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Managerial/Front Office Notes: White Sox, Kantrovitz, A’s, Cards

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There’s quite a lot of intrigue in the front office and managerial arenas this offseason. Let’s check in on the latest bits of information …

  • WGN broadcaster Dan Roan crafted an eyebrow-raising tweet regarding the next White Sox manager. Indications are that the organization is preparing to make a swift and dramatic decision to fill the top dugout opening. Roan hints at a forthcoming announcement that Tony La Russa will be tapped for a return run on the South Side. It’s certainly not a firm report of an imminent agreement, but Sox fans may want to keep an eye on the news wire on Thursday.
  • The Angels have a new potential target in their GM search, per Jon Morosi of MLB.com (via Twitter). The Halos have asked the Cubs to green-light a chat with Dan Kantrovitz, the current VP of scouting in Chicago. Kantrovitz, who has been with the Cubs for less than a year, could in theory be considered for the top job in Anaheim or targeted as one of two hires if the club decides to bring on both a president of baseball ops and a general manager.
  • This time last year, Kantrovitz was still with the Athletics — a team that now appears to be looking at the end of an era with the potential departure of Billy Beane. Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle addresses several elements of the situation in response to reader inquiries. Unsurprisingly, she anticipates that GM David Forst would step into Beane’s shoes in the event of the latter’s departure. Kantrovitz might’ve been in line to succeed as GM had he remained. As things stand, Slusser suggests that AGM Billy Owens stands to move up the ladder if he’s not first snatched up by another org.
  • The Cardinals are planning to trim costs in player payroll after a round of front office cuts. It turns out that the recent departures included a trio of notable former players, according to Mark Saxon of The Athletic (via Twitter). Former Cards Chris Carpenter, Jason Isringhausen, and Jim Edmonds are no longer being paid as special assistants.

Mozeliak On Cardinals’ Payroll Outlook

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The Cardinals front office is preparing for some austerity in the 2020-21 offseason, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak indicated to reporters including Mark Saxon of The Athletic (Twitter link). Details remain unclear, but Mozeliak left no doubt that payroll will decline.

The St. Louis organization already passed on a chance to retain second baseman Kolten Wong at a $12.5MM salary. That decision would’ve been a close in “normal” times, but came as little surprise in the current environment.

It seems fair to presume we’ll see wallet tightening around the game, but Mozeliak suggests the Cards may be uniquely impacted. COVID-19 closures have battered revenue in 2020 and left ample uncertainty for the ensuing season.

Mozeliak explained:

“Obviously, the success of the Cardinals the last 20 years has been our gate revenue. I do think we might be more negatively affected than others.”

It’ll certainly be interesting to see where the mainstay organization ultimately sets its payroll. In recent seasons, the Cardinals had carried Opening Day payrolls in the $160MM range.

The club is presently committed for just under $100MM in salary for 2021, with fairly minimal anticipated arbitration payouts to be added. It’s possible there’ll still be a fair bit of financial flexibility to work with, but a major paring of payroll would likely take the Cards out of the market for premium free agents.

Paul Goldschmidt Undergoes Elbow Surgery

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Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt recently underwent surgery to have a bone spur taken out of his right elbow, according to president of baseball operations John Mozeliak (via Jeff Jones of the Belleville-News Democrat).

Goldschmidt is recovering well from his procedure, which is welcome news for a Cardinals team that can’t afford to go without him. After having a pedestrian season (by his lofty standards) in 2019, Goldschmidt returned to form in a big way this past year. The 33-year-old took 231 trips to the plate and slashed .304/.417/.466 with six home runs, reminding the Cardinals why they paid a hefty price to the Diamondbacks to acquire Goldschmidt heading into 2019.

Goldschmidt was easily the Cardinals’ main offensive threat this year, and barring a major acquisition(s) over the winter, that will remain the case next season. Despite Goldy’s best efforts, the Cardinals only finished 19th in wRC+ (93), and most of their regulars recorded below-average numbers at the plate.

Cardinals Decline Kolten Wong’s Option

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The Cardinals have declined second baseman Kolten Wong’s $12.5MM club option for 2021 in favor of a $1MM buyout, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was among those to report.

