COVID-interrupted season influences free agent market, St. Louis Cardinals’ payroll
One wall inside the gleaming community amenities space on the eighth floor of One Cardinal Way is covered in caricature drawings of significant figures in St. Louis Cardinals history.
Each of the men depicted has been inducted into the Cardinals Hall of Fame, save for two — Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina.
Pujols left in free agency following the 2011 season. Molina is eligible to do the same this winter, as is his multi-decade teammate, Adam Wainwright.
Whether either or both plays in St. Louis in 2021 could come down to the ability to abide by the strictures of a pandemic-laden baseball economy.
“I think everything is struggling from an economic standpoint,” Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III said. “Obviously the baseball team had a big loss, and there’s uncertainty about what the season will look like next year.”
The opening of One Cardinal Way was slated for spring of 2020, allowing residents to partake of their new ballpark views as the team took the field. With delays caused by the onset of the pandemic, residents didn’t move into the building until Aug. 1.
The crown jewel of phase two of the Ballpark Village development, DeWitt said that even the state-of-the-art apartments have struggled to achieve the financial goals set out for them.
“It’s been a struggle, to be honest. So we’re kind of behind the 8-ball, and we need probably a few years to sort of catch up to where we were going to be.”
A representative of Cordish, the company which manages the building, said that the apartments are 85% occupied. A public listing of available spaces shows apartments available for as little as $1,505 per month for a one bedroom or as much as $7,935 per month for the two bedroom, split level “Cardinal” unit, for which there is a wait list.
MLB free agency opens the day after the end of the World Series, with players able to sign with other teams five days later. Within the next week, then, some players will have new contracts with new clubs, but DeWitt still cautioned that it may be too early for the Cardinals to commit to a payroll structure for the 2021 season.
“I think it’s a little too early to tell,” DeWitt said when asked about the possibility of a decrease in payroll for the 2021 season.
“Everybody’s in a similar boat in a sense that many teams are trying to figure out how to try to reset based on the new economics, but teams that have long term, fixed payroll obligations, of which we’re one, it makes it harder.
“I think it’s a little early to predict what may happen to payroll and therefore what sort of moves we can make.”
According to FanGraphs’s roster resource, the Cardinals have only $51 million in current payroll commitments beyond the 2021 season, with Paul Goldschmidt, Miles Mikolas and Paul DeJong the only players with deals extending that long.
Several key players, such as Jack Flaherty, Alex Reyes and Dakota Hudson, will be arbitration eligible, and both Matt Carpenter ($2 million) and Carlos Martínez ($500,000) will be owed buyouts if team options are not exercised.
One player who’s hoping to join that group is Molina, who has been clear about his desire to sign a two-year contract to ostensibly finish his career in St. Louis.
Per MLB rules, any player who signs an extension which includes at least a 20% pay cut must first officially file for free agency. Molina, who made $20 million annually on his most recent contract, would certainly have to accept a cut of at least that much if he is to remain a Cardinal, so his filing is a fait accompli.
His return, long assumed to be the same, is less clear.
“(Wainwright and Molina) do fit into the payroll structure,” DeWitt said. “They have to, and it’s all gotta work. Without predicting what will happen there, I don’t think you can look at them kind of separately.
“Those are a couple guys, though, that sometimes the consideration there is a little different than just some 100% baseball-slash-economic decision making because of the iconic nature of those two players. It’ll tend to factor in a little bit more than if you’re looking at an outside free agent with no Cardinal loyalty at this point.”
Whether outside free agents of consequence are added to the Cardinals roster this winter is an open question, and DeWitt commented more than once that the economic squeeze across the industry should allow the club to remain economically competitive.
If cuts are happening everywhere, logic then dictates that prices are likely to go down.
The Cardinals dealt with blowback this summer when chairman Bill DeWitt, Jr. told Frank Cusumano on KFNS that, “the industry isn’t very profitable, to be quite honest,” despite his own investment having grown in value by nearly two billion dollars since the group’s initial investment.
Financier Steve Cohen is set to buy 95% of the New York Mets in the coming weeks at a price which values the club at nearly $2.5 billion. Still, DeWitt III expressed hope that Cardinal fans would understand the club’s struggles in the context of their own pandemic-induced economic hardships.
“We’re not going anywhere,” DeWitt emphasized. “On a relative basis I think we’ll be fine, and so hopefully Cardinal fans will hang in there with us and recognize that we’re trying to pull out of this difficult spot just like most of them are as well on the personal side.”
