***Official 2021 STL Cardinals Thread***

[Rams Fan]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

No - he really isn't.

Here's his track record of late:

All contracts in excess of $5 million over the last 10 years:

2012

Ty Wigginton 2 years, 5 million
Randy Choate 3 years, 7.5 million
Jake Westbrook, 1 year, 9.75 million
Yadier Molina, 5 years 75 million

2013

Jason Motte, 2 years, 12 million
Allen Craig, 5 years 31 million
Adam Wainwright, 5 years 97.5 million
Jhonny Peralta, 4 years, 53 million

2014

Matt Carpenter, 6 years, 52 million
Jordan Walden, 2 years, 6.6 million

2015

Lance Lynn, 3 years, 23.5 million
Jon Jay, 2 years, 11 million
Mike Leake, 5 years, 80 million

2016

Brandon Moss, 1 year, 8.25 million
Trevor Rosenthal, 1 year, 5.6 million
Brett Cecil, 4 years, 30.5 million
Dexter Fowler, 5 years, 82.5 million

2017

Carlos Martinez, 5 years, 51 million
Yadier Molina, 3 years, 60 million
Miles Mikolas, 2 years, 15.5 million
Luke Gregerson, 2 years, 11 million

2018

Macell Ozuna, 1 year, 9 million
Paul DeJong, 6 years, 26 million
Greg Holland, 1 year, 14 million
Andrew Miller, 2 years, 25 million, 12 million option

2019

Marcell Ozuna, 1 year, 12.25 million
Miles Mokolas, 4 years, 68 million
Paul Goldschmidt, 5 years, 130 million
Matt Carpenter, 2 years, 39 million with vesting option
Adam Wainwright, 1 year, 5 million
Kwang-hyun Kim, 2 years, 8 million
Adolis Garcia traded to Tex for cash considerations (Just throwing that in there)

2020

St Louis declined 12.5 million option for Kolten Wong
Andrew Miller vested 12 million dollar option



How many of those worked out? Carpenter's first deal (which was immediately immolated by the worst extension ever). A couple of the later Wainwright deals. Maybe Jon Jay for a year before we had to dump him?

Look at that array of shit. He's, what, $400 million underwater there in terms of the value the team got out of those guys over what they'd have been able to get internally? Or by not trading away guys that were cheaper/more effective?

He's a BAD general manager. He's done a bad job building this team. The only reason anyone has EVER thought he was worth a shit was the work that Luhnow did in re-stocking the 2010ish era Cardinals and now some of the key picks Flores has made.

Mike Shildt made chicken salad out of this roster for 162 games and Mozeliak axed him for it.

I want Mozeliak held accountable as much as the next guy, but he’s done some good things with regards to acquiring talent.

Mikolas’ first contract had insane value. Neshek was an all star on a minor league deal. Goldschmidt, Arenado, and Ozuna were acquired in below market trades. The corpse of Craig was dumped for Lackey making below a million.

If your argument is Mozeliak is bad at signing expensive FAs that he didn’t first acquire, I won’t disagree. But he’s done well trading wise(for the most part).

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Rams Fan

I want Mozeliak held accountable as much as the next guy, but he’s done some good things with regards to acquiring talent.

Mikolas’ first contract had insane value. Neshek was an all star on a minor league deal. Goldschmidt, Arenado, and Ozuna were acquired in below market trades. The corpse of Craig was dumped for Lackey making below a million.

If your argument is Mozeliak is bad at signing expensive FAs that he didn’t first acquire, I won’t disagree. But he’s done well trading wise(for the most part).

Mikolas first contract had excellent value that he immediately torched with an extension a year too early.

And I'll say the same thing about the Goldschmidt deal I said then - it WASN'T below market. It WAS the market. If anyone was offering more, Arizona takes it. And it wasn't until the last 4 months of this season that Goldschmidt played to his salary, let alone the prospect capital we traded to get him.

And the funny thing about the Arenado deal - when the rumors first started I crunched the numbers and here's what I said at the time (this was before it picked up steam, mind you - just seemed like more Mozeliak bloviating):

Spoiler!

