MLB Payroll Analyis and Offseason Preview: St. Louis Cardinals

With the offseason approaching in less than two months, and all teams rosters mostly settled for the year, I thought it would be a good time to start looking at the payroll situation for each MLB team. We start the series off with the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Cardinals are currently out of playoff position, one game behind the New York Mets, and two behind the San Francisco Giants. They have already lost their chance at the division, as the Chicago Cubs recently clinched with an astonishing lead of 17.5 games.

Still, St. Louis has a good chance to make to make its 6th consecutive playoff appearance if it can leapfrog either the Giants of Mets.

It has been a bit of a strange season for the Cardinals, as they have been plagued by many injuries all over the diamond. Shortstop Jhonny Peralta went down in spring training and was replaced by Aledmys Diaz, who went on to be an All-Star. Then, when Diaz went down in early August, Jedd Gyorko and Greg Garcia filled in seamlessly. Matt Holliday also has been out for an extended period of time, but has been replaced by Brandon Moss who has hit even better than Holliday.

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The problem this season has actually been the healthy starting pitching. Last year, Cardinals starters easily led the league with a 2.99 ERA. This number was the best in the MLB since the Phillies in 2011. This year, they have slipped to 14th with a 4.29 ERA. Disappointing seasons by Michael Wacha, Mike Leake, and Jaime Garcia, as well as the offseason loss of John Lackey, has left Carlos Martinez as the only productive member of the rotation left from last year.

As a bullpen, the Cards have been decent as closer Trevor Rosenthal’s troubles have been remedied by the emergence of “The Final Boss”, Seung-hwan Oh. The Korean reliever has converted to closer and has continued to pitch well while throwing over 70 innings out of the pen already.

Without further adieu, let’s look at how the Cardinals payroll looks like for the future. We’ll start with looking at the teams upcoming free agents.

Note: Only players on 40-man roster/60-day DL with MLB experience accounted for. Players who are not on a 40-man, or on a 40-man without MLB experience have not had their service clocks started.

Next: Upcoming Free Agents