In yesterday’s post, I highlighted the diminishing quantity of extra draft picks awarded the St. Louis Cardinals over the last five seasons. The total decreased by one each year, starting with their most recent high-water mark of four in the 2005 draft to the point they had none in 2009.
While the analysis showed the take in terms of results from the players selected with the extra picks were uneven and perhaps less than from the club’s regular selections in the same rounds, there is no dispute having more top players offers greater trading flexibility.
This article will look at compensation picks for which the Cardinals were eligible since 2005 and the ones they actually received, good for use in the following June’s First-Year Player Draft.
Some background first. Here we are discussing veteran (six or more years of MLB service time) free agents for whom a club has the right to offer arbitration on a one-year contract. The player has the right to accept or decline that offer.
A very high percentage of the time when offered, it is declined. Yet if offered, there is always the chance the player could accept. That would tie player and team together for another season at market price.
If the team declines to offer, then the player can sign anywhere without penalty. If the club offers and a player in the top 40 percent of his peers declines, the organization is entitled to draft pick compensation if that player agrees to terms with another team.
This latter case is our focus. Though I am not going to get into the details here, based on their performance, all players are ranked yearly into either the top 20 percent (Type A), second 20 percent (Type B) or the rest (no compensation).
The former club of a Type A free agent that was offered arbitration but declined receives two compensatory picks in the upcoming June draft when the player signs with a new team. One pick is an extra pick, called a “sandwich pick” added to the end of the first round and prior to the second, a period called the supplemental round. The other pick is taken from the new team and given to the old team, usually their first- or second-rounder.
A Type B player offered arbitration would fetch a sandwich pick only, meaning there is no real penalty to the signing team for having added the free agent.
There is another wrinkle. If an arbitration-eligible player signs with a new team before the December due date for the old team to offer arbitration, the old team receives the appropriate picks just as if they had offered the player later on.
(To be more complete, another way to secure an extra pick is in compensation for an unsigned player from the first three rounds of the previous draft. That case does not apply here.)
Ok, without further ado, here are the 17 Cardinals Type A (two picks in compensation) and Type B (one pick) free agents from the last four off-seasons.
| FA | Draft | Player | Potential | Picks gained | Picks gained |
| picks lost | signed early | offered arbitration | |||
| 2008 | 2009 | Russ Springer | 2 | ||
| Jason Isringhausen | 1 | ||||
| Braden Looper | 1 | ||||
| 2007 | 2008 | David Eckstein | 1 | ||
| Troy Percival | 1 | ||||
| 2006 | 2007 | Jeff Suppan | 2 | ||
| Ronnie Belliard | 2 | ||||
| Jeff Weaver | 1 | ||||
| Jason Marquis | 1 | ||||
| Preston Wilson | 1 | ||||
| 2005 | 2006 | Matt Morris | 2 | ||
| Abraham Nunez | 1 | ||||
| Mark Grudzielanek | 2 | ||||
| Al Reyes | 2 | ||||
| Julian Tavarez | 2 | ||||
| Reggie Sanders | 1 | ||||
| John Mabry | 1 | ||||
| Four-year total | 18 | 2 | 4 |
The 17 players represent a maximum of 24 possible draft picks. Only six of those compensatory picks, or one-fourth of them, were actually received by the Cardinals, having been collected from four of the 17 players. The Cards declined to offer arbitration to the other 13.
Even if the Cardinals had wanted to capture the maximum number of picks possible, some of the players might have accepted their offer and remained with the team. In that case, the club would not have received compensatory selections for those players and potentially been stuck with players they did not want.
In several other cases, however, the Cardinals left almost sure picks on the table by not offering arbitration for a player obviously leaving. This is consistent with the organization’s stated philosophy of not offering players unless they were wanted to return.
A prime example was former starting pitcher Jason Marquis. There seemed no way Marquis would have accepted an arbitration offer to return to the Cardinals for 2007 after the problems that culminated in him being left off the 2006 playoff rosters. The sandwich pick the Cardinals would have received had they offered and Marquis not accepted would have been a “free” one, not taken away from the signing team (the Cubs, who signed him for three years, $21 million).