This doesn’t necessarily close the book on Wong’s career with the Cardinals, who were reportedly interested in extending him on a multiyear contract just a couple of weeks ago. For now, though, it does make Wong a free agent and leave a hole at the keystone for St. Louis.

A member of the Cardinals organization since they chose him 22nd overall in the 2011 draft, Wong has been a generally effective part of the team dating back to his 2013 debut. While Wong has never been a major threat at the plate, his ability to combine passable offense with outstanding defense has made him an average or better contributor throughout his career. Just this past season, the 30-year-old Wong batted .265/.350/.326 with a strong 14.4 percent strikeout rate in 208 plate appearances. He also accounted for six Defensive Runs Saved and a 3.8 Ultimate Zone Rating in the field.

Now, if Wong actually explores the open market, he’ll be one of the most accomplished players available at his position. Wong would arguably be the second-best player in free agency there after DJ LeMahieu.

 

Offseason Outlook: St. Louis Cardinals

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For the second straight year, the Cardinals overcame a lackluster offense to reach the postseason, though 2020 also saw the club emerge from a widespread COVID-19 outbreak.  St. Louis now faces some tough decisions on veteran cornerstones, while also figuring out how to make further needed upgrades despite a potential lack of payroll flexibility.

Guaranteed Contracts

  • Paul Goldschmidt, 1B: $103.5MM through 2024
  • Miles Mikolas, SP: $51.75MM through 2023
  • Paul DeJong, SS: $21MM through 2023 (includes $2MM buyout of $12.5MM club option for 2024; Cards also have $15MM club option for 2025 with $1MM buyout)
  • Matt Carpenter, IF: $20.5MM through 2021 (includes $2MM buyout of $18.5MM club/vesting option for 2022)
  • Dexter Fowler, OF: $16.5MM through 2021
  • Carlos Martinez, SP: $12MM through 2021 (includes $500K buyout of $17MM club option for 2022; Cards also have $18MM club option for 2023 with $500K buyout)
  • Andrew Miller, RP: $12MM through 2021 (club option vested into a guaranteed deal)
  • Kwang Hyun Kim, SP: $4MM through 2021

Arbitration-Eligible Players

Note on arb-eligible players: this year’s arbitration projections are more volatile than ever, given the unprecedented revenue losses felt by clubs and the shortened 2020 schedule. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz, who developed our arbitration projection model, used three different methods to calculate different projection numbers. You can see the full projections and an explanation of each if you click here, but for the purposes of our Outlook series, we’ll be using Matt’s 37-percent method — extrapolating what degree of raise a player’s 2020 rate of play would have earned him in a full 162-game slate and then awarding him 37 percent of that raise.

Option Decisions

  • Kolten Wong, 2B: $12.5MM club option for 2021 ($1MM buyout)

Free Agents

On the plus side of the payroll equation, the Cardinals don’t have a big arbitration class, and they have quite a few major contributors who are either just becoming arb-eligible or are still in their pre-arb years.  The released Brett Cecil’s contract will come off the books and the Yadier Molina/Adam Wainwright free agent duo represents $25MM in salary, so the Cards could have some money to play with this winter.

The question is, however, whether these savings will be reinvested into payroll.  While St. Louis has a lot of inexpensive players, it also has almost $110MM committed to eight players for 2021 (that isn’t counting Kolten Wong’s $12.5MM club option, which we’ll cover later).  Like every other team in baseball, the Cardinals are dealing with revenue losses and will be looking to make at least some cutbacks whenever feasible.  That said, this is also a veteran win-now team, so the Cards will still be looking to contend.

It leaves president of baseball operations John Mozeliak and GM Mike Girsch with a difficult offseason ahead of them, in part because the 2020 Cardinals are a particularly hard team to evaluate.  The coronavirus outbreak affected multiple members of the roster and kept the entire team sidelined for over two weeks, only adding to the stop-start nature of an already abbreviated season.  A case can be made that the front office could try to run it back with mostly the same core group, yet the Cardinals have enough weak points that some changes definitely need to be made.

