-Before I dive right in to the main point of this post, first let me say that Cardinal fans are truly blessed to watch Albert Pujols play in St. Louis. Albert’s numbers, makeup, and work ethic are all off the charts, and to think that he should still have several more seasons in his prime is amazing. Scott Boras has used the term “franchise player” to describe Matt Holliday this off-season, but if Boras wants to see what a real pillar of a franchise is, he should watch Pujols’s press conference from yesterday. Pujols is the very definition of what a franchise player is, and no disrespect to Matt Holliday, but he just isn’t in Pujols’s league.-

                In recent weeks, General Manager John Mozeliak has given several indications of what he would like to do this off-season. Plan A this off-season is re-signing Matt Holliday, who is the biggest bat on the free agent market. In a radio interview on 101 ESPN Mozeliak said that pitching would be the primary focus of plan B, with a lesser bat likely manning either third-base or the outfield. Some feel like Jason Bay, the best bat besides Holliday, should be a priority for the Cardinals, but Mozeliak’s interest appears to be mild at best. So now that it’s becoming clearer what the Cardinals might do, I think it’s a good idea to try and figure out why they see those two plans as the best course of action.

                Obviously plan A is and should be to try and re-sign Matt Holliday. No other position on the Cardinals needs an upgrade more than left-field, and Holliday was the most valuable left-fielder in the game this past season per WAR (Wins Above Replacement-for a good explanation of what WAR is, check out Derrick Goold’s excellent article here). It’s been speculated by many that Holliday’s contract will fall into the $16-18 million range per season, and since each WAR is generally paid $4.4 million on the free agent market, its easy to see that if Holliday stays at a 5.5 WAR level, $16-18 million per year could make him a valuable asset. I know it seems like I have contradicted myself in citing that each WAR is generally worth $4.4 million on the free agent market and then say Holliday is likely to get a deal in the $16-18 million per season range, but the reasons for that are: 1. some of Holliday’s value comes from his defense, and defense is still undervalued by some clubs 2. the $4.4 million figure is what teams generally pay for a single season, in a large multi-year deal like Holliday will command, the risk of injury/attrition in performance mean that his average annual value will be slightly lower than his worth if he were to just sign a 1 year contract. So even though Holliday will command a large contract, he will likely be a good value to the club and would fill a large hole in left-field.

                If the Cardinals don’t get Holliday, some members of the media don’t see why Jason Bay wouldn’t be a priority for the Cardinals (for my take on the Bay-Holliday debate, click here). In short, Bay figures to command a contract in the 4 year $60 million range that Boston offered him. Considering Bay has been worth $15 million once in the past 3 years and he is already 31 years old with bad knees and worse defensive range, its easy to see how a Bay contract won’t be providing the surplus value (WAR-Actual Salary) that Holliday’s contract might. It appears that the best that the team that signs Bay can hope for is for Bay to just be worth his contract and not provide any surplus value, which is possible. That team would be paying almost the $4.4 million per WAR market value for Bay, which doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Why can’t the Cardinals do that?

                The Cardinals have a payroll that has consistently been around the $100 million mark. If the Cardinals payed the market value of $4.4 million per WAR to all of their roster, they would theoretically reach the .500 mark at about $88 million, meaning that at $100 million payroll would give them around a 83 win team. That’s not good enough to reach the playoffs most years, and obviously because of below market extensions like Pujols has signed and young players like Brendan Ryan and Colby Rasmus producing value for the league minimum not every player on the Cardinals is getting payed market value for their WAR, but it is easy to see that too many players providing 0 surplus or even negative value can really inhibit the Cardinals from being a good team, so instead the Cardinals have to look at some players on the free agent market that will likely be more valuable than their actual salaries. One way to do this is to sign Matt Holliday, but in case that doesn’t happen, the Cardinals have a backup plan.

                Mozeliak said that the priority would likely be pitching if Holliday departs, along with a lesser veteran bat at either third-base or left-field. Derrick Goold has said that the club has interest in Xavier Nady, who will likely command a salary of around $5 million since he is coming of an injury. Allen Craig will also be a candidate to see some time in left, so the 2010 left-field combination would cost around $5.4 million and produce around 2 WAR. If you compare that to the 5.5 WAR and $16-18 million Holliday is likely to pull in you will see that the Cardinals would have accumulate 3.5 WAR and only have $10.6-$12.6 million to do it. If the going rate is $4.4 million per WAR on the free agent market, theoretically the Cardinals shouldn’t be able to obtain that many WAR with the remaining dollars they have, but this year there is a way it is possible. With many talented pitchers who are coming off of injuries available, if the Cardinals were to sign someone like Rich Harden (I discussed here) or someone like Ben Sheets it is possible for the Cardinals to get 3.5 WAR for less than market value. The reason for this is that since these pitchers were injured, they won’t be getting paid market value for their performance and will sign lower cost and incentive laden deals instead. A healthy Sheets would probably be worth at least 3.5 WAR, which would mean for around the same price that the Cardinals would be paying Holliday, they would obtain roughly the same amount of WAR. This is why plan B’s priority will be pitching, and not Jason Bay. Sure signing a pitcher coming off of an injury is risky, but so is giving Matt Holliday 6 years and $100 million. To wrap this up, the Cardinals are looking for good values this off-season, and they will either get their value from Matt Holliday or from pitching. Each has risks, but each also carries the potential reward for another playoff birth. These next couple weeks will be some of the most exciting of the off-season, so it will be interesting to see if Mozeliak ends up using plan A or plan B.

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