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It's an estimate, but you get the idea
we gotta start w/ the cards’ payroll situation, which we were discussing yesterday in the context of a possible jarrod washburn acquisition. st louis already has $25m tied up for 2009 in 3 starting pitchers --- carpenter ($14m), pineiro ($8m), and wainwright ($2.6m). they’ll have cost-controlled internal options available to fill out the rotation in wellemeyer (arb eligible next year i think), mcclellan, boggs, garcia, mortensen, todd, and parisi. anthony reyes will probably be gone. if wellemeyer is sound, that looks like plenty of material with which to assemble a pretty decent rotation, with the potential to be very good ---- and it’s already paid for. so if the cards decide not to allocate their dollars to lohse, they won’t necessarily leave themselves exposed in the rotation. but here’s the other side of the argument: all three of the top 3 men in that projected rotation (carp welley wainwright) have some injury issues, while lohse has a clean health record. and you can never have too much pitching . . . . .
let’s look at the rest of the team. they probably won’t (and shouldn’t) be signing any high-priced outfielders; ankiel / ludwick / rasmus project as the starting trio, and schumaker / mather / barton / duncan provide plenty of fodder for the bench. no need to spend a lot of money there. they’ll be spending more money naturally anyway --- ankiel and luddy will both be arb eligible and will get substantial raises (probably into the $5m range), while molina’s salary will double to $3.3m next season. they’re set at the infield corners and at catcher; the only need is at middle infield, and they’ll probably only make one high-priced expenditure there (if any). as for the bullpen: if mcclellan moves to the rotation, the only known holdovers in the ’pen will be perez franklin and brad thompson; izzy seems unlikely to be back, springer might retire, and the left-handers . . . well, who needs ’em? they have plenty of rhrp candidates in the high minors (motte, salas, worrell, jess todd, parisi, possibly boggs) but no left-handers; they might need to spend a few million to sign one.
so a quick n dirty roster matrix, lising only the guys already under control for next year:
ok; this leaves us with a payroll of $90 to $95m, which leaves the cards somewhere around $10m below their self-imposed ceiling. that’s the amount they can afford to throw at kyle lohse (or some other pitcher) without leaving themselves short in other areas of the roster --- ie, without skimping on a starting ss or an lhrp. when discussing washburn yesterday, i had blanched at the idea of committing $10m to another starting pitcher, because i thought it would tie up too much in the rotation and leave the team short elsewhere on the roster; having looked at it more carefully, i now think a $10m pitcher is an affordable luxury.
is lohse worth it? well, let’s put it this way: if jeff suppan and carlos silva and gil meche and jarrod washburn are worth $10m a year --- and i am not necessarily agreeing they are worth that money, but that’s what the market valued them at --- then lohse most definitely is worth it. his performance this year is not a mirage --- his FIP (3.67) is very close to his ERA (3.39), a strong indicator that he hasn’t just been getting lucky. in fact, lohse’s FIPs (see his fangraphs page) have been very consistent throughout his career, and consistently decent --- almost always in the 4.50 range. compare his FIPs to suppan’s --- very similar. lohse has a slightly lower home-run rate than usual this year, because he’s pitching in a pitcher’s park instead of in a bandbox, and his BABIP is down just a tick, because he has a great defense behind him; on the whole, though, i think his performance is largely sustainable. indeed, he has sustained it since coming to the national league in august 2006. in that 2-year span, lohse has a suppanish 23-19 / 4.22 mark --- the 14th-best era among nl pitchers over that period. he’s been almost exactly as good as suppan over that span (supps is 21-20, 4.28) and about as good as guys like aaron harang (24-21, 4.07) and brad penny (27-17, 4.23) --- although both of the latter, it should be noted, play in front of much weaker defenses than lohse currently does. given his age (he turns 30 in december), his spotless health record, and the consistency of his FIPs (which --- say it with me, people --- are highly predictive of future performance), lohse is a very good bet to pitch 190 innings for each of the next 3 years with eras in the 4.00 range.
is that worth $10m a year? on a one-year deal, it’s definitely worth it; on a 3-year deal, i don’t think it’s worth it to the cardinals. let me repeat the last 3 words --- it might make sense for some other franchise to make that investment, and for lohse’s sake i hope somebody gives it to him. but i don’t think the cardinals need the pitching that badly, particularly in years 2 and 3 of the hypothesized contract. by then the cards are almost certain to have one or more pitchers available internally (read: very cheaply) who are at least as good as lohse --- not potentially as good, but actually as good. that pitcher or pitchers won’t necessarily be ready in 2009, although they might be; but by 2010, i’m confident that one or more youngsters from that group i listed above (garcia, mortensen, et al) will have stepped forward and gotten himself established as a reliable big-league starter --- much as wainwright did in 2006-07. in which case, spending $10m on kyle lohse for those years would be a waste of money. if he'd give a deep discount --- say, 3 years at $8.5m per --- i would be more interested, because then lohse would more likely be an appealing trade commodity if the cards wound up w/ a surplus. another possibility would be to offer $10m per year, but front-load the deal --- offer him $13m for 2009 and $8.5m each for 2010-11; the avg annual salary is $10m, but the cards preserve payroll flexibility / tradeability.
