Should the Cards Add Peavy: The Money & The Splits

Which starter gets demoted to the bullpen? This question is a lot harder to answer since Pinata became useful…

Here’s the link. He provides a list of roughly analogous Future Redbirds.

Something that’s never considered is how this improves our team by NOT allowing the Cubs to land him. If the Cubs get Peavy, that’s going to hurt us and our division chances. They’re going to win more, and we’re going to need to win more. I know we always consider WAR, etc. but we rarely consider the impact of another team getting him.

as for who we need to send to them to land peavy – i’m not too sure of their needs – off limits are wallace, rasmus and motte. how about duncan, d jones/jay, hawksworth/ottavino and thurston?

if we wait until after ‘10 to extend pujols, then we only have one year of slightly bloated payroll before carp’s contract drops

and with what i propose we have a tentative starting five and lineup of

carp
peavy
waino
lohse
kmac

ss – tgreene
cf – rasmus
1b – pujols
lf – luddy
3b – wallace
c – yadi
rf – craig/jay/jones
2b – ryan/skip

and then perez and motte manning the the 8th and 9th

looks pretty intimidating to those in the know

Pujols won’t take 30 million a year. he isn’t that greedy, and he will sacrifice a part of what he could make so the cards can afford other good players. I totally agree that they can easily afford peavy, and 101.35 million payroll is probably on the high side, and even if that is what it turns out tu be, it is definitely possible, largely due to the young players that can fill in the smaller roles for low $. Mo and the FO have always said that they have the flexibility to make a deal if the right move comes around. It is really just a matter of what they think of peavy as. Usually they know more than us, but if they think of Peavy as one of the best starters in the game and a clear ace, I don’t see why they shouldn’t get him unless they think he’s an injury risk. There is no way they can justify not getting peavy for payroll reasons IMO.

Honestly, I think if we add Peavy, Pujols will be more inclined to sign at a cheaper price if it means being able to keep him on the team. This could make this team a Dynasty, and I’m sure Pujols wouldn’t mind missing out on a few bucks for that.

but if it could be done for any combination of players that does not include Rasmus or Wallace, I’d do it in a heartbeat. This is the kind of move Pujols must have been talking about when he said he’d like to stay in STL as long as they are committed to winning (I’m paraphrasing). I know we are extremely hampered by injuries right now, but sometimes its just sad to look out there and see Pujols—the best player on the planet—and think what’s going through his head: Cards management going “Here you go, big guy. Go win one with Nick Stavinoha and Joe Thurston!!” Obviously I’m being a little facetious here, as I know this is not the FO’s ideal lineup either, but somehow, sometime, I’d like to see the Cardinals make a major move to try to win one while Albert is in his prime (I was born in 84 and out of the country with no tv or internet for all of the 06 playoffs and WS, so I’ve never seen them win one….damn my luck)

The White Sox weren’t giving up a pitcher anyhere near the same prospect level as Rasmus.

He’s their Pujols, absolutely no way they even consider trading him :D

But yeah, Peavy ftw

but i don’t think it should prevent the team from going after Peavy. i know owning a baseball team is a biz & every owner is in the biz to make money. but how much cash do you really need to make? with a guy like Peavy, assuming he stays healthy & performs at the level he’s always preformed at for the length of his deal, won’t all the money the team gets from playoff games & merchandise & everything else that comes with having a championship caliber club off set the extra cost of his contract?

if the Cards were to go get Peavy & DeRosa, and everything for once goes their way, they are without a doubt the favorite to win not only the central & NL, but the WS. and not only for this year, but for the next few years. i know, i know, Albert is going to have to be paid. but they can pay him & keep putting out a winning club. sure they may not want to, it may take a chuck out of their bottom line, but they can do it.

i’m sorry, i just don’t buy the spin from the team that they don’t have the cash like the big market clubs. of course they don’t have as much, but it’s not like they are the Royals, A’s, Rays,.etc. they have shown in the past they will spend when it’s the right player or two. and they have made millions upon millions of dollars in the past, and they will continue to make millions of dollars that they will never in their live time, or their kids lifetime, or hell even their grand kids life time be able to spend. so from where i set, this all comes down to commitment. are they really committed to winning it all every year? or are they really just committed to makes as much money as they can year in & year out?

i won’t be mad if they don’t do something like this. but as usual i will be disappointed & feel taken advantaged of because the Cards will once again say one thing, and do another.

