With seven of the Cardinals’ nine potential free agents declaring their liberty yesterday, let’s review each player taking into consideration his type and projected value for 2010 (based largely on the Bill James Handbook projections).

• Matt Holliday (offer long-term contract, arbitration): Holliday is, of course, the lynchpin of the team’s offseason plans and has been since the team traded for him in July. Unfortunately, the hope of signing him is going to die a long, slow death. The key for the Cardinals will be recognizing when it’s time to cut bait, because their flies aren’t enough to land this fish. As Erik Manning noted, the situation could be analogous to the Cardinals’ ultimately fruitless effort to sign AJ Burnett during the 2005 offseason. They wound up signing Sidney Ponson and cobbling together a staff with him, a horrendous Mark Mulder and Jeff Weaver, while forcing Jason Marquis to give them 194 innings of 6.02 ERA. In waiting, they missed out on signing players like Brian Giles, Esteban Loaiza, Jamie Moyer and Russ Springer. What will be the opportunity cost of waiting for Holliday to snub them, especially given Bill DeWitt Jr.’s frank acknowledgement that the matter won’t soon be settled: "Some of the bigger free agents with Scott [Boras] have always taken longer."? If John Mozeliak is serious about his desire to "make sure we don’t miss any opportunity," it may mean moving on before the Holliday sweepstakes are over. Teams like the Angels and Red Sox, who’ve signed Bobby Abreu and acquired Jeremy Hermida, respectively, aren’t waiting. The Cardinals should make their best, “take-it-or-leave-it” offer in the next 15 days and offer arbitration when Holliday and Boras spurn them.
• Troy Glaus (no action): Without a clear option at third, the Cardinals would seem to need Glaus. But while Bill James estimates a productive 2010 for him, the Cardinals can probably get by with David Freese and at much less cost. If the Cardinals did want to bring Glaus back (which Matthew Leach expects won’t happen), offering arbitration might make some sense but be too much of a gamble, especially considering that they also have Type-B Mark DeRosa. And they can’t offer to both.
• Joel Pineiro (offer arbitration): We’ve written before, and we’ll do it again: The Cardinals should thank Pineiro for his service and wish him well — with someone else. Again, James is bullish on Pineiro repeating in 2010, but 2009 was the first time in Pineiro’s career that he put up an xFIP below 4.00; we’re not banking on him being the second coming of Warren Spahn. As much as they’ll need starting pitching next year, the Cardinals should follow the pattern of recent Duncanized pitchers, such as Braden Looper and Jeff Suppan, and let Pineiro make more and produce less for some other team. Offer the arbitration, though, as it represents a win-win opportunity.
• Mark DeRosa (offer arbitration): If the Cardinals do offer arbitration to one of their Type-B third basemen, the surer bet is DeRosa, who stands to make less than and offer comparable production to Glaus. DeRosa would likely look for a multiple-year deal and so the chance of him taking the offer is low.
• Khalil Greene (no action): The Cardinals have replacement-level players in the wings, so bringing Greene back under any circumstances would be an unwise use of a roster spot.
• John Smoltz (offer one-year contract): A one-year deal similar to his 2009 contract of $5.5 million, which he exceeded in value, would work well given that the team can reliably expect a lot of innings from only John Adam Wainwright and Kyle Lohse. Remember, Chris Carpenter’s 192 2/3 IP in 2009 was an unexpected windfall, which he likely won’t repeat. Smoltz, of course, is no spring chicken, but he’ll provide quality innings when he does pitch. Given Duncan’s stated reluctance to promote Jaime Garcia, the starting rotation is, in our opinion, an underrated area of concern this winter.
• Todd Wellemeyer (no action): Next year the Cardinals will have plenty of other options in relief, which is probably the best place for Wellemeyer to be in order to limit the damage of his career 4.37 BB/9 rate.
• Rick Ankiel (no action): Hopefully the 2009 campaign was enough to wake Tony La Russa and overly sentimental fans from their Ankiel dream. Yes, James expects him to return to his 2008 form, but we’ll take the under and so should the Cardinals, who have no shortage of farmhands who will could post on-base percentages above .300. Better to save the bench spot for someone who can at least make contact against lefties, and, despite the occasional highlight-reel play, Ankiel’s defense is overrated.
• Jason LaRue (offer one-year contract): LaRue provided positive value in 2009, which is more than Glaus, Greene, Wellemeyer and Jason Motte can say. With Matt Pagnozzi not yet ready for prime time (.299 OBP in 86 games at Memphis) and Bryan Anderson in limbo, LaRue makes sense as limited-use backup again at around $1 million.

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 5:07 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.