In other cases, the Cardinals may have avoided offering a marginal Type A player because it would have diminished his value in the open market. A possible example is Ronnie Belliard. After having joined the Cardinals late in the 2006 season, the second baseman was declared a Type A. Few if any clubs would have forfeited their first or second-round pick in the 2007 draft just to sign a role player like Belliard.
Finally, there were a few players the Cardinals probably should have offered in the hope the player would accept and remain with the club. A glaring example is right-handed reliever Russ Springer (pictured). Despite having been very effective out of the pen during the prior two seasons, Springer was told prior to 2009 that the Cardinals wanted to get younger. 12 months later, one of the team’s reported priorities is to acquire – you guessed it – another veteran righty for the pen.
In two of the four cases in which they received comp picks, the Cardinals had no control over receiving those selections. Both Al Reyes (2005) and Troy Percival (2007) signed with their new clubs early. That gave the Cardinals two picks, whether they wanted them or not.
We know for sure only that the Cardinals wanted two of the 17 to come back, Matt Morris (2005) and Jeff Suppan (2006). In other words, they were the only two actually offered arbitration and each declined. When the two signed with San Francisco and Milwaukee respectively, St. Louis was awarded a total of four picks.
The Elias Rankings which define the Type status of all players, including free agents, are traditionally released near the end of the World Series. At that point, we will know what compensation, if any, the Cardinals’ nine 2009-2010 free agents may fetch – but only if they sign elsewhere early or arbitration is offered, that is.
After 2006, we re-signed Preston Wilson. He later re-injured his knee and did not do much in 2007, IIRC. If a guy re-signs, he cannot count as a foregone draft pick.
Springer was a circa 40 year old set up man. If the Cards tagged him with a Type A designation, this would have destroyed his market value, because the signing team would have had to surrender their June first round pick for an aging setup RHP. It would have been unkind treatment of Springer, so the Cards did the right thing by him.
Al Reyes blew out his elbow in late September 2006, further lowering his value. As a journeyman with a rebuilt elbow, Reyes could not have commanded a first round compensatory pick.
We wanted to end the relationship with Isringhausen, however, Izzy would have been happy to accept an offer of arbitration given his prior salary of $8MM.
I understand passing on Looper. If we give Braden arbitration, he might have been awarded several million more bucks than he got from the Brewers.
Marquis was not selected for our 2006 playoff teams. When Cubs GM Jim Hendrie chose to confer a 3 year $21MM deal on Marquis, many Cards fans were astounded. In hindsight, it could be said that it would have been smart to gain a draft pick by offering compensation to Marquis, but Jocketty would have been worried Marquis might have taken it and cost $7MM.
I can understand passing on Eck. He would have cost $5MM in arbitration. In the market, Eck got less.
We could be questioned for not offering arbitration to Troy Percival. Happily, Troy was signed so early that we got the draft pick invested in Lance Lynn.
It was strange the Cards did not offer arbitration to Jeff Weaver, since Goldilocks was coming off a WS win and had market value. We lost one draft pick on him. We agree on Weaver.
IIRC, a condition of our signing Grudzielanek was we would NOT offer arbitration.
After 2005, Mabry and Sanders were old, declining players. They were popular, so might have accepted an arbitration offer. Mabry told the Post Dispatch that Jocketty encouraged him to accept an offer from the Cubs.
Julian Tavarez is debateable. He had enough market value we could have gotten two picks. But he did not cost us a first rounder on the way into St Louis, so maybe we did not want to lower his earning potential on the way out of town.
We informally gave Kennedy and Belliard the same offer, playing them off against one another. Kennedy went for the deal first. At that point, we did not want to pay millions more to Belliard to be his backup. Belliard ended up signing cheap with the Nationals.
Its nice lifer journeyman Abe Nunez turned into 1B prospect Mark Hamilton. Extra picks are nice to obtain.
Clearly, you continually display this sort of information to torture me. It kills me that they let all of these potential picks slide. Trading high level prospects for veterans this season wouldn’t seem so costly if the team didn’t give up on so many picks in the past.