… but we’re not signing Peavy, we’re trading three or four of our best prospects for him. which means giving up some twenty-odd cost-controlled player-years plus giving up Lohse (in the hypothetical where we don’t sign Lohse and do trade for Peavy).

let’s look at this a little more closely. suppose we have a choice between Peavy on the one hand or Lohse + 4 of our non-Rasmus/Wallace prospects on the other. suppose Peavy will be a 5 WAR player on average over the next four years (‘09-’12), while Lohse will be a 2.5 WAR player during the same period, so Peavy would give us 10 WAR over four seasons above Lohse. the 4 prospects combined will have 12 “free” years (each’s three pre-arb years) plus 12 years at salaries below the market rate (their arb years).

now, what level of performance can we assume for the prospects? it’s impossible to know for sure, and we’re not even talking specific prospects, but if two of the prospects end up being just league average while the other two are replacement level, what have we given up? we’ve given up 6 “free” years of 2.5 WAR, and 6 undervalued years of same.

in other words, we’ve given up 15 free WAR plus 15 cheap WAR, in order to gain 10 WAR. that’s not a very good deal.

let’s change the assumptions and see what happens. suppose Peavy equals his career-best year every year from now through 2012. he’d accrue 24.8 WAR. suppose Lohse is only worth 2 WAR in each of those years, or 8 WAR overall (this is the level of production his contract assumes). each of the four prospects would have to be worth no more than 1 WAR on average every year in order for a trade to make sense. basically, they’d all have to be worth no more than what Piniero was worth in 2008, and less (over a whole season) than Piniero has been worth so far in 2009.

and that still doesn’t make up the salary difference: Peavy is making $15mn more than Lohse from ‘09-’12, then has a $22mn option that he’d probably want guaranteed for ‘13, after Lohse would be gone. at $5mn/win, we can subtract 3 wins from Peavy’s projected ‘09-’12 for the difference in cost. let’s assume he performs exactly according to contract for ‘13 just to keep things simple, even though he’s only matched or exceeded that once in his career.

what does that mean? to make the deal, it means that even if you think that Peavy will equal his best season for each of the next four years, and even if you think Lohse’s average ability over the next four years is equal to the value he provided in his rookie season (rather than last season or something in between), and even if you think that Peavy will not regress away from Petco, and even add Peavy’s full value from this season rather than a half-season, then you still have to think that four prospects combined will be worth less than 3.3 WAR/year from ‘09-12, and then worth nothing at all after that. suppose the four are Boggs/Garcia/Salas/low-level prospect as Future Redbirds postulated. it’s not entirely unreasonable to think that Boggs or Garcia might out-perform that on their own. and with less drastic assumptions, and assuming that the Pads would accept the above package, if even one of them is league-average then the deal isn’t worth it.

Peavy’s contract is good… but only for the Padres. for a team trading prospects to get him (and pay him), it’s very difficult to come up with a scenario in which the trade makes more sense than signing a Lohse-type at the rate he actually got and keeping the prospects.

His likely contributions over his time with the Cardinals would be something like 200 innings and a 4.0 FIP each year. That’s worth about 3 WAR per season. That’s only about a win better than what Peavy projects to contribute each year. Given the fact that Lohse didn’t cost any prospects, it would be hard to say that Peavy would be that much better for us than Lohse.

I don’t care about the way it affects the rivalry, but I do agree with your view of that team going forward.

Part of me wants the Cubs to cough up the last few remaining prospects in their system, take on another huge and questionable contract, and see what happens as these contracts go sour.

The other part is scared of Peavy, though. So I’m undecided.

especially if they have peavy. They have a lot of good players on unlucky runs at the moment.

wellemeyer would need to go to the bullpen. and with us only paying peavy a prorate $11MM and oujols making 15, there’s be no need to get rid of welly or pineiro before season’s end. then they’re gone at the end of the season

and i’m not willing to give up boggs or garcia. those are our backups in the event that there’s an injury (cough carp cough). and i don’t think we’ll need to give up either. bear in mind peavy is putting the didgers in a tricky situation and you can almost smell the desperation growing to drop his contract. the white sox deal didn’t have two prospects as good as boggs and garcia and we could get peavy for less.

