According to ESPN.com, our current team salary is

88,528,409, not including Holliday.

Let’s assume here that Glaus and Greene are both not going to be resigned, since essentially we don’t need either of them now and both are in the last year of their contract.

Also, with our new acquisition, we are probably not going to resign Rick Ankiel. And this salary still includes Duncan. If you take out all of those salaries for next year, we have a team salary of roughly $66million.

So, if we resign Holliday for say…$15million/year, and sign DeRosa for the same price tag he has now, or maybe a little more, that brings our total salary up to approximately $81million, which is less than our current salary. We can fill some backup and bench spots with some “B” type players and still have around $5-10 million to work with to pay a starting pitcher. I’m not sure who else we would have to resign next year, but it seems to me that Holliday will fit perfectly in with the salary budget we have…at least for the next couple of years.

…I see us re-signing Holliday, DeRosa, Miller, and Piniero; Pornstache LaRue, Welly, Kbot, and Ankiel walk, and we fill from within. It won’t be cheap, but it should be enough to cowvince TLR and, moore importantly, Pujols to re-up. I bet they take care of Pujols next year, esp. if we get to/win the WS.

But mark this cow’s words: we will see Wallace blossom into a fearful hitter in the next 1-2 years.
:=8/

Are being paid roughtly $18,000,000 combined, neither of them will be back next year, just my prediction.

i was just discussing this via e-mail w/ another cardinal fan. here’s what i wrote him --

• if wallace can’t play 3b (and apparently he’s not viable there long term), then it definitely makes sense to move him -- he’s no loss to the cards, because he’ll never crack our lineup. but it doesn’t make sense to me to move him for a 2-month rental. poor return on the investment.

• likewise -- mortensen and peterson are both redundant players. there are multiple duplicates of each guy within the system (lynn / boggs are about equal to mort, and henley / jay are about equal to peterson), so the cards won’t be hurt by losing them. but those players still have value -- why give them away for a 2-month rental?

• i suspect that daniel descalso has surpassed wallace in the FO’s estimation. descalso has a similar bat (good OBP, line-drive power), and although his offensive ceiling is lower than wallace’s, his defense may put him over the top in terms of overall value. you never know, he might get a shot at 3b next year - he played there in college.

• i’m still mulling over what the long-term implications are re payroll / player development. for the next 2 years they are cost-controlled at both middle infield positions - schumaker, ryan, descalso, lugo, t greene, and possibly even hoffpauir can duke it out for those two spots. kozma can play his way into the mix by 2011 if his bat comes around. some of those players (descalso, lugo, t greene) can also compete for playing time at 3b, and they also have freese as a cost-controlled option there. in the outfield, they can still reasonably hope that one useful player comes out of the daryl jones / tyler henley / jon jay / joe mather group. and in the rotation, they just need one useable guy from among boggs, garcia, lynn, and ottavino (who is starting to get it together, i havne’t given up on him yet).

in other words -— as profligate as this expense is, it may be that the cardinals can afford the luxury. it may be that there’s enough cost-control built into the organization to avoid a total payroll disaster moving forward.

I’m sure the a-hole agent will say 8+ years….. but any more than 4 years will be a bad deal, IMHO.

MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick passes on comments Dodgers GM Ned Colletti made this morning on KABC Radio. Colletti says the Jays want two or three current Dodgers, including a young pitcher, or five or six prospects.

I can definately see why MO passed on this….. 5 or 6 prospects?

Good news is this is about as impactful a move as could be made for this team, this season. Bad news is that we almost certainly lose on this deal in the long term, if your measurement is total value (Production minus cost). Likely lose big.

All in all, I really hate this deal but I can’t deny emotionally I am going to be jazzed the second I see him in a Cards uniform tonight. I suppose we see that the Cubs window is closing – they’ve made similar moves in the past. The Brewers window is not closed but they are struggling to patch the rotation right now and made their big stand last year too. The Astro’s continue to defy logic, but they have no answer for this move. And then you have the Reds on the other extreme…they are positioned to be a force soon but aren’t there yet. There is a logical basis for acknowledging that this is the moment to take the big stand. I still would have prefered to make a smaller stand. I suspected Wallace was not viewed as 3B with all the rumors swirling around him, but I am pretty stunned we needed to sweeten the pot this much to get 200-250 ABs for left field. I think long term this thing has huge potential to stink to high heaven, but I am going to try my hardest to enjoy this season because there are the pieces to make it enjoyable.

