Do You Think the Cardinals Are Cheap?

[mizzoupacers]

As long as the team continues to play poorly, we are going to be seeing articles like this one:

link

What do you think? Is Bill DeWitt a cheapskate owner?

I'm going to say "No."

The Cardinals' payroll this season is just over $90 million. The mean is about $83 million per team. (That's including the Yankees at more than a hundred million above the mean, and the Red Sox at sixty million above the mean.)

The median is around $80 million. The Cardinals' payroll ranks eleventh among the thirty major-league teams. It ranks fourth among the sixteen National League teams.

Of the ten major-league teams with higher payrolls, six are in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. Of course we are not going to outspend those teams. The other four teams who are outspending us this year are Boston, Seattle, Detroit, and Baltimore. Boston and Detroit are much bigger markets than St. Louis. Only Seattle and Baltimore might possibly raise my eyebrows.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals spend slightly more than league rivals in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Atlanta--all significantly bigger markets.

In my opinion, the Cardinals' problems are not the result of a front office that is unwilling to spend money. It's that some of the guys getting the most money have aged much faster than anticipated, and our farm system has not been good enough to make up for it.

Of course, I'd be happy to see the team payroll go up to $100 million next year, like the front office semi-promised it would this year. Let's go spend $10 million this winter on a free-agent outfielder who can knock the crap out of the ball.

[bigboy1234]

Yes, you get a new stadium you're supposed to spend more money.

As I said last year, in one of our I believe three 8 game losing streaks that it may be better not to make the playoffs than make it and do nothing in the playoffs. (Luckily we won it all though.) But I believe if we wouldn't have made the playoffs that Cardinals mangement/owners would spend more money. But instead we won the World Series, so they thought they could get by with even less. At least thats the way I see it.

I would like the Cards to go after more foreign prospects, the Mets, Yankees, Giants, Mariners all did pretty good for themselves recently by signing "bonus babies" out of the country.

Also, I'm not really in favor of signing replacement players like Encarnacion for anymore than 500k. Reasons why I hated the Kip Wells, Encarnacion, Eckstein, Kennedy, Looper signings, because I believe you can get players of that level for 500k. Also I hate wasting money on a "closer", although Izzy has been pretty solid as a Cardinal, Ryan Franklin, Tyler Johnson, and Flores shows you that bullpen help is easy to come by despite popular belief.

Just my thoughts, and of course I believe I would be the best GM of all time.

[pacerfan]

I'm hoping the Cards are saving some money for a mid-season pick up.

I don't know baseball finances well, but on the surface it would seem the Cardinals payroll ought to be at least 100 million. Of course, it's easy for me to say as it is not my money.

[mizzoupacers]

I agree that it would be nice to see the Cardinals add some payroll...it wouldn't kill them to spend another $10-15 million. I guess I'm willing to accept the front office's argument that there just weren't good enough free agents available last winter, although in retrospect it looks like they should have been willing to overpay a little to keep Suppan...better to overpay him by a few million a year than to waste that few million on Kip Wells. Oh well, 20-20 hindsight...if the Cardinals fail to bring in a big-ticket free agent in the next year or two, then I'll be ready to call them cheap.

As a whole the Cardinals are spending about what you could reasonably expect a mid-size-market team to shell out in payroll. It's just that the guys we are paying the big bucks are not recent signings, so there hasn't been a big splash in awhile and people are getting restless.

Also, it doesn't help that the guys making all the money are having terrible seasons. Of our big-money guys--Pujols, Rolen, Edmonds, Izzy, and Carpenter--the only one who is having a good year so far is Izzy. That's what is killing us.

[bigboy1234]

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/artic ... lly-worth/
I recommend this site for everyone, mostly because it's one of my favorite baseball sites.

The Cards are definitely not on the level of the top 5 teams in the league. But still! NEW BALLPARK AND A CHAMPIONSHIP SPEND MONEY.

If they would just hire me as an advisor I could see us be the 90's braves with actual championships.

Oh, and just to let everyone know there have been rumors about a Weaver return.

[mizzoupacers]

Here is a take on the Jon Heyman article for Sports Illustrated that I linked to in my first post, the one where he calls DeWitt a cheap owner. Open the link and then scroll down to "Parse This":

http://www.firejoemorgan.com/

Admittedly, it speaks more to Heyman's article than to the Cardinals' overall personnel decision-making processes.



Wow, Jeff Weaver is really stinking it up in Seattle, isn't he? Was last year a fluke, or can Duncan turn "Dream Weaver" back into a postseason hero if we take him off the Mariners' hands for maybe a couple million bucks?