With the Cubs’ Carlos Zambrano filing for a club-record $15.5 million in arbitration, or being willing to settle for $100-110 million for six years, the Cubs find themselves, to put it indelicately, over the barrel. It’s not like the Cubs couldn’t see this coming: Zambrano has been one of the top-10 pitchers in the league the last four years. That’s even better than the Cardinals’ Chris Carpenter, who PECOTA projects to have about the same value as Zambrano in 2007 (Carp: 42.9 VORP, Zambrano: 40.6). Carp, of course, is six years older than Zambrano, so their contracts aren’t quite apples-to-apples, but they do demonstrate the importance of pro-action. With the pitching market as it is, Zambrano’s arbitration status gives him the upper hand in the negotiations, whereas the Cubs might’ve saved themselves some coin had they worked something out last year.

When the Cardinals extended Chris Carpenter’s contract earlier this Winter, we lauded the team for its proactive approach in playing to its strong suit, that is, leveraging their competitive advantage of having exclusive bargaining rights with their own players (even if we did feel it was one year too long).

Of course, for the Jocketty-era Cardinals, extensions are nothing new. Trading for a player in the final year(s) of his contract, then signing him to a multiple-year extension has been a plank of the team’s strategy since the McGwire years. In fact, the Cardinals have at least five current players who’ve signed extensions with the club:

• Edmonds (twice)
• Rolen
• Pujols
• Isringhausen
• Carpenter (twice)

Most of these players — Edmonds, Isringhausen, Rolen and Carpenter — have been in the prime of their careers; Rolen, at 27, was the youngest of the group to sign long-term. Contract extensions by yearly salary (B: bonus; D: deferred; c: club option):

But the signing of the young Albert Pujols, one of the club’s own, was a precursor to what will need to be a new twist on the team’s roster-management strategy: Instead of locking up more-veteran players nearing free agency, teams will perhaps more and more look to exploit the gulf that exists between pre-FA player salaries and FA salaries. That is, teams will increasingly want to “buy out” young players’ arbitration years (up to their first five in the bigs) and beyond.

Several teams have already begun moving in this direction. The Mets — not exactly renowned for payroll caution — signed two of their youngest players, David Wright and Jose Reyes, to long-term extensions in the middle of the 2006. The Phillies are talking about an extension with stellar second baseman Chase Utley.

Beyond Pujols, the Cardinals haven’t had any young players come through their system that would warrant more than a series of one-year contracts. However, with the pitching market being what it is, and the team having two solid starting pitchers on the horizon, the Cardinals may want to begin thinking about long-term arrangements with Anthony Reyes and Adam Wainwright. The positive side is that, as opposed to taking the risk of overpaying an older, more injury-prone pitcher for his decline years, the team would be paying for the pitchers’ prime years. The downside, of course, is that the players may end up more like Joe Magrane than Chris Carpenter, but the total cash outlay wouldn’t be nearly as much as even a short-term contract for a free agent like a Jason Schmidt or Barry Zito.

The alternative is the Beane approach: Get the most out of your young pitchers in their first five years, paying as little as possible, and either trade them or let them go when free agency comes. But as Zambrano is demonstrating, even arbitration — or, more precisely, the threat of it — can be costly. The Cubs are about to find out just how costly.

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 11:37 am 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.