Players typically make less money in arbitration than they do in the open market. Unless the player in question is crap, they should be offering arbitration. If worst comes to worst and someone accepts who you don’t want on your team, you can likely find a trading partner to take him at an arbitration-value contract. One year deals aren’t all that risky.
Abe Nunes personifies journeyman. He was a backup for years with the Pirates, a switch hitting light hitting good fielding middle infielder. The Cards signed him in the winter before the 2005 season as a free agent. When Rolen suffered a shoulder injury in 2005, Nunez collected a lot of at bats at 3B and had for him a good batting average of IIRC .285. Nunez signed a two year deal with the Phils IIRC in November. This gave the Cards a choice at the end of the 2nd round of the 2006 drive, used on 1Bman Mark Hamilton. I am not sure whether this is an example of the Cards declining to make an arbitration offer or whether Nunez signed with the Phils BEFORE the Cards got a chance to make an arbitration offer. If it is the latter, then we did not make a mistake in judgment to decline to offer arbitration. Instead, we received the compensation to which we would have been entitled had Nunez held off signing until after we offered arbitration. In either event, we received a high draft pick for losing a free agent who cost us nothing in terms of draft picks the previous winter. The Cards did not lose out on a compensatory pick in the instance of Abe Nunez.
With departing players in 2005, we also collected two picks for Matt Morris. Great!
I cannot concurr with Brian regarding the potential to reap draft picks for Gruzielanek (contract did not allow an offer of arbitration), Al Reyes (arm injury and no market value), Sanders and Mabry (washed up, with Jocketty even advising Mabry to grab a deal from the Cubs because we did not want him back).
Arbitration decisions about the 2006 departing free agents raise a couple of plausible questions.
First, the easy decisions. Suppan had a lot of market value, we offered arbitration, and obtained two high picks in the 2007 draft (Mortensen and Kopp or Todd). We received as much compensation as could be received.
Preston Wilson had a $4.5MM deal with the Astros, was cut, and signed with the Cards in Aug 2006. After the season, he was a free agent. If offered arbitration, he would have accepted and made about $4MM, because arbitrators will not cut a guys salary much and his market value was much lower than the year before. The Cards did not offer arbitration. This was smart. In due course, Wilson re-signed with the Cards, taking about a $3.25MM salary cut. Since he re-signed, he should not qualify to be on the list above. Wilson cannot be a player who should have yielded a draft pick, if he in fact resigned.
I think the Cards made a GM error not to offer arbitration to Jeff Weaver. Weaver was coming off a 10 K WS clinching victory. We wanted him back. Jeff ultimately accepted a two year from the Mariners, so he had some market power, even though he had a bad regular season overall. The case against offering Weaver arbitration is he might accept it and he probably would have gotten $7to8MM via arbitration, maybe $2to3MM more than we thought he was worth. Against this, you consider the possible gain of an extra 2nd round pick. Jocketty was replaced after the next season, perhaps for issues like this one.
For the second half of the 2006 season, Marquis was the equivalent of Wellemeyer in 2009. He was ineffective and did not make the Cards playoff roster (for the second round), even though he was a starter all season. Brian thinks we should have offered arbitration to collect a draft pick, because we should have foreseen the big offer Marquis got from the Cubs. I am less sure. The Cards were fed up with Marquis and did not want him back. If we offered arbitration he might have collected $6MM. The Cubs bid against themselves and made a strange offer to Marquis that they later regretted. We missed a chance to get a draft pick, but we avoided being stuck with Jason and his salary.
The Belliard case is simple. We did not lose out on two draft picks. We could have re-signed Belliard, in which case, no draft picks. Instead we signed Kennedy. It would not have made sense to offer arbitration to Belliard, because his market value was too low for any team to sign him at the price of surrendering their top pick. Even unencumbered with the price of surrendering a draft pick, Belliard still had to take a pay cut to find a roster spot with the Nationals. He may have been an NRI with the Nats, I cant remember for sure.
To some up the departing 2006 vets, we might have gotten one extra pick each for Marquis and Weaver. However, these were additional factors to consider, such as their salaries, given mediocre 2006 performances.