Molina was one of the COVID-19 positive Cardinals, and the longtime catcher simply never got on track, hitting .262/.303/.359 over 156 plate appearances.  That makes it consecutive seasons of subpar offensive production for Molina, but he is still looking for a two-year contract that would take him past his 40th birthday.  Letting Molina go would open the door for noted prospect Andrew Knizner to assume at least a share of everyday duties (maybe alongside a veteran such as a re-signed Matt Wieters), and yet are the Cards willing to let a franchise icon depart?

Wainwright represents perhaps a slightly easier decision, as the 39-year-old was still a very effective player last season.  Statcast metrics didn’t love his performance, but Wainwright still posted a 3.15 ERA, 3.60 K/BB rate, and 7.4 K/9 over a team-high 65 2/3 innings.  Even with a big decline over a fuller season of work, Wainwright still looks like he has something to offer a team, so the question now becomes whether or not the Cardinals could be that team.  Wainwright has said he wants to stay in St. Louis but hinted that his fate could potentially be linked to wherever Molina ends up.

Re-signing Wainwright to something close to the one-year, $5MM contract (plus several incentives) that he inked last year would seem like a logical move for the Cardinals, who head into 2021 with some question marks on the pitching staff.  Nominal ace Jack Flaherty struggled in 2020, Carlos Martinez battled a severe case of COVID-19 and then suffered a late-season oblique strain, and Miles Mikolas’ status for the start of next season isn’t yet known after the righty underwent flexor tendon surgery in late July.  On top of that, Dakota Hudson will almost certainly miss all of 2021 after undergoing Tommy John surgery in September.

A lower-tier move like a reunion with Wainwright might be all the attention the Cards focus on their rotation, since they still have some solid in-house depth.  Kwang Hyun Kim proved to be a real find last winter, and the South Korean left-hander solidified his spot in next year’s starting five following an outstanding rookie season.  Beyond Kim and Flaherty, the Cardinals also have Daniel Ponce de Leon, Jake Woodford, Johan Oviedo, and Austin Gomber to pick up starts, and top prospect Matthew Liberatore could also potentially work his way into the conversation.

There’s also oft-injured Alex Reyes, who stayed healthy (apart from an asymptomatic case of COVID-19) and pitched well in a relief capacity.  St. Louis could opt to just keep Reyes in the bullpen to avoid any further injury concerns, and the same logic could also extend to Martinez, who was returning to starting pitching in 2020 after an impressive season and a half working as a reliever.  Depending on Martinez’s health situation and the overall state of the rotation, returning Martinez to the closer role (or maybe situational closer duties shared with Reyes) could be a canny way of bolstering an already solid relief corps.  Jordan Hicks also figures to be in the ninth-inning mix, though his status is somewhat up in the air after he opted out of the 2020 season due to health concerns and a setback in his recovery from Tommy John surgery in June 2019.

The Cardinals’ ability to deliver consistent pitching and quality defense made them a playoff team, though that path would be much easier with any sort of regular help from the lineup.  Paul Goldschmidt wasn’t quite a one-man hit squad in 2020, as St. Louis got an unexpectedly big contribution from utilityman Brad Miller and center fielder Harrison Bader at least crushed left-handed pitching, even if his splits against righties were mediocre.

Goldschmidt is obviously a cornerstone player, and the Cards would be pleased with Bader as an everyday player (with some platoon possibility) if he continues to mash lefties and provide solid center field defense, though Bader’s glovework dropped from excellent in 2018-19 to merely good in 2020.  Beyond those two, however, the Cardinals will go into next season unsure of whether or not Matt Carpenter, Paul DeJong, or Dexter Fowler can turn things around at the plate.

DeJong’s struggles could be explained by a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, though Carpenter has had two straight subpar seasons and Fowler has been hit-and-miss for much of his St. Louis tenure.  On top of that, Tommy Edman followed up his strong 2019 rookie year with an underwhelming second season, so it remains to be seen if Edman just had a sophomore slump (on top of everything else in 2020) or if he can adjust and become a regular contributor within the infield.

