In my opinion, one of the better sources of Hot Stove rumor mill information is a weekly Sunday column by Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe. In Sunday’s article, three ex-St. Louis Cardinals received prominent mention.
First up was the next chapter in the continuing and heartwarming Mark Mulder feel-good story, clearly designed to try to drum up a market for a pitcher that hasn’t been able to pitch effectively for at least the last two years.
More details were “leaked” about the current nature of Mulder’s infamous arm slot – not as high as when he was dominant, but allegedly higher than with St. Louis this past season. The spices were emotional comments from Mulder himself, relayed by his helpful agent Gregg Clifton and new Brewers mamager Ken Macha.
While this is at least the third “Mulder is doing great” piece in recent weeks, no one has apparently seen him actually throw a baseball. At this point, the only team rumored to potentially have interest is Walt Jocketty’s Cincinnati Reds, which on one hand would be a curious destination, but on the other, quite fitting in a perverse sort of way. Yet, no teams have been named that actually admit tendering Mulder an offer.
As a result, there is more work for Clifton ahead. Expect the next installment of the Mulder propaganda in a couple of weeks. Feel free to ignore it, if you are so inclined.
Jim Edmonds, who is not being asked back to the Chicago Cubs for 2009, could become a target of the Red Sox, suggests Cafardo. The club is in the market for a fourth outfielder and Jimmy Ballgame’s 19 home runs for the Cubs have apparently generated attention.
To put that into perspective, if you add the 2008 home run counts of Cardinals outfielders Chris Duncan, Brian Barton, Joe Mather, Skip Schumaker and Nick Stavinoha, your total would be only 24 long balls. It took them 1105 at-bats to collectively achieve that.
Edmonds delivered his 19 in just 250 ABs.
While there was no doubt that then-GM Jocketty erred in giving Edmonds two years prior to the 2007 season, it is a shame that the outfielder could not have remained a Cardinal last year. In hindsight, perhaps it took his humbling failure with the San Diego Padres for Edmonds to accept he might be better deployed as a platoon player in the latter stage of his fine career.
A mercurial type, he might have never been able to bow to that reality in St. Louis. Too bad, but best of luck to Edmonds in wherever he lands in 2009.
(We’ll have to forgive Cafardo for not knowing JimEd flamed out to start the 2008 season with the Padres rather than the Cardinals. At least he understands there is baseball played outside the Northeast Corridor.)
Last but not least is underappreciated Braden Looper, who Cafardo fingers as being “close” to signing with the Milwaukee Brewers. It seems an ideal spot for the right-handed starter to land. Too bad it is a National League Central rival of St. Louis.
The Brew Crew’s 2008 playoff rotation took a major hit this off-season with the loss of C.C. Sabathia and the almost certain departure of Ben Sheets. They still have exciting youngster Yovani Gallardo and holdover Jeff Suppan, but clearly need outside help.
As an aside, Looper has Suppan partially to thank for receiving the opportunity to convert from relieving to starting in 2007. The two were teammates in St. Louis in 2006, with Suppan in the rotation and Looper in the bullpen. Once Suppan and Jeff Weaver departed after the World Championship season, Looper was drafted to help fill the starting gap the past two years. Now it is his turn to cash in.
Soup, a great guy if there ever was one, priced himself out of the Cardinals comfort range as he headed toward free agency. Suppan ended up signing with Milwaukee for four years, $42 million, a deal quite comparable to what the Cardinals and Kyle Lohse agreed to at season’s end. (Seems longer than 90 days ago, doesn’t it?)
While there is one parallel between Suppan and Looper in that they were cut loose, there is one huge difference.
The Jocketty-led Cardinals of the 2006-2007 off-season were quite comfortable that Suppan would not accept an offer of arbitration. As a result, they offered, Suppan declined as expected and the Cardinals collected a compensation-round draft pick plus the Brewers’ second-rounder when he signed with Milwaukee.
That comp round pick was turned into Clayton Mortensen, who has already reached Triple-A, and is indisputably a top 15 prospect in the system. (Milwaukee’s forfeited second rounder was used by the Cards to take Clemson’s David Kopp, currently our number 34 prospect in the Cardinals system.)
While the take for losing Looper this time around would have only been the sandwich pick, the Cardinals were overly cautious in deciding not to offer him arbitration. I still believe John Mozeliak and the Cards were unnecessarily worried that Looper would accept a one-year deal with them.
The decision not to make the offer to Looper left a valuable comp pick sitting on the table, never to be used. If the Cards go one step further and sign a Type A free agent such as reliever Brian Fuentes, their first 2009 draft pick would be in the 65-70 range. No talent anywhere near a Brett Wallace or Colby Rasmus level will still be left on the board.