Mark Mulder was also a free agent. I do not know his FA status. If he were a Type B, it would have been nifty if we had offered arbitration and then let him leave. It was a disaster that he stayed.
The outcomes regarding Weaver, Mulder, and Marquis after 2006 were frustrating.
We shall have to hope the 2009 post-season turns out not to be as frustrating as the 2006 post-season.
However, if Holliday and DeRosa depart, we will gain extra picks in the June draft, as when Morris and Suppan left.
To summarize, in the essay above, Brian suggests 18 draft picks were foregone when 13 free agents departed.
I agree that arbitration decisions are important.
Among the 13 departures, I agree about 1 case (Jeff Weaver).
I also concede two more cases are fuzzy (Marquis and Tavarez), though on balance I agree with the Cards not offering them arbitration.
And I have introduced the case of Mark Mulder as someone who might possibly have yielded an extra draft pick had he not been resigned. (I am not sure of his FA status.)
Summarizing is good, Jumbo.
Mulder did not qualify for compensation as a free agent following the 2008 season. Over the previous two years, he pitched only a total of 12 2/3 innings, not nearly enough time to accrue stats to rank among the top 40 percent of pitchers.
A player like Marquis had more value to another club than the Cardinals. The reason they didn’t offer him is that they didn’t want him back. Period. And based on events prior to his free agency, it seems likely Marquis had no interest in returning, either. Having been in the clubhouse helped me draw that conclusion. Noting his Cubs contract was used only as a reference point that the player had considerable value on the open market. Neither you nor I know the second-highest bid for his services, but as a Type B free agent with no penalty to the signing club, I am 100 percent positive Marquis would have gotten offers from others, arb offer or not.
I will stop there because analyzing individual players was not my point in bringing this up. I did not suggest every pick could have and should have been taken, only that there were opportunities to get more if the Cardinals had wanted to assume a bit more risk. On that point, we agree.
The key reason why is that the team does not offer arbitration unless they truly want the player back. That is an understandable philosophy, yet is a very conservative posture. If they had instead decided to place a higher priority on rebuilding their farm system with additional early picks, they might have considered altering that approach somewhat.
That was the entire point of the article, not to get into deep details on every player. Forest versus trees. You may recall discussion elsewhere on this blog where at least one poster tried to rationalize a downturn in fortunes in the farm system in part due to having fewer extra picks. I have shown here how they could have tried to acquire more of them, if they so chose.
In a way, I am glad you have thrown out a bunch of unproven theories as they have given me subjects to write about, and in a number of cases, debunk. To that end, your absence from the “aggressive player movement” thread is most noticeable…
Any news about that kid with the bad eye, Mateo? Can anyone sign him and take a chance on the eye thing, or is he done? Seems like worth looking at for someone if it doesn’t cost $3M.
In his daily Winter Leagues Notebook on the main The Cardinal Nation site, Josh Jones has been updating Mateo’s situation regularly. Mateo has been showcasing his skills for scouts and there are rumors he may sign with someone in the $1 million range. Given the bad feelings with the Cardinals, it would seem unlikely it will be them. The good news is they have done due diligence on his medical condition for the others.
Brian, a point of clarification. Mulder was a free agent after 2006. The Cards had four pitchers who became free agents after 06 (Marquis, Weaver, Mulder, Suppan). I tried to suggest that had we offered arbitration to Mulder after 2006 and he left, we might have landed another pick (depening on Mulders classification at that time, unknown to me). You suggest I meant after 2008 Not so. (I appreciate the humor, however.)
You may be right Marquis would have commanded a better deal via free agency versus arbitration. While I am not fully persuaded we should have offered arbitration to him, because of financial factors, I can see it as a plausible opinion. I do not disrespect you for holding it.
I read you to imply the Cards passed up 17 draft picks they could have gotten from the departure of 13 players. IUts hard for any reader not to draw this inference from your essay. This story distressed Nutlaw and rightly so. If this were so, I would be outraged too.
You suggest you have proven the Cards could have acquired more picks. I think they might have landed two, possibly 3 more, and its a shame they did not land them. But its not egregious.
