Free Agency 2010

I don’t know how they do the books though

is Garcia expected to pitch towards the end of the year…or is he out till 2010?

I don’t see how you bring Glaus back unless it’s a 1yr/$5M deal. Ankiel will command WAY too much money, and won’t justify supplanting Rasmus, Ludwick or Duncan. Whether or not to bring Khalil back has less to do with his performance and more to do with Ryan and T. Greene’s performances IMO. At this point I don’t see Welley or Piniero coming back.

had to do it

Bedard would be a signing I would be happy with, but I think some trades would better suit us. Trading for Michael Young would be great.

but that is actually a quality list of names. Myers is a guy who I think would thrive outside of Philly. Also, guys like Millwood and Padilla are underrated due to Arlington and Texas’ crappy defense. It would be nice to get Harden or Bedard, but they would likely be too expensive and have too much injury risk.

Bedard has top of the rotation potential and is a lefty. It all depends on how Garcia recovers.

Brett Myers a lot.

But their just isn’t any good options for a good fielding SS that can field

we should see wallace in AAA this year. unless he progresses much more slowly than I think he will, we need to get him in the majors by next year. he’s not showing any signs currently of slowing as he proceeds through the system.

wallace has a pair of contradictory factors in play right now: with more practice, his technical skills at 3b will improve; as he ages, his speed and range will probably decline. not many people project him as a serious 3b option; still fewer think he can make it there long term. it may very well be that we have only a few years where he will be young enough to play the spot with agility. we need to maximize those years.

and re: wallace and flim’s concern about good defensive SS’s — maybe that’s the sop that will make having tyler or ryan at SS next year. if having an excellent range SS alongside a poor range 3b allows us to put a hulking 3b bat in the lineup, the weak bat of the defensive specialist doesn’t look so bad.

keep that film of tyler greene fielding that grounder far to the third base line in your head as you think about our lineup for 2009.

he sees the same thing (not to make an unfair comparison) that pujols faces. and he sometimes responds the same way — by reaching for pitches out of the zone.

note that, while his K rate has shot up, the rate of walks has shot up as well. in fact his bb/k rate is HIGHER this year than last.

Sound alot like Ryan Howard

hitting .266 with a .400 OBP and 5 HR in 24 games is huge problem. His K/BB is 2:1, so he walks quite a bit in addition to striking out. He’s getting pitched around an awful lot from the look of things and he’s still putting up an .863 OPS in less than 40 games at the AA level. Power is usually the last thing to come to player when he switches levels so I’m not that worried about Wallace just yet. His plate discipline is still fantastic, which is one thing that translates well from the minors to the big leagues — just look at Rasmus’ career minor league OBP and his OBP so far in the big leagues for a good reference to that.

According to your evaluation, Stephen Hill might be the best player in the Cardinal organization: hitting .342 with a .696 SLG in 79 AB’s!!!

was considered to be a high average bat. Lot’s of line drives and stuff. I could swear I read something last year about him being voted as the most likely to hit for average out of the draft (or something along those lines).

I also think that any production at all is better than what Glaus has given us this year and I really don’t think it would be a good idea to pony up the kind of money he’ll command in free agency just to see him on the shelf for parts or all of 2010. He just can’t seem to stay healthy and I’d hate to see us pony up multi-millions to sign him when there are fairly decent internal options like Wallace, Craig, and Freese.

of course, it’s also {barden/thurston + $10M} or so, vs what glaus gives. I’m really interested in seeing what barden does the rest of the year. If he can be a .750 OPS player, he’ll be worth at least 3 wins, which is about what glaus should be expected to do in the future.

Now, the ONLY reason I believe Barden has a shot at that level of performance is his off-season surgery, and the ensuing performance boost (which I think is mostly illusion, though he’s actually somehow been unlucky on BABIP). But I do believe he has a shot at doing it.

Thurston, not so much, though they’ll both be better than “expected” if platooned heavily like they have been.

the org has three other good reasons not to sign a third baseman.

I think you’re pretty darn close to about what the raises will be, although the club might get Luddy to sign a long term deal that would decrease their obligation to him next year. Not sure if I’d be in favor of that or not. The team should let the rest of those guys go to arbitration.

That still leaves about $15M left of this years payroll (depending on attendance and revenues, it may go up) left to improve the team at SS and 3B and add a starting pitcher. If Tyler Greene or Ryan could become the SS and Craig/Barden/Thurston/Wallace/Mather is able to win the job at 3B the team could go out and look at getting an ace FA pitcher. Who knows, maybe Jones makes the leap this year and makes Duncan expendable, and we can then trade him for a starting pitcher.

The point is, we have a lot of options for this upcoming offseason, and there will probably be fewer bidders this year than last because of the attendance fiasco and ballooning payroll in New York and the fact that a lot of small market teams are going to be hurt by attendance this year.

will be somewhat dependent on how he fits in at second. if by the second half he’s an acrobatic second baseman who turns double plays in his sleep, he’ll make more. if he flops at 2b and is relegated to 5th OF status, then he probably makes six figures. but the safe bet is that he’ll end up somewhere in the middle, in which case $2M sounds about right.

duncan and ludwick’s arb raises will be dependent on performance and health. but the numbers sound good.

this is pretty low on the totem pole, but PK got arb this year. i doubt he’d be in line for a tremendous raise, even if he has a good year and even if we retain him (neither of which seems likely).

I know that $2M of Carp’s salary is differed and $3M of Pujols is also
Lohse’s raise can be anywhere from the $1.75 or only 500K increase depending on how you counted his bonus.

Scout.com Forum has an excellent Payroll Matrix up

but on the surface I’d say that is right.

IMHO