Nola, Gray may be Cardinals’ targets at MLB Winter Meetings. Both bring a hefty price tag
It may well be true that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time, but there’s not generally a competitive disadvantage that comes from others approaching the pieces of the prey which seemed to be the most tempting.
That is roughly the challenge that faces the St. Louis Cardinals this winter.
With the annual General Managers Meetings taking place this week in Scottsdale, Arizona comes the official start of winter player movement. Players became eligible to change teams via free agency on Monday evening, and the deadline to exercise player options and provide the qualifying offer passed as well.
The Cardinals, with a pachyderm-sized hole where a complete pitching staff ought to be, find themselves now thrust into executing a winter strategy that will return them to relevance after their worst season in decades.
With a task this daunting, the most obvious place to look for guidance around their approach is in their past behavior. In situations where they’ve had easily identifiable targets, the front office under John Mozeliak has historically acted to set the market rather than react to it, attempting to jump the line in the name of cost certainty.
The two most obvious examples of that strategy are the free agent deals given to lefties Brett Cecil and Steven Matz, the first of which was an unrepentant disaster and the second of which can be generously judged to be incomplete, depending on whether Matz can secure sufficient health to turn in productive seasons in the two years he has remaining on his deal.
On Monday, it was announced that Sonny Gray finished in the top three of voting for the American League Cy Young, based on his work for the Minnesota Twins in 2023, and it was also announced that the Twins extended him a qualifying offer. On Tuesday, Gray turned 34. In the coming days, he could offer clarity to the Cardinals.
Gray, like Matz, makes his home near Nashville, and throughout the season expressed to reporters covering the Twins a desire to play close to that home. The Cardinals and Atlanta represent two options that would fulfill that desire, and both teams are set up to compete for his services, though Atlanta’s exercise of Charlie Morton’s one year option could potentially tamp down their immediate enthusiasm.
Having eschewed the traditional end of year press conference in the wake of the team’s face plant, Mozeliak spoke to reporters in Arizona on Monday and largely echoed many of the thoughts he expressed throughout the later part of the season. Those thoughts include a desire to add three pitchers who will make starts for the Cardinals in 2024; one way to look at that divide, Mozeliak opined, would be to acquire two sure things and a third arm which might find itself in a timeshare.
Gray would represent one of those sure things, and would come in at a lower price point than top of the market options like Aaron Nola and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who the Cardinals will also pursue. That relative bargain is only important inasmuch as it could set the framework for the rest of the winter; if Gray represents roster certainty, he could also represent budget certainty. A fast pursuit could mean starting at the middle of the problem and working out from there.
The Cardinals would have to pay a penalty for signing Gray under MLB’s qualifying offer system, though crucially, their highest pick in the 2024 draft would be protected. That pick stands a 10% chance of being first overall and a greater than 50% chance of being in the top five, which would be their highest selection since picking J.D. Drew fifth overall in 1998.
As neither a receiver of revenue sharing nor a payer of the competitive balance tax, the Cardinals would lose their second-highest pick and $500,000 from their international bonus pool for signing Gray. Should they sign a second player who was qualified, such as Nola or Blake Snell, they would also forfeit their third-highest pick and an additional half million dollars from the same pool.
Those penalties are significant, but they have not deterred the Cardinals in the past.
Last winter’s addition of Willson Contreras, for instance, included the penalty, and it was simply baked into the acquisition cost and weighed against the other options. While definitely a relevant variable, it seems unlikely that, even with higher than normal picks in hand, the Cardinals would allow themselves to be stopped by potential future losses.
Indeed, all signals from the team are that the present is all that matters, and there appears to be sincere determination to avoid 2023’s humiliating failure. Whether that determination is strong enough to overcome the reality check which will accompany the size of the checks which need to be written is something that will be learned throughout the winter. That is where the rubber will meet the road.
Fans, at least, should be hopeful that the team is in fact bringing a big appetite and is prepared to pay the bill to satiate it.
This story was originally published November 7, 2023 at 12:50 PM.
