Cardinals righty Jake Westbrook "fully intends on exercising his half of mutual option for '13" after the season, tweets Joe Strauss of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but the pitcher has no idea what the Cardinals will do. Westbrook's contract, signed in November of 2010, includes an $8.5MM mutual option for 2013 with a $1MM buyout if the club declines and no buyout if the player declines.
Given Westbrook's solid 2012 performance, this could be one of the rare mutual options where both sides are exercised. The 34-year-old owns a 3.61 ERA, 5.8 K/9, 2.3 BB/9, 0.57 HR/9, and 57.7% groundball rate in 127 innings this year.
I like Jake Westbrook but I don’t see the Cardinals exercising the option.
Waino
Carp
Lynn
Garcia
Kelly/Rosenthal/Miller/ or (hopefully) Lohse
Not really anywhere to put him.
Agree the same regarding Westy. I like that starting 4 a lot. For the 5th spot, there should be a nice little competition in spring between Kelly/Rosenthal/Miller assuming Lohse is not brought back. If Lohse is indeed brought back, Kelly and Rosenthal could compete for a bullpen job and Shelby would likely get another crack at AAA unless he totally dominates in the spring
Always liked Kelly, hope they give him a chance to start next season as well.
I’m surprised by this. Seems like Jake could get a multi-year deal if he hit free agency. At the very least he should be able to find a one year deal for $8.5M, so he wouldn’t really have anything to lose by declining the option.
If he declines his end of it, the Cardinals can also decline and he gets nothing. However, if he picks up his end, he’ll get $1 million if the Cardinals decline (plus a new contract somewhere most likely), and $8.5 million if they don’t. Either way, gets at least an extra $1 million by doing this.