As we look back on the Cardinals’ championship season, which players contributed the most bang for the buck? Let’s check out the roster using Salary (actual amount the Cardinals paid, to the best of our knowledge) and Win Shares to come up with Win Shares per Dollar (in millions):

^ denotes midseason acquisition whose salary is either prorated and/or was subsidized by another team.

At first glance, the chart in many ways validates the team’s offseason and midseason moves:

• Duncan’s callup and heavy playing time
• The bargain pickup of Preston Wilson off the scrap heap
• Hancock making the team out of Spring Training
• Miles getting the nod at 2B much of the year
• Wainwright pitching in the pen
• Kinney’s mid-year callup
• Scott Spiezio
• Even Juan Encarnacion (though in the first year of his back-weighted contract)

Of course, not every move came up roses:

• Hector Luna was a valuable player, while Belliard turned out not to be.
• Even at .9 mil, Larry Bigbie was a bad signing
• Sosa
• Rincon
• The team just about broke even with Looper and Weaver.

Not surprisingly, the best values were guys who made less than $1 million last year, primarily young players who saw some decent playing time. But if you consider the team average of 2.5 WS/$Mil, you can begin to see where the team has done well in its signings, and where it hasn’t. Namely, the core of value signings who contributed heavily to the team’s Win Shares were Duncan, Miles, Wainwright, Molina — all major-league-ready youngsters — and Encarnacion, Spiezio, Carpenter, Eckstein and Pujols — “value veterans,” if you will. Below the line are several injury-prone and/or aging veterans: Rolen, Edmonds, Isringhausen and Mulder. That should be instructive as the team goes about their offseason business this winter, hopefully avoiding the likes of Mulder, Weaver, Jason Schmidt, Barry Bonds and Luis Gonzalez, among others.

If this year was any lesson, the Cardinals need not overspend on the bullpen, including closer (though Izzy is under contract for $8.75 mil next year), or on quickly-aging or softer-tossing veteran starting pitchers. Identifying the Suppan or Carpenter-like value-veteran starting pitcher and an above-average outfielder at reasonable cost will be the challenge.

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 3:30 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.