Will Jack Flaherty have to leave before the St. Louis Cardinals stop being stupid?

The St. Louis Cardinals have made plenty of mistakes in the past five years when it comes to contract decisions.

They gave money to Brett Cecil and Luke Gregerson with very little to show for it. They gave even more to Mike Leake and Dexter Fowler for mixed returns at best. Now Andrew Miller is hurt with no timetable for return after a questionable first season on a two-year deal.

With all this in mind, I’m more than a little bit nervous as the Cardinals stand at a financial crossroads with star pitcher Jack Flaherty.

St. Louis is standing firm on a ridiculous formula for assigning non-arbitration contracts, thoroughly ticking Flaherty off in the process. Are Major League Baseball jobs the same as stock boy roles at the local department store? If one leaves, don’t worry about it, we’ll just find someone else.

I believe it’s these salary formulas that are holding the Cardinals back. They dictate that all players are, if not completely the same, at least only slightly different shades of gray. They used to target specific players when the offseason rolled around. Now they look for “pitching depth” or “a left-handed outfielder” instead of one guy in particular. Usually, they let more aggressive teams have the pick of the litter, then they take the third or fourth or fifth guy on the list when the price meets their target.

That doesn’t work on the free agent market. And it really doesn’t work when it comes to your own players. Look at the Kris Bryant saga with the Chicago Cubs. His relationship with the team that drafted him has soured so completely after the Cubs mistreated him by manipulating his free agency clock that the team is actively (read: desperately) trying to trade him to San Diego, Colorado, even, reportedly, to the division rival Cardinals.

If the goal is to develop talent, you can’t let guys like Flaherty walk away at first opportunity because you’re so foolish as to stick it to him over a couple million bucks now that might save you $50 million — or $100 million — later. If the Cardinals would have acted this way when Albert Pujols was a young player, they would have lost him when he was 26 or 27 instead of 32. One thing is for sure in this world: Prices are never going down.

St. Louis Cardinals just won’t spend money

The Cardinals have chosen again this year to ignore the opportunity to build the team through free agency and there were no trades last season at the deadline with the club desperately needed a bat. So the only options for getting better are to draft and grow players. But you can’t just hang on to players through arbitration and then let them go when they’re 26 years old and just reaching their prime. It used to be St. Louis didn’t want to pay players past their premium years. Now they don’t want to pay them IN their premium years. Like I said about Pujols, the time to get players at a reasonable rate is when they haven’t banked several million. They want security that if they get hurt, they still have a healthy nest egg. Pujols gave away several years of free agency for that security. But when he finally neared free agency, he wasn’t in the mood to take a discount because he had $100 million in the bank and had nothing to lose.

The bottom line is that, in a game that requires extraordinary skill, you can’t treat players like disposable parts. The Cardinals drafted and developed Flaherty as an elite performer. So if that’s what their evaluations told them they should put their money where their mouth is. Or else they can just become the Pittsburgh Pirates or Miami Marlins and trade every decent player they get when he’s 24 or 25 for more prospects to trade when they get to be 24 or 25.

This club has the chance to be special with Flaherty, Dakota Hudson, Dylan Carlson, Nolan Gorman, Lane Thomas, Andrew Knizner, Jordan Hicks all coming of age at about the same time. So let’s make sure that the window of opportunity lasts more than a couple of years before the band starts to break up and players go places they feel like the team is committed to winner. After all, every time the Cardinals appear to be ready to dip into the deep end of the free agent pool, we hear that the Cardinals have to save money for the days when their internal options start to see their salaries increase. So pay the men. The Cardinals should show us how smart there are at building from within and go all in on the guys you promised us were the future of this proud franchise.

At some point John Mozeliak and company need to learn when to hold ‘em and when you fold ‘em. But the other thing they need to learn is how to treat people. Because you can say that a player doesn’t care about anything but money when it comes to contracts. But that hasn’t been the case lately. Marcell Ozuna turned down $50 million from the Cincinnati Reds to take $18 million from the Atlanta Braves. Jason Heyward took less money from the Chicago Cubs than he was offered by St. Louis. Why? Because they believe in the organization they opted to join and they felt like they were treated right.

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.