Regarding his value...hmm....

Let's say he hit his peak season last year and try to scrub a bit for the shoulder injury. He's been such a steady player that a healthy Arenado is unlikely to be much different than the guy he was for the 5 years prior. So set his baseline at 6 wins to be fair and assuming his shoulder comes back.

Good rule of thumb is -.5 per year at 30 and beyond. I think you want to add another 1/2 win lost at 34 and 36 as those are typically pretty big dropoff seasons for most. WAR should also adjust for Coors factors fairly well because it is supposed to be ballpark adjusted.

So starting at 5.5 wins in 2021 and moving forward 6 years, that gives you 24.5 wins over the full deal by bWAR. But here's the problem - Arenado get a lot of WAR value from his defense and I've never thought bWAR does a very good job of weighing a defensive win share - it inflates them, IMO. I think fangraphs does a better job there. By fWAR his baseline for 2021 is really a 5 win player rather than 5.5. So that nets you an fWAR of 21.5 over the 6 years when re-scaled.

So assuming a return to health, no inordinately large 'non-coors' adjustment and a basic aging curve, you're looking at a 21-25 win player over the next 6 years. Placing him as being 'worth' $170-200 million if you accept $8 million/win. Bear in mind that I hate this figure, I think it's incredibly easy to dissect and if you're building a team around $8 million win shares, your team will suck.

A $6 million/win return is actually getting you on a path towards building a winning ballclub. That say's he'd be worth $125-150 million over those 6 years. He's due to make $199 million.

So here's the thing. The only way I can get to a point where Arenado is 'worth' what he'll be paid is to A) Accept full health in his injured shoulder B)Give roughly equal weight to a defensive win share as an offensive one and C) accept $8 million/WAR as a 'winning' move, which is to say that last year's Harrison Bader is actually a $24 million/season player if he plays at that level going forward.

Um....yeah....he ain't.

I'd go the low side of every single one of those choices and say that he's worth roughly $125 million over the rest of the deal which means the Rockies are upside down by $75 million.

They'd have to take Carpenter, Fowler AND Mikolas off our hands to start earning any prospect capital in return. They won't. So we should probably pivot.

My takeaway in there was that the Rockies would need to absorb almost $50 million to get to break even on a salary dump (I suggested they take on that much in bad contracts) and they would never do that so it wouldn't get done. Low and behold that's EXACTLY what they absorbed. They didn't take on bad contracts, they just paid cash. But I pegged the market for the guy. When everyone else was sucking off Mozeliak, it was because too many of these old talking heads still have no concept of surplus value.

The Cardinals didn't get Arenado for below market value either.

And in the end they didn't get Ozuna for below market value because evidently the rest of baseball knew what we, the fans, didn't know at the time - his shoulder was wrecked. Oh by the way, Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen, the guys we moved in that deal, might just have as much trade value as Jack Flaherty has right now. Alcantara almost certainly does at least (Gallen probably did but that elbow issue will scare teams off).

Man, if you're reaching for Neshek, you're really scraping bottom. Name a team that doesn't stumble-ass backwards into a reliever every year or two. That's the nature of reliever volatility and exactly why you shouldn't do dumb shit like pay retail at $36 million for Andrew Miller or give Brett Cecil 4 guaranteed years.

[Rams Fan]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Mikolas first contract had excellent value that he immediately torched with an extension a year too early.

And I'll say the same thing about the Goldschmidt deal I said then - it WASN'T below market. It WAS the market. If anyone was offering more, Arizona takes it. And it wasn't until the last 4 months of this season that Goldschmidt played to his salary, let alone the prospect capital we traded to get him.

And the funny thing about the Arenado deal - when the rumors first started I crunched the numbers and here's what I said at the time (this was before it picked up steam, mind you - just seemed like more Mozeliak bloviating):

Spoiler!

Regarding his value...hmm....

