St. Louis Cardinals fans should opt out of season tickets to send the team a message
While we wait for the St. Louis Cardinals to sign Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright to new contracts, it seems like it’s the fans who will have to make the really tough decisions.
As news came out that Molina was insulted by the Cardinals offer that apparently fell well short of his request for a one-year deal with an option that paid $10 million and Wainwright has yet to even field an offer of any sort from the team while President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak appealed through the media for team supporters to exercise “patience.” Meanwhile, the Cardinals emailed season ticket holders and offered them the chance to opt out of the 2021 season.
It’s difficult enough to know if we’ll feel safe hanging out at Busch Stadium during the upcoming season when we don’t know what COVID-19 will be doing. Will the vaccination be effective? Will people take it? Will parks be full to capacity or will there be limits on the number of people in the stands? But it complicates things even more when we don’t know if the Cardinals are going to make the investment necessary to put a team worth watching on the field.
In a usual season, it’s a bit of a gamble. We hear all about how the Cardinals are the favorites to sign David Price, Bryce Harper or Manny Machado and things are still up in the air by the middle of January when our payments are due in full. Then, inevitably, those deals don’t go through and were left to wonder if Dexter Fowler and Brett Cecil are going to be the guys to get us to the World Series promised land. (Spoiler alert: They weren’t.) This year, the odds of the team fielding a product we’ll want to see seem slim and none. Not only is an exceptionally mediocre 2020 team that barely made the post-season only because of a greatly expanded playoff format unlikely to go out and get any players that could make it’s pathetic offense BETTER. It doesn’t even look promising that the team will return a roster that’s as good as the team had in 2020 with Kolten Wong already cut loose and Wainwright and Molina currently out in the cold.
If the Cardinals are willing to let Molina and Wainwright walk for what amounts to a combined $15 million in 2021, I don’t really see the team doing anything else substantial. They’re not going to take that money and go get a game changing player or two. They’ll find a cheap journeyman catcher to help east the transition to Andrew Knizner who the club should have given a lot more playing time last season over short-timer Matt Wieters and they’ll probably go with internal options to replace Wainwright. That’s a terrible idea, by the way, because the COVID-shortened season limited starters to 50-60 innings. If the Cardinals try to up hurlers innings in one calendar year from 50 to 150, they’re going to have to make a lot more room on the disabled list for pitchers to join Dakota Hudson in recovering from Tommy John surgery.
I have been itching to get to the ballpark ever since Major League Baseball chased us out of the last spring training game in March and shut the season down for months. But I’m not sure I want to invest several thousand dollars in a skeleton crew of a team that isn’t even seriously trying to compete. When I go to a restaurant, they don’t give me a bill when I walk in the door and then surprise me with whatever meal the chef feels like serving. I look at the menu, see if there is anything I want to eat, check the prices to determine if the cost is worth it and THEN I order. Show me the menu, Cardinals.
It’s not just for me to decide if the Cardinals are worth watching. I admit that I am something of a financial idiot when it comes to how much money I spend watching grown men in pajamas try to hit a little white ball with a wooden stick. But I’m crazy like that. I actually have a job and a family, though. I can’t go to ALL of the games. I have to find fellow enthusiasts to split the freight with me to make things work financially. If I say yes, I want to go to the games, and no one else wants to buy some of my tickets, I’ve got big trouble.
Having to pass on going to the ballpark in 2021 after having to miss the entire 2020 season seems like an awfully cruel insult to injury. But the Cardinals’ “players? Who needs players?” attitude is threatening to force my hand and the hands of many other loyal fans who represent the core of the team’s season ticket holder base.
Give us something to be excited about if you expect us to show up, Cardinals. This is a two-way relationship, whether you think so or not.
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Scott Wuerz is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan. The Cheap Seats blog is written from his perspective as a fan and is designed to spark discussion among fans of the Cardinals and other MLB teams. Sources supporting his views and opinions are linked. If you’re looking for Cardinals news and features, check out the BND’s Cardinals section.