i say duncan, ottavino, lynn and a low level middle infielder, maybe even kozma. that’s a steal for peavy. i’d like to see his contract reworked, too, but that’s probably dreaming. either way, he’s not possibly getting that $22MM option at the end of his contract short of winning cy young every year until then

seriously, mo, make this deal. even if carp stays healthy from here on out, we need an undisputed ace type for after 2011 and peavy is pretty young. this deal seems like a no-brainer. i just hope mo doesn’t get too caught up in that “three SPs with long term contracts” thing. because even if two guys go down, we have two viable options in boggs and garcia. and if carp, peavy and waino all look like cy young winners, we can trade lohse to texas or something

you’d be giving up a 3 and 4 pitcher plus others for a guy who’s contract could cause us to not be able to afford any other FA’s in the future…not to mention he won’t be as good for us as he is for the padres

the Cubbies cannot afford Peavy… I wouldn’t worry about THAT. The Brewers, on the other hand, might want to pull another Sabathia type move (I assume they have more money available.)

he’s a free agent next year and will command a large salary. and it’s not like they’re making a run.

duncan, jones, anderson, ottavino, robinson for peavy and a $5MM discount on his contract

for the rest of his contract, then you’re dead right. i’m just sick of getting burned on that front

Lohse has a NTC for all four years of his contract. It’s a pretty crappy deal on our end.

They want to UNLOAD salary, not trade salaries. That’s the reason Peavy is even available.

… the fallacy in this line of logic is that you are comparing Peavy’s WAR and salary as if he were a FA. he isn’t. to match the White Sox’s offer, we’d be giving up 24 cost-controlled years in addition to paying the salary, and it would likely include our two best SP prospects (Boggs/Garcia) to boot (assuming the FR analysis is roughly correct). to make that trade beneficial, Peavy has to be MUCH more valuable than 4.2 WAR every year unless you just assume that those four players have absolutely no value at all.

similarly, if Wallace gave us anything close to the same value as Peavy, then why would it make sense to trade a “free” player (i.e. making pre-arb minimums until ’12) for somebody with a premium contract? why not keep Wallace and use the money to sign somebody else? even if Wallace is only half as valuable as Peavy, we could sign another player at market rates to make up the difference and still have some significant cash (~$5mn/year) left over.

as for trading Wallace… there is roughly a $15mn/year salary difference between him and Peavy from ‘10-’12. if that money was spent on another SP, then you are basically choosing between having Peavy alone or having Wallace AND Derek Lowe AND two/three other prospects.

i’ll take the latter, please.

alternatively, if you take Peavy and keep Wallace but send over what FR suggests would be necessary (i.e. Boggs+Garcia+Salas+somebody else) then you have to either spend money (which we won’t have) to pick up a FA starter to fill out the rotation, or rely exclusively on Mort and Walters to fill the 5th spot plus cover any injuries that occur.

if Peavy were a FA, i’d say go for it. but he’s not, and i think the combined salary + prospect cost is prohibitive.

If the Cards take Peavy and increase their odds for post-season success, would Albert take be willing to take a bit less in his next contract. My guess is… maybe. But I wouldn’t count on it. Albert wants to win, but making fair money is not a SUPER distant second place.

Too hyperbolic. I meant that there is a likelihood that Peavy would not be as dominant as he was with the Padres, meaning he might not be worth what his contract guarantees him; that is, he’s not worth the salary he is due for a club which plays its home games not in PetCo. And I forgot to add how much more sense a Peavy trade makes as compared to the Carp extension. You are absolutely right that this is the time to add Peavy. He is hitting the “sweet spot” rather than the downward slope (is that “down on the handle”?) of his career. I’m still up in the air on this…

and were on the hook for 22 mil/yr on the DL.

Also: Those splits scare the bejesus out of me, and I had lots of bejesuses. He’s like the Matt Holiday of SPs.

we’ve traded for this same all-star multiple times and the trade keeps falling through after only 2 or 3 appearances

we might want to make a trade where you do have to give up prospects and assume this as a trade for a number 3 or 4 starter

then we’re not thinking about next year, we’re thinking about winning it all this year, and being the frontrunner in the National League the next two years.

If we’re making this trade it’s a win now proposition, damn the consequences and the payroll bulge — there’s really no way of making this a “financially sound” move, because it isn’t.

would not require anyone near rasmus and wallace’s level. there wasn’t anyone that good in the sox deal. plus, san diego will have to concede to taking even less considering how picky peavy is being about what clubs he will go to. so if one that he would go to (ie st louis) wanted him, they would have to take whatever they can get

but people are looking. and apparently oswalt shares peavy’s disdain for playing for the white sox

after Peavy nixed their deal. However, Oswalt also has full no-trade protection and is apparently not too keen on a move to the AL. I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t be that keen on a move to StL either, or indeed that the ‘Stros will make a trade within division featuring one of their stars unless they get a shedload of talent back. I’d pass…