Can the Cardinals afford to go cheap? Not if they want to reverse playoff fortunes

The opening of the National League Championship series on Tuesday in California presents both a reminder of the randomness of the MLB postseason and a sharp contrast to the roster building methods employed by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Neither the Philadelphia Phillies nor the San Diego Padres have reached this far into the postseason since the Phillies played in three straight LCS from 2008-2010, and the Padres have come this far in the postseason only twice in franchise history, most recently in 1998.

For most of the last 20 years of Cardinals baseball, their record of postseason success would’ve stood in sharp contrast to those teams. And yet with the club having won only one LCS game in the last nine seasons and bowing out in the Wild Card round in each of the last three, can the Cardinals lay claim to the juggernaut they once built? If not, where does their path diverge from the teams now finding success?

The most important players at the core of each roster just finished their fourth season with their respective teams, having signed enormous free agent contracts in excess of $300 million before the 2019 season. Manny Machado was never seriously on the Cardinals’ radar, playing a position that was occupied by a troublesome contract attached to Matt Carpenter and seemingly displaying a preference to play on the west coast before finding a home in San Diego.

Bryce Harper, on the other hand, both filled a need for and was engaged in conversation with the Cardinals ahead of their trade to acquire Paul Goldschmidt. With a looming financial commitment to Goldschmidt on the horizon and a belief in the potential production of outfielders in the system, the Harper conversations petered out long before his signing with the Phillies on the eve of spring training.

Indeed, the commitments the Padres and Phillies made to Machado and Harper are lightyears beyond any the Cardinals have ever made in free agency. The five year, $82.5 million deal signed by Dexter Fowler in 2016 remains the largest contract the team has ever given a free agent, with the five year, $80 million deal for Mike Leake in 2015 the largest free agent deal given to a pitcher.

Both contracts, of course, were disastrous. Leake would be traded to Seattle before the end of his second season in St. Louis in a pure contract dump (even one which required the team to eat money), and the last season of Fowler’s deal was shuffled off to the Angels within a day after the Cardinals acquired Nolan Arenado.

The perils of free agency

That those contracts ended in disaster seems to have reinforced to the Cardinals the perils of free agency, along with oversized deals handed out to relievers like Brett Cecil, Greg Holland and Andrew Miller. Last winter’s biggest free agent prize, Steven Matz, signed a $44 million deal which saw him pitch only 48 innings over 15 appearances, ten of which were starts.

And yet the creation of that negative feedback loop was based in large part by the decisions made that were seemingly reactions to market forces which have largely outpaced the club’s mode of thinking. Pursuing a trade for Adam Eaton, for instance, led the Cardinals to balk at the asset cost and instead pivot to Fowler. Misreading the reliever market led to frontrunning deals given to Cecil and Miller, as well as the mystifying current two-year commitment to Drew VerHagen.

The Cardinals, who made excellent trades for both Arenado and Goldschmidt in which they sacrificed very little in terms of talent while also holding economic leverage in both instances, continue to seem flummoxed by the basic functions of the free agent market, and have given very little sign that they’re likely to change their previous positions this winter.

There are franchise-altering players available in free agency should the Cardinals choose to pursue them. Any of Carlos Correa, Dansby Swanson and especially Trea Turner would fill a position of need while simultaneously providing depth to the top of the lineup in a way that would elevate the Cardinals to the top echelons of the National League.

A third of a billion dollars

Heading into the postseason, manager Oli Marmol felt obliged to move Albert Pujols to the second spot in the lineup, not trusting that aligning Brendan Donovan and Lars Nootbaar to theoretically receive the most at bats on the roster would provide the necessary offensive punch.

His thought process was solid, and an example of making the best he could out of what he was given. The back half of the lineup, though, couldn’t provide enough to overcome the punchless middle, and the Cardinals again faded out with a whimper.

Deals like those given to Harper and Machado come with risk, and a third of a billion dollars is an enormous commitment to make in one swing. Indeed, signing such a deal would represent a commitment of more than four times the financial outlay of acquiring the entire franchise back in 1995.

Those commitments, though, pay off. Baseball is a risk-based business. Can the Cardinals afford to swing for such enormous deals? Increasingly it seems they can’t afford not to.