that’s my opinion; yours may differ. discuss below.
let’s look at the rest of the team. they probably won’t (and shouldn’t) be signing any high-priced outfielders; ankiel / ludwick / rasmus project as the starting trio, and schumaker / mather / barton / duncan provide plenty of fodder for the bench. no need to spend a lot of money there. they’ll be spending more money naturally anyway --- ankiel and luddy will both be arb eligible and will get substantial raises (probably into the $5m range), while molina’s salary will double to $3.3m next season. they’re set at the infield corners and at catcher; the only need is at middle infield, and they’ll probably only make one high-priced expenditure there (if any). as for the bullpen: if mcclellan moves to the rotation, the only known holdovers in the ’pen will be perez franklin and brad thompson; izzy seems unlikely to be back, springer might retire, and the left-handers . . . well, who needs ’em? they have plenty of rhrp candidates in the high minors (motte, salas, worrell, jess todd, parisi, possibly boggs) but no left-handers; they might need to spend a few million to sign one.
so a quick n dirty roster matrix, lising only the guys already under control for next year:
| ROTATION | carp, wagonmaker, pineiro, welley, +1 promotion from memphis | $26m |
| LINEUP | ludwick, ankiel, rasmus, pujols, glaus, kennedy, ryan, molina | $45m or so |
| BULLPEN | franklin, perez, thompson, and internal promotions | $3.5m commited so far |
| BENCH | ryan, plus 2 of duncan / schu / barton / mather | $1.5m |
| COMMITTED | $76m | |
| NEEDS | starting 2b or ss, lh reliever(s), backup c and if | $15m - $20m (est) |
ok; this leaves us with a payroll of $90 to $95m, which leaves the cards somewhere around $10m below their self-imposed ceiling. that’s the amount they can afford to throw at kyle lohse (or some other pitcher) without leaving themselves short in other areas of the roster --- ie, without skimping on a starting ss or an lhrp. when discussing washburn yesterday, i had blanched at the idea of committing $10m to another starting pitcher, because i thought it would tie up too much in the rotation and leave the team short elsewhere on the roster; having looked at it more carefully, i now think a $10m pitcher is an affordable luxury.
is lohse worth it? well, let’s put it this way: if jeff suppan and carlos silva and gil meche and jarrod washburn are worth $10m a year --- and i am not necessarily agreeing they are worth that money, but that’s what the market valued them at --- then lohse most definitely is worth it. his performance this year is not a mirage --- his FIP (3.67) is very close to his ERA (3.39), a strong indicator that he hasn’t just been getting lucky. in fact, lohse’s FIPs (see his fangraphs page) have been very consistent throughout his career, and consistently decent --- almost always in the 4.50 range. compare his FIPs to suppan’s --- very similar. lohse has a slightly lower home-run rate than usual this year, because he’s pitching in a pitcher’s park instead of in a bandbox, and his BABIP is down just a tick, because he has a great defense behind him; on the whole, though, i think his performance is largely sustainable. indeed, he has sustained it since coming to the national league in august 2006. in that 2-year span, lohse has a suppanish 23-19 / 4.22 mark --- the 14th-best era among nl pitchers over that period. he’s been almost exactly as good as suppan over that span (supps is 21-20, 4.28) and about as good as guys like aaron harang (24-21, 4.07) and brad penny (27-17, 4.23) --- although both of the latter, it should be noted, play in front of much weaker defenses than lohse currently does. given his age (he turns 30 in december), his spotless health record, and the consistency of his FIPs (which --- say it with me, people --- are highly predictive of future performance), lohse is a very good bet to pitch 190 innings for each of the next 3 years with eras in the 4.00 range.
is that worth $10m a year? on a one-year deal, it’s definitely worth it; on a 3-year deal, i don’t think it’s worth it to the cardinals. let me repeat the last 3 words --- it might make sense for some other franchise to make that investment, and for lohse’s sake i hope somebody gives it to him. but i don’t think the cardinals need the pitching that badly, particularly in years 2 and 3 of the hypothesized contract. by then the cards are almost certain to have one or more pitchers available internally (read: very cheaply) who are at least as good as lohse --- not potentially as good, but actually as good. that pitcher or pitchers won’t necessarily be ready in 2009, although they might be; but by 2010, i’m confident that one or more youngsters from that group i listed above (garcia, mortensen, et al) will have stepped forward and gotten himself established as a reliable big-league starter --- much as wainwright did in 2006-07. in which case, spending $10m on kyle lohse for those years would be a waste of money. if he'd give a deep discount --- say, 3 years at $8.5m per --- i would be more interested, because then lohse would more likely be an appealing trade commodity if the cards wound up w/ a surplus. another possibility would be to offer $10m per year, but front-load the deal --- offer him $13m for 2009 and $8.5m each for 2010-11; the avg annual salary is $10m, but the cards preserve payroll flexibility / tradeability.
that’s my opinion; yours may differ. discuss below.
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