That's it: I've been blogging for going on nine years, now, but as of yesterday I am finally, permanently obsolete. Yesterday an organization seemed set to offer a baseball player a long-term contract, and the most I could offer as justification was the possibility that that very organization was doing more and better sabermetric work than the internet. From, "Man, baseball organizations are stupid," we've reached, "Well, I guess they're smart; after all, they're a baseball organization." I'm calling it: The Baseball Prospectus era is officially dead. Ken Phelps and Jeremy Brown, I've failed you.

And Yadier Molina is, reportedly, very rich. At last check the Cardinals were nearing a five-year deal with their erstwhile holdout worth, depending on who you retweeted, $60-75 million. Let's assume we can know nothing about the Cardinals' particular brand of catcher valuation and see how much special sauce we'll have to ladle over this contract to like it, assuming it exists.

Disclaimer 1: The Cardinals have either written over their last cheap Molina year or pushed their obligation to their 29-year-old catcher out to his age-34 season; at press time, such as it is, we don't know if, let alone which. Better the first than the second, in which case the right to negotiate exclusively with Molina cost them $5-8 million and allowed them to announce a five year deal without counting out six years from this April.

Disclaimer 2: What's likely led us to think the most about the possibility of a special sauce is Mike Fast's terrifying Prospectus article about pitch-framing, which will convince you once and for all that robots should call games with the suggestion that, across the last five seasons, Jose Molina was worth 60 runs per 120 games more than Ryan Doumit based on his ability to fool umpires. Yadier Molina's better than average at it, but it should be noted that the Cardinals also recently signed—on purpose—Koyie Hill, who is among the worst finishers in the study. (Along with Gerald Laird.)

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The Cardinals are in a weird place with Yadier Molina. In order of ascending weirdness:

1. Yadier Molina is a catcher. Catchers are difficult to value because they accumulate fewer wins above replacement than everybody else and they're scarier to lock in on long-term at the ages when most stars and near-stars become free agents. Since 2000 there's been all of 11 instances of five bWAR seasons from catchers, and four at six—Joe Mauer twice, Jorge Posada once (at 31), and Javy Lopez in that random season where he slugged .687.

Albert Pujols notched five WAR 11 times in that span. Shortstops did it 36 times, corner outfielders 60 times, and so on. A lot of this is likely related to our limited understanding of catcher defense, but unless the Cardinals know something we don't or are confident in a specific estimate of Molina's defensive abilities catchers remain more difficult to evaluate, let alone to sign long-term.

On the Cot's list of enormous contracts, there's Joe Mauer at sixth—$184 million over eight years—and Mike Piazza's highest-paid-player-in-baseball contract at the turn of the millennium. Before Mauer the biggest active catcher's contract was Jorge Posada's four year, $52 million deal. Catchers just rarely get long-term deals; the closest comparison I can come up with is Jason Varitek, who got a four year, $40 million deal to be the team captain of the Red Sox in 2005. Varitek was three years older than Molina will be, and had two Jason Varitek seasons and two below-average ones.

2. They didn't sign Albert Pujols. That leaves Yadier Molina atop the list of popular Lifelong Cardinals with just one year left on his contract. Right now the Cardinals basically look like last year's squad with a bunch of robotic old-player enhancements bolted to their spindlier limbs; 2013 will be our first glimpse at how or whether the Cardinals go in a different direction as they attempt to rebuild on the fly.

Whatever signal John Mozeliak intends to send, he'll have a hard time pushing it out there over the din of the Molina negotiations.

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