Let's say he hit his peak season last year and try to scrub a bit for the shoulder injury. He's been such a steady player that a healthy Arenado is unlikely to be much different than the guy he was for the 5 years prior. So set his baseline at 6 wins to be fair and assuming his shoulder comes back.

Good rule of thumb is -.5 per year at 30 and beyond. I think you want to add another 1/2 win lost at 34 and 36 as those are typically pretty big dropoff seasons for most. WAR should also adjust for Coors factors fairly well because it is supposed to be ballpark adjusted.

So starting at 5.5 wins in 2021 and moving forward 6 years, that gives you 24.5 wins over the full deal by bWAR. But here's the problem - Arenado get a lot of WAR value from his defense and I've never thought bWAR does a very good job of weighing a defensive win share - it inflates them, IMO. I think fangraphs does a better job there. By fWAR his baseline for 2021 is really a 5 win player rather than 5.5. So that nets you an fWAR of 21.5 over the 6 years when re-scaled.

So assuming a return to health, no inordinately large 'non-coors' adjustment and a basic aging curve, you're looking at a 21-25 win player over the next 6 years. Placing him as being 'worth' $170-200 million if you accept $8 million/win. Bear in mind that I hate this figure, I think it's incredibly easy to dissect and if you're building a team around $8 million win shares, your team will suck.

A $6 million/win return is actually getting you on a path towards building a winning ballclub. That say's he'd be worth $125-150 million over those 6 years. He's due to make $199 million.

So here's the thing. The only way I can get to a point where Arenado is 'worth' what he'll be paid is to A) Accept full health in his injured shoulder B)Give roughly equal weight to a defensive win share as an offensive one and C) accept $8 million/WAR as a 'winning' move, which is to say that last year's Harrison Bader is actually a $24 million/season player if he plays at that level going forward.

Um....yeah....he ain't.

I'd go the low side of every single one of those choices and say that he's worth roughly $125 million over the rest of the deal which means the Rockies are upside down by $75 million.

They'd have to take Carpenter, Fowler AND Mikolas off our hands to start earning any prospect capital in return. They won't. So we should probably pivot.

My takeaway in there was that the Rockies would need to absorb almost $50 million to get to break even on a salary dump (I suggested they take on that much in bad contracts) and they would never do that so it wouldn't get done. Low and behold that's EXACTLY what they absorbed. They didn't take on bad contracts, they just paid cash. But I pegged the market for the guy. When everyone else was sucking off Mozeliak, it was because too many of these old talking heads still have no concept of surplus value.

The Cardinals didn't get Arenado for below market value either.

And in the end they didn't get Ozuna for below market value because evidently the rest of baseball knew what we, the fans, didn't know at the time - his shoulder was wrecked. Oh by the way, Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen, the guys we moved in that deal, might just have as much trade value as Jack Flaherty has right now. Alcantara almost certainly does at least (Gallen probably did but that elbow issue will scare teams off).

Man, if you're reaching for Neshek, you're really scraping bottom. Name a team that doesn't stumble-ass backwards into a reliever every year or two. That's the nature of reliever volatility and exactly why you shouldn't do dumb shit like pay retail at $36 million for Andrew Miller or give Brett Cecil 4 guaranteed years.

Hasn’t Goldschmidt historically performed better as the season’s progressed?

You’re probably right that he gave up market value for Goldschmidt. Losing Kelly is going to stink.

Arenado-I don’t know man. They basically gave up nothing of significant value to take on Arenado’s contract. I think he’ll be fine long term.

Alcantara will be something nice, but I value a starting outfielder more than I do a pitcher.

Mozeliak’s best moves since 2008 have been the following:
Holliday trade/signing
Not signing Pujols
Signing Berkman
Trading Craig for Lackey
Signing Neshek
Signing Mikolas(first contract)
Signing Beltran
Trading for Arenado
Trading for Goldschmidt
Rasmus trade

Mozeliak isn’t a great executive, but he’s not terrible. He’s above average and is towing the company line. I don’t think he should be leading the Cardinals given his propensity to spend money poorly recently along with being the person behind the rotation and bullpen being a cluster ****.