For now, the Cardinals’ infield picture lines up as Goldschmidt at first base, DeJong at shortstop, Carpenter at third base, and Edman as the nominal second baseman until a decision is made on Wong.  Though Wong hit only .265/.350/.326 over 208 PA last season, the Cards know what they have in the Hawaii native — roughly average offensive production (a 99 wRC+ and 98 OPS+ from 2015-20) and an often spectacular second base glove.  In a normal offseason, exercising that $12.5MM club option would seem like a relatively easy call for St. Louis, but the team is thought to be exploring a contract extension with Wong that would lower his salary for the 2021 season but give him more long-term security.

If an extension can’t be reached, could St. Louis consider simply declining Wong’s option?  It seems a little unlikely, given Wong’s obvious value to both the Cardinals and other teams, yet the possibility can’t be ruled out if the Cardinals are lacking in payroll wiggle room.  The Cards might have some confidence they could get Wong to re-sign at a lower price tag, but a number of second-base needy teams (i.e. the Athletics, Indians, Yankees, Rockies, Phillies, Angels, Cubs, and probably others) would provide a lot of competition for Wong’s services.

With Carpenter a question mark, St. Louis will probably look for more infield depth beyond Edman, and re-signing Miller would certainly seem feasible given how well he played last season.  Miller has quietly hit .247/.343/.510 with 20 home runs over 341 PA since the start of the 2019 season, with much of that production coming against right-handed pitching.  Signing a player of Miller’s ilk will become even more of a need if the National League again has the DH for 2021, as Miller instantly provided the Cardinals with some pop from the new position.

That leaves the outfield, a big problem area in 2020 that nonetheless has hope for improvement.  St. Louis outfielders combined for an 82 wRC+ in 2020 (the sixth-lowest total of any team), but Bader did hit lefties well, and star prospect Dylan Carlson seemed to turn a corner in mid-September after being recalled from a demotion to the alternate training site.  The Cardinals likely have Bader and Carlson penciled in for two outfield spots, or perhaps 1.5 spots if Carlson plays center field on days when the Cards face a right-handed starter.

That puts no small amount of pressure on a 22-year-old, of course, and it would help the Cardinals immensely if they could count on anything from Fowler, Tyler O’Neill or Lane Thomas.  COVID-19 limited Thomas to only 18 games, so there is some expectation that he can rebound as at least a part-time outfield option if healthy.  O’Neill is only 25 and not far removed from being a top prospect, but he has yet to translate his hitting potential into big league numbers.

This much wait-and-see is risky for a team hoping to win in 2021, so if St. Louis makes any sort of notable addition this winter, the outfield is the logical landing spot.  As much as trading Randy Arozarena might still weigh heavily on the front office’s mind, the Cardinals could shop O’Neill, Thomas, or Bader for a more proven veteran bat.  With only one year left on his contract, Fowler might also be moveable in a bad-contract swap or if the Cards are willing to eat some money.  If the trade market isn’t the preferred route, the Cardinals could look at free agents, whether it’s pure outfielders like Joc Pederson, or perhaps multi-position types like Jurickson Profar or Enrique Hernandez that could help in both the outfield and infield.

There’s probably bound to again be speculation about the Cards trying to swing a bigger-ticket trade like their acquisition of Goldschmidt two offseasons ago, or their rumored interest in Nolan Arenado last winter.  But, if payroll concerns were an obstacle to an Arenado trade last year, a deal seems even more unlikely now in the pandemic’s wake.

It’s easy to imagine either a pretty quiet or a pretty busy offseason for the Cardinals, depending on how much change they feel is necessary.  After all, this is a club that has been to the postseason in consecutive years, albeit via the expanded playoff field in 2020.  The potential departures of Molina and Wainwright have more than just symbolic importance, as the Cards would be left with two more areas of need on a roster that is lacking in sure things.

Latest On Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright

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“The Cardinals have had continuing discussions” with Yadier Molina’s representatives, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes, as the Cards try to find common ground with their longtime catcher on a new contract.  Molina will officially hit free agency five days after the end of the World Series, giving the Cardinals roughly a week to come to terms on a contract extension that would keep Molina off the open market.

