer is NO based on the overall revenue, attendance, size of fan base, and franchise worth the Cardinals have.Having a larger payroll can help a team paper over some mistakes, re-sign internal core players, and have a wider margin of error. There is no doubt about that but the three core principles of team building apply no matter what.
For example, let’s look at a different team who also uses those three core principles, the Tampa Bay Rays. Erik Neander leads the Rays front office and who did he study under? Friedman of course. Do the Rays have a financial advantage over the Cardinals? No they don’t but they can still share similar traits. Money doesn’t always determine who wins and who doesn’t. The Rays were in the World Series with a microscopic payroll but what do they specialize in?
Drafting, Development, and Trades. And not just making trades they WIN trades.
So the point of all of these comparisons was to complement the Cardinal front office on what they used to do and what I think they are going to be doing in the future, which is draft, develop, and trade. We should probably avoid big free agents unless we think it is an absolute slam dunk. Over the years we have acquired via trade McGwire, Wainwright, Rolen, Edmonds, Holliday, Heyward (who was good with the Cards), and Goldschmidt. Free agency hasn’t been as kind to us.
Let’s stick with what we do best. I am hoping our front office has learned from their mistakes in free agency and internal extensions and are ready to get back to basics.
Franchise worth does nothing to provide cash flow. Just because the net worth of the franchise goes up on paper doesn’t mean the cash in the bank went up, too.
MARKET size relates to the market the team is in. Yes, the Cardinals do have a following from a wide area but that doesn’t mean that the fans from the far reaches can attend many games a year. I live 4 hours away and wouldn’t be able to attend 10 games a year. If the St. Louis metro area was 1/2 again larger than it currently is, then I would admit it is a large market team.
Reading the article that was referenced in the Yadi thread, the Astros were said to have made the most profit of any team last year. If the Dodgers have that gigantic revenue and yet make no more (or even less) profit than the Cards, where does that all go? Likely into the scouting and development budget. It probably is double what the Cards have and can afford. That places the impetus on the smaller and mid market teams to be very good at identifying and developing their talent as they know that they can’t compete on the payroll front.
All that said, I think the Dodgers copied the Cards earlier this decade when they saw the success St Louis was having, so I don’t think it’s an insult at all that they are doing comparable things. They just aren’t doing so with even distantly similar resources.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if Tampa is spending near what St Louis is on scouting and development. That’s probably where they realized they can make hay while shaving money off the MLB payroll.
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