After a second consecutive season where they’ll miss the playoffs, the Cardinals organization appears to be in flux. With a presser scheduled for early in this coming week, rumors have swirled that the club is set to make some notable organizational changes to kick off their offseason. Those changes figure to be headlined by former Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom stepping into a larger role with the club’s baseball operations department, but USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reports this morning that this offseason’s changes could carry over to the big league roster as well. Per Nightengale, the Cardinals are willing to listen to offers on veteran right-hander Sonny Gray just one year after signing him to a hefty three-year, $75MM deal as the team hopes to cut payroll entering next year.
The notion of St. Louis looking to trim down its payroll isn’t exactly a shocking one. Cardinals attendance dropped below 3 million this year for the first time since 2003 (ignoring the pandemic-impacted seasons of 2020 and 2021), leaving the club with less gate revenue than expected. Meanwhile, the TV revenue side of things isn’t much rosier as the Cardinals are one of the teams impacted by the ongoing Diamond Sports Group bankruptcy. While MLB and the Players’ Association agreed back in July to redirect funds towards clubs that have lost TV revenue amid Diamond’s troubles, it would hardly be a surprise if the club’s budgets going forward were impacted by this revenue uncertainty.
Even if the overall baseball operations budget isn’t reduced, it’s still possible to imagine the club’s player payroll dropping heading into 2025. After all, The Athletic’s Katie Woo reported on the state of the Cardinals organization earlier this week and described a situation where the club has begun to prioritize major league payroll over investing in the organization’s development infrastructure, resulting in cuts to key areas of player development in order to sustain an ever-growing payroll at the big league level. With changes to the front office seemingly on the horizon, it’s certainly plausible that the club could pare back its payroll in order to invest in a more robust player development apparatus.
That possibility of a lower big league payroll next year leads back to Gray, who will see his back-loaded salary rise from $10MM this year to $25MM in 2025. While RosterResource at Fangraphs suggests St. Louis has just $108MM in guaranteed commitments for next year, that doesn’t include an increasingly expensive arbitration class including key players like Brendan Donovan, Lars Nootbaar, and Ryan Helsley. Nor does it include the possibility of the club deciding to exercise its club option on one or both of Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn, each of which are $12MM options with $1MM buyouts. With Gray’s $15MM raise this year and those possible additions to the payroll, it’s easy to see why the Cardinals may need to trade salary away in order to address the roster’s needs this winter even after shedding Paul Goldschmidt’s $26MM salary when he reaches free agency in November.
With that being said, losing Gray would be a major blow to St. Louis’s hopes of contending next year. The veteran right-hander had something of a down season in his first year with the Cardinals, posting a 3.84 ERA that’s just 9% better than league average by ERA+. Even so, Gray’s 3.12 FIP was nothing short of excellent and he remains just one year removed from a dominant season with the Twins that saw him finish second in AL Cy Young award voting behind Gerrit Cole. The 34-year-old hurler would likely be an improvement to just about any club’s rotation next year, but it’s hard to imagine the Cardinals themselves finding an adequate replacement for the right-hander internally coming off a season where the club’s starters collective posted a 4.36 ERA that ranks 21st in the majors and a 4.08 FIP that ranks 15th even with Gray in the fold.
What’s more, the hefty salary that could lead the Cardinals to consider dealing Gray could prove to be an anchor that makes him surprisingly difficult to trade. Between his salary for the next two years and a $5MM buyout on his option for 2027, Gray is owed $65MM over the next two seasons. That’s a hefty sum for any club to take on, and it could be especially problematic for clubs at or near the luxury tax. Upon being traded, contracts are recalculated for luxury tax purposes based on the remaining dollars and years on the deal, meaning that an acquiring team would be accepting a hit of nearly $32.5MM to their luxury tax ledger over the next two years by trading for Gray. Even if the Cardinals can find a trade partner willing to stomach that cost, Gray’s full no-trade clause could further complicate things by allowing him to block any deal if so chooses.
That’s not to say a deal would be completely impossible, of course. Plenty of players with no-trade clauses and even larger contracts than Gray have been dealt over the years, and if the Cardinals are sufficiently motivated to get a deal done there will surely be suitors for a pitcher of Gray’s caliber. Nightengale suggests that the Reds, for whom Gray pitched from 2019-21 and made his second career trip to the All-Star game, could have interest in a reunion if the veteran is made available this winter.
The Reds have had a disappointing season in 2024 but nonetheless sport an exciting young core of talent led by right-hander Hunter Greene and shortstop Elly De La Cruz. Adding Gray as an experienced, front-of-the-rotation veteran would be a huge boost for a Cincinnati rotation that appears likely to lose Nick Martinez to free agency this year but still has a number of interesting young arms behind Greene such as Nick Lodolo, Andrew Abbott, Rhett Lowder, and Graham Ashcraft. Any of those young arms would surely be attractive to St. Louis as a potential return for Gray’s services given their own rotation needs, though it seems likely that the Cardinals would need to retain some money in order to facilitate such a deal given the Reds’ typically low payrolls and Gray’s large contract.