Once Looper signs a nice, big two or three-year deal with Milwaukee (or elsewhere), it will become even more obvious that the Cardinals blew their chance to add another premium draft pick in a year when they could really use it.
The Cardinals should sign Mulder as a lefty reliever. I’m kidding.
I wish Jimmy the best anywhere outside the NL Central.
Great points about the compensation pick lost for not offering Looper arb. It is nice having Mortensen and Kopp in the system once Suppan moved on.
I’ll be more upset about losing Looper’s comp pick if Fuentes or another Type A is signed and the Cards lose their first-rounder, too. Yeah, Mortensen and Kopp were a nice take for Suppan. Good thing the organization wasn’t paralyzed over risk of arbitration then.
I have a gut feeling Looper is going to get three years or two plus an option that includes some player control. At his age, 34, he simply wouldn’t want to take the risk that he will stay injury-free and have a better 2009 season than 2008.
Right now, he is likely in the best place he is ever going to be to get what may be his last long-term contract and I bet he’ll get it..
Years ago teams had to wait weeks for a player to decide whether or not to accept arbitration. During which time a team’s hands were tied, because they could not move forward. But I believe this year, the players only had one week to decide to accept arbitration or not. I believe that week was the first week in Dec. so it was relatively early in the off-season before the market developed for most FAs, So I would think the chances of a FA accepting arbitration so early wold depend on his confidence in getting a muti-year contract. The Cardinals may not have felt Looper would have high confidence. But as Brian points out, Looper would have had a high need for a multi-year contract and may have been more willing to gamble on not accepting arbitration.
I am sure we (fans) are much less conservative than the Cardinals (most MLB teams?) when it comes to offering arbitration in order to hopefully get draft picks. I doubt that more than 10% of fans would not have offered arbitration to Looper. It seems to me that the Cardinals do not try to calculate the likelihood of the FA getting a multi-year contract and therefore the likelihood of the FA declining arbitration. The Cardinals seem to ONLY offer arbitration when they do want to retain the FA and what they expect would be the salary. They must not have thought they need Looper enough to pay him his expected salary.
Mulder is working with a West coast stretching guru and is seemingly having some success. I’m sure he will avoid the dead pool and sign late if at all.
About Looper not receiving arbitration. I would guess this is going to be a big tell in coming months. There are many opinions and rationalizations that have been offered. One seems to loom
above the others. It is very apparent that the Cards felt that the Market would collapse, and bet on it. It seems curious though that if they had assigned a Draft Pick to his future contract, they would have been much more likely to get the dead pool deal than someone else. It appears that their “Impulse” was to guard the purse above reasonable baseball operations. I stand by this rational.
Certainly subscribing to the “market collapse” theory would explain why a club would not make moves quickly and if an agent believed that, why he would want to get his clients placed as quickly as possible. In the past, it seemed like Boras would rather wait until teams got desperate.
Boras has all high end players…..except Lopez……who signed. Looper is not with Boras.
The point here is that the Cards made a very “Conservative” move with Looper, with no thought seemingly to the value of draft picks. They seemed more worried that the Collusion would be discovered early, before the very short Arbitration window closed. If they had played it straight, they would have had a much better opportunity of signing a guy they really need, because of his more enhanced costs to other teams. Brewers are talking but not offering. He won’t get anymore the 3/21 or two yrs with a buy out……if he’s lucky……………. No other team has went public with a lo-ball offer (Fuentes) to a player the Coach and GM has said is important to their future. The Cardinals are anchoring (posturing) as the arbitrators of player esteem and value as they shoot themselves in the foot with their own competitive posture. The idea that the Organization is on a higher plane of “gentleman agreements” and Cardinal tradition, if it exists, (I wouldn’t know) is obviously this years PR talking point. No good will come of this when the season starts. I predicting the Cards will again posture as “Frustrated” when clearly it appears that they may be the team least likely to take advantage of a market they are leading the way in creating.
Brian, in past years you seemed to totally defend any idea of the organization not to offer arbitration if there was even a hint of a chance the player might take it. Has your thinking changed slightly (in other words, its worth weighing the odds) or is this concern about the loss of a draft pick Looper specific?
I had quoted Mo in the past when he told me directly that they would not offer just to get a pick. But yes, this year with them trying to sign a Type A FA and no other comp picks coming in, the different dynamics from recent years definitely impacted my opinion on offering Looper. Great question!
We shall have to see what sort of deal Looper will command in the open market. Arbitration might have yielded $7 to $10 million for a 6th pitcher. The Cards have better uses for this monetary commitment. They need to invest in upgrading the bullpen.
Fenway like Wrigley is a ballpark that is suited to Edmonds, with a reachable left field wall. Carl Yazstremski hit balls off the Monster. Ted Williams was another lefty swinger who excelled at Fenway.