I liken this to all these people that bought more house than they should a few years ago. It’s awesome at first. You enjoy the space, you enjoy the status. Everything looks good from afar, but the reality is that you are unprepared to deal with any setbacks. The first cracks that show, the first time equipment breaks down, the first time things don’t go completely according to plan……well, all of the sudden you feel completely different about your status in life and you don’t have the easy answers at your disposal. You may just have to break down and start all over if there are too many surprises.

That’s what this feels like. But I’m going to try to enjoy the house while we’re still living in it.

All have a problem that will prevent them from getting what they want — long term contract. All have big upside from 2009 performance. Ankiel might sign cheap for a year to give him one more shot at a big pay day. Nice rotational outfielder and can play center if Colby falls off. Glaus doesn’t have the ties to the Cardinals, but assuming he doesn’t want to be DH who else needs an over the hill 3B for 5-7+ million with a bad shoulder. Again I can see signing him to a 1-2 year deal to plug 3B IF his shoulder is ok. Greene showed that big bopper bat in his last call-up —have to admit if he could hit like that he could fit in at SS with Ryan being more of a defensive replacement. Given our needs i can see 2of the 3 back in the fold.

Piniero will get beaucoup bucks — he’s already gone —just hope he can bring us a supp pick.

nice job. I just pulled it up and Lohse’s numbers for 2011 & 2012 are incorrectly stated at just $12. The fix really highlights issues with the Holliday signing.

nice work.

a while back i looked at team payroll as a function of overall mlb payroll:

now 2005 is a bit of a mess, because walker’s salary was paid in part by the rockies, which usa today doesn’t recognize, but dewitt has been willing to go to 130+% of the median. in 2009 dollars that’s 105 million. the typical baseball inflation rate has been a whopping 10%, but that may not be feasible in the midst of World Depression II. of course a depression would also impact salaries that player receive in fa and presumably in arb. so waving my hands at inflation, i’d guess for a team that’s been desperately seeking ways to spend money, these kinds of numbers for holliday and derosa make sense.

wrt the pitching, the cardinals have shown a willingness to part with williams, suppan or looper when they hit fa, and then they find the next reclamation projection for duncan. i’d expect that to continue with piñeiro — who admittedly is having a better season than any of those guys had in their walk years but still is joel piñeiro — departing from one of the rotation spots.

this was really insightful. thanks, fourstick.

… the trouble is that the only payroll flexibility we have for the next few years all comes in the up-coming off-season. Glaus, DeRosa, Piniero, Ankiel, Greene represents a lot of money off the books, but the deals to Pujols, WW, Molina, Lohse, Carp all stay the same or escalate from 2010-12. so we basically have two options: spend big on one or two players and hope that they perform well for several years (and our farm can plug in the gaps), or spread the money out on lesser players on shorter deals and repeat each off-season as necessary. so let’s look at it:

first off, i think you’ve got Holliday too low. i fully expect him to get more than $15mn/year, especially if the Yanks get involved (which they will, and probably the Mets as well). i really don’t see how we could pay him $17-20mn and still fill a decent roster. in any case, i really don’t think we have the money for it.

second, no matter what else we do we must lock up Luddy and buy out at least one year of FA. somebody suggested 4/$28. if that would do it, then get it done. i don’t think that’s enough, but even if it takes more like 4/$40, then do that. right now he represents the best opportunity for the team to lock up All-Star type talent at below-market rates.

third, a lot depends on if we get league-average production at SS/2B from Kozma/Descal/Ryan/Lugo/Schumaker/Hoff over the next few years. if we think we can, then that gives us some flexibility to spend at 3B/LF/SP. i think it’s possible that that group aggregates up to league-average, but they could blow up as well. frankly, i don’t expect that group to fill two positions and be league-average. but hopefully they can get close enough to not hurt the team too badly.