Melvin Roman, Molina’s agent, recently stated that his client is looking for a two-year deal.  Molina himself indicated last April that he is willing to play for another team than the Cardinals if it means extending his career, though that also came a few months after Molina said he intended to remain a lifetime Cardinal.

It remains to be seen if the two sides can strike a deal this close to the opening of free agency, as Goold indicated that though Molina is “prioritizing a return to the Cardinals,” the veteran catcher is willing “to hear what other teams think of him.”  Molina has never been a free agent during his 17-year career, thanks to three previous contract extensions with St. Louis.

If Molina did leave, could Adam Wainwright follow?  The right-hander is also a free agent, and after 15 seasons in a Cardinals uniform, has also indicated a preference to remain with his longtime franchise.  In a recent radio interview on the Scoops With Danny Mac show (audio link), Wainwright said he and Molina had briefly discussed their impending free agencies, with the hurler asking his catcher what his future held.

“He goes, ’I don’t know, but let’s go somewhere together.’  I said I agree, let’s go somewhere together,” Wainwright said.

These comments could simply be idle, best-case-scenario chatter between teammates, as obviously Wainwright and Molina have a strong relationship after so many years playing together.  From a more practical standpoint, going into free agency as something of an unofficial package deal could be difficult to coordinate, as Wainwright and Molina are represented by different agencies.  And, Wainwright continued to stress that ideally, both players would continue playing together as Cardinals.

“Neither one of us wants to leave St. Louis,” Wainwright said.  “We both want to be there, so we’ll see what happens.  I know that times are weird…and the payroll flexibility is probably not what Mo [president of baseball operations John Mozeliak] wishes it was, but we’ll see.  I don’t know.”

After injuries threatened to derail his career, Wainwright has pitched very well the last two seasons, including a 3.15 ERA, 3.60 K/BB rate, and 7.4 K/9 over 65 2/3 innings in 2020.  On the flip side, Molina has had consecutive subpar years at the plate, though his 2020 performance was undoubtedly impacted by a three-week absence due to a positive COVID-19 test.

Cardinals To Retain Coaching Staff For 2021

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After a playoff-bound season, the Cardinals are bringing back their entire coaching staff for 2021, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Assistant Willie McGee, who opted out of the 2020 campaign in the middle of August, plans to return.

Led by manager Mike Shildt, who just completed his second full season on the job, the Cardinals overcame COVID-19 issues to finish 30-28 and land in the wild-card round. However, the club bowed out then, 2-1, against the Padres.

Along with Shildt, hitting coach Jeff Albert and pitching coach Mike Maddux are among those who will be back. The Cardinals didn’t perform especially well on the offensive side, as they ranked 19th in wRC+. Meanwhile, their pitchers rated ninth in ERA and 19th in FIP.

Ryan Sherriff Discusses End Of Time In St. Louis

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  • Rays reliever Ryan Sherriff worked his way back from a 2018 Tommy John surgery to appear on Tampa Bay’s World Series roster. This season marked his first big league action since a 2017-18 stint with the Cardinals, as Sherriff discusses with Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Released by St. Louis in August 2018, two months after undergoing surgery, Sherriff concedes he was frustrated with the way things ended. In light of his success with the Rays, Sherriff now considers his Cardinals release the “best thing that ever happened to me.” A grievance filed in 2018 against the St. Louis organization for back pay and MLB service time related to the date of Sherriff’s injury is still pending, Goold reports.

Looking Back At The Randy Arozarena Trade

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For starters, yes, it’s now officially “The Randy Arozarena Trade.”

Arozarena has been the star of the Rays’ postseason run, hitting an incredible .382/.433/.855 with seven home runs over 60 plate appearances in these playoffs.  The 25-year-old outfielder’s performance earned him ALCS MVP honors, making him the first rookie position player in baseball history to ever be named MVP of a league championship series or World Series.

It’s pretty on-brand for the Rays’ style of roster-building that their October hero is someone a lot of fans probably had never heard of as recently as September.  For a team that is rightly credited for a strong minor league system, it’s a little surprising that so few members of Tampa Bay’s World Series roster are actually homegrown players — only seven of the 28 players came up entirely through the Rays’ pipeline, with the other 21 all acquired via signings or trades.