I value reasonable interpretation of data. The downside for me is this can be timeconsuming. So I may not follow all threads. If my absence from a thread is interepreted by others to imply the vindication of their outlooks, I am happy to confer such joy.
I believe the article was abundantly clear that not all potential picks were likely attainable and in a general sense, why. The actual number of picks foregone is a personal interpretation that no two people will probably agree on. But it is clearly non-zero.
Whatever the number to which a person attaches, it represents real, actual missed opportunity. You may wave it off, but I believe that the Cardinals would have benefited greatly had they come up with even one more Rasmus, Perez or Lynn from a subset of the extra comp picks they chose not to go after.
Even using your number of three extra picks, expecting at least one more top prospect to have come through from them would have been a reasonable rate of return based on data I showed in the “early draft pick return” post. It should not require deep analysis to be able to draw that basic conclusion.
I have been critical of the Cards in the past for not offering arbitration to some guys (Weaver/Eckstein are good examples). I thought I read Brian as supporting/defending that action in the past while here he seems a little critical. I have actually come around a little on this myself to the more supportive side of the Cards organization. It is somewhat a game of chicken but it is an expensive game.
Let’s say the Cards had three guys over the 5 years they could have offered arbitration to with some chance that the player would or would not accept. The Cards don’t want to offer because they feel they can get a better value replacement on the market or in house. If one of these guys accepts it may cost them $3 million over what they feel his value was over a similar upgrade. Add that $3 million to about $2 million they would have paid for the 2 draft picks they got from the 2 guys that didn’t accept and you have a total of nearly $5 million. With that $5 million they could have signed one of the top 3 Latin guys each year. That would seem a better investment than the 2 supplemental draft picks.
Of course in the end the Cards didn’t spend money on one of the top 3 Latin players each year but maybe they wouldn’t have had the money for the De La Cruz and Mateo signings if they had offered these guys arby and one of them accepted.
Not sure what the point i just made (or didn’t make) was but I guess I’m just pointing out that there are lots of things to factor in – it is seldom black or white.
You are right, CC. There are many factors. In any given year, I was probably not militant in my recap of Cardinals arbitration decisions. Though when I missed on my projections, it was almost always by expecting more guys would be offered than the other way around. In analyzing each individual situation as poor time-consumed Jumbo tried to do, one could make a credible argument either way in a number of the cases.
Yet when looking at the past few years in aggregate, I came up with a little different view. Jumbo is actually the one who led me into this work by suggesting that having fewer extra picks was one of several possible reasons for a downturn in fortunes for the minor league system.
For $3 million, given the chance I think I would rather spread my bets, taking a shot at three Rasmus/Lance Lynn-type picks at a million each than one 16-year-old Mateo. Across MLB in recent years, if you look at the number of six-plus year veteran free agents that actually accept arbitration, the number is very, very low. I will try to remember to look it up later. I suggest that if an unwanted player accepted arbitration, he might later be tradeable, allowing at least some of the salary to be recovered, an observation Nutlaw made earlier.
Bottom line, I am not being critical of the Cardinals as much as I am observing they had a potential path and chose different ones instead. As I have acknowledged a number of times, the organization has been very consistent, not offering players arbitration unless they are really wanted back. With some very high-profile free agents this winter, it will be very interesting to see what they do.
As an aside, this is a factoid to file away that affects signings, especially the international ones. The Cardinals run on a fiscal year budget that begins on November 1, rather than a calendar year. As a result, some later signings last winter are charged against the current budget. Since July 2, there have been a handful of recent Venezuelan signings and some Dominican ones that will be announced once the necessary background checking is completed, but at this point, I don’t think any are big-bucks guys. As such, it is difficult to see where all the Mateo money went. At least with draft picks, you know ahead of time about how much you are going to need to budget. The international situation is so volatile, there is no such clarity.
I of course knew that I prompted this thread. Maybe its inspiration owes to a provocative new strategy from Roger Aisles to boost subscriptions. If baiting poor time constrained JS works as an entertaining marketing ploy, I am in fact all for it. Businesses need as much money as they can extract in this economy.
