UTK Special 11/28/23

The Cardinals Way

The Cardinals had already brought in Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson. They couldn’t find another Indiana pitcher, so they brought in Sonny Gray, who’s from Tennessee. Three SEC pitchers who’ve had longevity and success, but are 34 (Gray) and 36 (Lynn and Gibson). With a total cost of $110m, the Cardinals fill out their rotation and keep their payroll relatively low despite a handful of big contracts. Arbitration will change it, but there’s plenty of room to do more, one would think.

[Update: Sonny Gray’s contract includes a fourth year team option at $30m, it was stated after this article published. I’m not updating the cost sections here because that option is a choice for the team apart from the need for the current bridge rotation.]

Assuming Miles Mikolas becomes the de facto 1 or 1A (while really a 3) and with a handful of candidates for the 5 slot, there’s no question the team could now go into the season and be competitive. Good? Far different question. There’s very little downside here as both Lynn and Gibson were trade deadline value last year and it’s reasonable to assume they could be flipped again.

But that cost - $110m - is the cost of not having three pitchers ready to take on the rotation now. It’s the cost of not keeping several pitchers, like Steven Matz and Cooper Hjerpe healthy. The generation of pitchers from the last batch is gone with very little success. Look at this MLB list from 2019. I picked that year simply to take out the COVID weirdness of the next two following years and the reasonable assumption that a 2019 hot prospect should be in the 2024 lineup, even if they were an A-ball guy. Dakota Hudson, Alex Reyes, Genesis Cabrera … Ryan Hensley might be the most successful of them. The #14 is now pitching for a team called the Spire City Ghost Hounds and I had to look that up to make sure it was real.*