Case in point, Arozarena.  Back in January, the Rays and Cardinals completed a multi-player deal that, at the time, was best known as “the Jose Martinez trade” or even “the Matthew Liberatore trade.”  Tampa Bay sent top pitching prospect Liberatore, catching prospect Edgardo Rodriguez, and their draft pick in Competitive Balance Round B (which ended up 63rd overall) to St. Louis in exchange for Martinez, the Cards’ pick in Competitive Balance Round A (or the 37th overall pick) and a certain future ALCS MVP.

At the time, Martinez was easily the best-known quantity, having hit .298/.363/.458 with 41 homers over 1288 PA for the Cardinals in 2016-19.  If you had predicted in January that a player from this trade would help lead the Rays to the AL pennant, the assumption would have been that Martinez continued (or improved upon) the offensive production he delivered in St. Louis.  A move to the American League was long seen as a way to possibly fully unlock his potential, as the defensively-challenged Martinez would no longer have to worry about playing the field in a league with a designated hitter position.

As it turned out, Martinez didn’t even finish the season in Tampa.  After missing much of Summer Camp due to a positive COVID-19 test, Martinez hit .239/.329/.388 over 76 PA for the Rays and was traded to the Cubs in a deadline deal for two players to be named later.  Martinez then didn’t collect a single hit over 22 PA for Chicago, and now looks like he could be a non-tender candidate this winter.

It’s worth noting that Martinez didn’t hit as well in 2019 as he did in 2017-18, leading some Tampa fans to wonder why a 31-year-old DH type was the apparent headliner of a trade package for one of the Rays’ (and baseball’s) top prospects.  Liberatore was the 16th overall pick of the 2018 draft and a consensus top-65 prospect, and even accounting for the lost 2020 minor league season, there’s no reason to believe Liberatore couldn’t still become a quality MLB starter.  Liberatore could even factor into the Cardinals’ pitching plans for 2021, as president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said Liberatore impressed the team while working out at the alternate training site this summer.

Arozarena was a well-regarded prospect in his own right, but hardly a top-100 type or even one of the top-tier names in the Cardinals’ system alone; MLB Pipeline ranked Arozarena as the tenth-best St. Louis minor leaguer at the time of the trade.  Since the Cards were already overloaded with outfield candidates, it was more than understandable that Mozeliak and company jumped to unload some of that surplus while bringing back a promising minor league arm.  Granted, St. Louis fans might not agree with this logic based on immediate returns, as several Cards outfielders (such as Tyler O’Neill, Lane Thomas, and even top prospect Dylan Carlson) badly struggled at the plate in 2020 while Arozarena thrived in Tampa Bay.

As valuable of an asset as Liberatore was and still is, however, the Rays felt okay with moving a piece of their future for the win-now addition of some outfield bats.  This is where the Rays’ outstanding player development system really comes into play — Tampa Bay is comfortable in taking the risk in trading such prospects because the front office has confidence they can always draft, acquire, and develop more good players to fill that void.

In a baseball world that holds top-100 prospects in higher regard than ever before, the Rays have dealt three such players (Liberatore, Jesus Sanchez, and Nick Solak) since July 2019, bringing back the likes of Arozarena, Nick Anderson, Peter Fairbanks, and Trevor Richards in return.  All are controllable young players in their own right, and all have been able to contribute at the big league level more immediately, with Arozarena, Anderson, and Fairbanks in particular all being major components of Tampa’s push to the World Series.

The Rays/Cardinals trade is also perhaps instructional in considering just how much teams value draft position.  The concept of trading draft picks is still unusual in baseball terms (the Competitive Balance Round selections are the only picks that can be traded), though fans of the NFL, NBA, or NHL are very familiar with how much teams in those sports often have to surrender in order to trade up in those respective drafts.  A 26-spot jump in the draft was a big leap upwards for the Rays, who used that 37th overall pick on Arizona State shortstop Alika Williams.  St. Louis, meanwhile, took Arkansas high school pitcher Tink Hence with the 63rd overall pick.