fourth, if we can re-sign DeRosa to something like 2/$15 or even 2/$20, then we should definitely do it. he can be a 3 WAR player in either LF or 3B. if even wants a longer-term deal… then it depends on the money.

fifth, offer arb to Glaus if he can throw the ball to 1B by December. if he accepts, then DeRosa moves to LF and everything is okay. if he declines, we take the picks and search for a 3 WAR vet 3B or LF (e.g. Abreu, Beltre, Nady) on a one- or two-year deal for something like $5-7mn/year. in that 1-2 year window, we should know what we’ve got with Jones/Mather et al. the last thing we want to do is sign a mediocre player to a 3-4 year deal and then find that Jones developed and is blocked.

so after all this we’re at ~ $82mn in salary. we spend whatever we’ve got left on a mid-range starting pitcher. somebody like Myers, Davis, Bedard, Harden, Penny, Hudson, Washburn, Wolf. at least one of those guys should sign for short-term deals with AAV of $5-8mn. the 5th rotation spot goes to Garcia/Boggs/Lynn.

what we should NOT do is sign any relievers or MIFers. we have to trust that we can fill those positions from within, and we have bigger needs elsewhere.

this roster stays under $90mn, doesn’t sign any Type As (probably), has a lot of built-in flexibility if a prospect breaks out or somebody flames out (but doesn’t overly rely on unknown quantities like Freese), and looks like this:

Yadi: C
Albert: 1B
Skip/Lugo: 2B
Ryan/Lugo: SS
DeRosa: 3B
Abreu-type: LF
Raz: CF
Luddy: RF

bench: Ryan/Lugo, Mather, catcher, Hoff/TGreene, Craig/Jay
rotation: Carp, WW, Lohse, Myers-type, Garcia/Boggs/Lynn
pen: Franklin, Motte, Kinney, Miller, Reyes, whoever.

that’s not a very deep team, and it may not be good enough to win the division, but i don’t think we can do much better with the payroll constraints we have. plus we net some draft picks from Holliday and maybe Piniero or Glaus.

we really shouldn’t’ve traded Wallace for a rental, tho. it makes all of this so much more difficult.

dewitt says they wanna re-sign holliday. i’m pretty sure he’s somehow contractually obligated to say that, however, and wouldn’t put too very much stock into it. it is still encouraging, however, to at least hear him say that.

i honestly expect that dewitt looks at re-signing pujols as a given, simply because i can’t imagine him re-signing holliday at the cost of re-signing pujols. whatever. we’ll see what happens.

I would actually prefer it, but I think it is a key to sign Derosa to a 2-3 year deal. Tony loves to have a flexible guy that can play all over the field. If injuries hit the ballclub, having a guy that can take his spot works wonders for the team’s overall situation. If we can grab him for like 3 years 24 million or 2 years 18 million. I would pull the trigger.

but did you have to put the roster matrix on a website that requires an account to sign in? It would’ve been better to put it somewhere we could all access it. I don’t have a google account and don’t really want to get one just for this….

and a lot will depend on how this team finishes, but holliday does seem to fit the team well, and i think we will almost have to sign him to 1) save face on the deal (PR moves are important to the FO after all) and 2) appease albert. dewitt has said as much that he doesnt view this as a 1 year rental (paraphrasing here). so i think we might as well pencil him in, though the $$$ are hard to guess. but, boras knows all of this of course, so it will likely be $15 at minimum, probably more like $17.

im aware that this is not knew information, but i think the FO really put itself in the corner here and almost has to sign holliday. we might as well factor it into our decisions, imo.

also, i think we definitely need an outside starter from the FA market, and i prefer piniero. we cannot count on our farm to give 2, though 1 is plausible given boggs/lynn/garcia. i guess we could dumpster dive here, but i would rather not consider the possibility.

we might have enough depth to pull off not resigning derosa, though. as fourstick stated, Mather, Descalso, Lugo, Freese, and Craig are all options. however, i would personally sign derosa. then, we could have some depth here to deal from as 2010 unfolds. not a lot of depth, but some.

regardless of which scenario the FO chooses, we will be thin in the depth chart pretty much everywhere, unless some recent draft picks rocket through the system as quickly as todd and wallace and even mortenson did. cross our fingers.