Perhaps in a decade’s time, we’ll look back on this deal as “The Alika Williams Trade” or “The Tink Hence Trade,” or even “The Edgardo Rodriguez Trade.”  Since the swap has already led to at least an AL pennant, the Rays likely won’t be too upset if Hence, Rodriguez, or Liberatore end up being staples of the Cardinals’ roster.  While fans take stock of which teams “win” or “lose” trades, most front offices hope all their deals are win-win moves — it won’t help future trade negotiations, naturally, if other teams are too wary of a club who only trades away future underachievers.

The Rays do tend to come out on the better end of trades more often than not, however, which is why the low-payroll franchise is currently playing for a World Series title.  Every playoff champion seems to have at least one unheralded acquisition leading the way, and while Arozarena is but one of several such players on Tampa Bay’s roster, his immediate impact and long-term potential make him a particular success story for the Rays’ front office.

Yadier Molina Seeking Two-Year Deal

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Cardinals icon Yadier Molina saw his three-year, $60MM contract expire at season’s end, which could potentially send him into the open market for the first time in his 17-year big league career. There’s sure to be mutual interest in extending the relationship, but agent Melvin Roman tells MLB Network’s Jon Heyman that his client is seeking a two-year deal (audio link to Heyman’s Big Time Baseball Podcast with Tony Gwynn Jr.; Molina talk begins at 34:30).

Whether the Cardinals are interested in handing out a multi-year deal for Molina at this stage of his career is unclear. Though he’s a nine-time All-Star and nine-time Gold Glove winner, Molina’s bat has tailed off dramatically in recent seasons. He’s still managed to hit for a respectable average, but his already meager walk rate has begun to head south. And while his 13.5 percent strikeout rate from 2020 was still considerably lower than the league average, Molina sat around nine to ten percent in that category at his peak. This year’s 78.1 percent contact rate was far and away the lowest of his career, and his 12 percent swinging-strike rate was easily a career-high.

Overall, Molina has turned in a .268/.310/.388 slash over the past couple of seasons. It should be noted that while that translates to an 86 wRC+ — composite production that is 14 percent worse than an average hitter when weighted for home park and league — Molina’s production is right in line with the average MLB catcher in that span. In addition to being a solid bat relative to his positional peers, he also threw out a strong 31.7 percent of attempted base thieves over the past two seasons. In terms of pitch framing, both FanGraphs and Statcast consider Molina slightly above-average dating back to 2019.

It’s not the same package that Molina brought to the table at his peak — or even when he signed that three-year deal prior to the 2018 season — but it’s not as though he has completely wilted. A rather considerable pay cut in terms of annual salary still seems all but certain, whether on a one- or two year deal and whether with the Cardinals or a new team. Not long ago, talk of Molina signing anywhere other than St. Louis would have seemed outlandish, but he said in the run-up to this year’s shortened season that he intended to keep playing even if it meant signing with a new team.

For the Cardinals, the decision comes down to retaining an icon and potential Hall of Famer or turning things over to a younger option like Andrew Knizner. The 25-year-old Knizner (26 in February) has yet to produce in the big leagues but has long rated as one of the organization’s more promising farmhands. He carries a .283/.362/.453 slash through 341 Triple-A plate appearances and a near-identical OPS in a more pitcher-friendly Double-A setting.

At some point, one would imagine the Cardinals would like to see Knizner take on a larger role — even if Molina were to re-sign for a year or two. Further down the organizational pipeline is 20-year-old Ivan Herrera, who could also factor into the equation by the 2022 time frame through which Molina apparently hopes to be extended.

The Cards have some decisions to make regarding both Molina and longtime teammate Adam Wainwright, each of whom seems intent on playing another year at least. The organization must also decide on Kolten Wong’s $12.5MM option, although it’s possible they’ll look to restructure that arrangement.

Those decisions come not only against the backdrop of league-wide revenue losses stemming from the absence of fans in 2020, but at a time when the Cards have $109.75MM guaranteed to eight players and an arbitration class with some key names up for raises. It’s a tough situation for president of baseball ops John Mozeliak and general manager Mike Girsch to navigate — particularly as they look to account for the loss of righty Dakota Hudson (Tommy John surgery) and augment a lineup that produced middling results in 2020.

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