There is an oddly wide gulf between 17 foregone draft picks and a revised sober claim of “non-zero” from “non-critical” “non militant” Brian.
Being generous to a fault, I even tried to help out Brian’s case by coming up with Mulder as an idea after 2006. Mulder should not have been signed by the Cards for a two year deal and if we had just offered him arbitration, maybe we could have gained a pick by his departure. So we lost twice over, thrice if we count Haren too. What misery the wretched Mulder wrought.
Marquis, Mulder, and Weaver were all after the 2006 season and this is probably not a coincidence. Money may have been tight and the Cards may have been leery of arbitration. Sadly money was still spent on Mulder, Edmonds, Spiezio, while we got no compensation for Marquis and Weaver. Coupled with other factors, its no wonder Walt was out after that.
The Cards have signed some $100,000 international free agents. They have yet to recruit the next Marichal or Pujols. With internationals, the competition becomes more monetary, since there is not the monopoly right via the domestic draft. In 09, they played for Yorman Rodriguez and this year landed a different outfielder, Mateo. It was an amazing outcome. A team that used to cap bonuses at just $4,000 spent $3.1MM and outbid 29 other teams. Then, like a fly ball to LF in twilight at Chavez Ravine, bad luck intervened.
Jumbo said:
To suggest that I altered my view is inaccurate because I never stated an amount of picks, only the maximum with plenty of qualifiers. I knew that trying to come up with an exact number was a black hole in which you have unfortunately fallen.
Following is what I said in the initial post. If you interpreted the word “several” to mean 17, then you are a more careless reader than I believe you to be. Key words relating to quantity are highlighted below.
I suggest that a majority of posts that imply disagreement with or questioning of the Cardinals could be interpreted as baiting JS. Completely unrelated remarks about subscriptions dropped into the midst of a baseball-related discussion on a free, no-advertising blog are inappropriate at best.
Ok, here is what I think.
While it is good style to have a crisp headline, Cards passing up comp draft picks, the next most visible aspect of the story is the bottom line on the Table, with 17 potential picks lost. Most readers are going to focus on just these two things, the headline and the 17.
Almost all the rest of the words are a distraction. I am not trying to suggest they are poor writing and am not trying to make a negative statement. I just think that is how many people will react.
As to the text, Russ Springer is a “glaring” example and Jason Marquis is described to be a “prime” example. These seem emotive word choices, in keeping with the headline, that jump out to me as a reader, even if I do not want to read every word to figure out how exactly what is being said.
(Maybe this illustrates for me a difficulty of sorts with a Web site versus a newspaper. I might be more inclined to read a newspaper, but with a smallish computer screen and scrolling, I happpen not to want to devour all the words. I notice the headline, the 17, and a few emotional words.)
We have had discussions about the significance of numbers. I like to understand the origin of numbers qualitatively. What significance does a number merit? Maybe as a journalist wishing to have snappy messages, you like a crisp number. This may work for your needs and I would not wish to suggest you are wrong. For my part, I say, I dont know what it means when the number of minor league all stars decline from one year to another. Its probably not a positive, but I would want to know the names of the all stars to have more of a qualitative feel for the topic because by itself a number may not be sufficiently meaningful, even though crispness can also have its place.
So now in this thread we have a snappy headline, a crisp number 17, though the names are broken out (which I appreciate). I glance through the names, I do not sense a big problem. Russ Springer is not for me a persuasive example of passing on compensatory draft picks (because we are not going to hurt Russ’ earning power by tagging a 40 year old journeyman set up guy with the weight of a lost first round pick). I can see a case for Jason Marquis, but I can see the financial disincentive and Dave Duncan was probably fed up with Jason. Jeff Weaver I guess is the strongest candidate and I volunteered Mulder after 2006 as another possible nominee.
So that is how one person (myself) reacts to this one story. I am not a thorough reader. I am going to try to hunt for what I think is the essence. What are the key facts? Do they fit the headline?
There were two reactions provided in comments. Nutlaw thinks this sounds bad and I can see why he thinks so. And I slowly blah blah through the cases, one after another, with my interest in data quality, and conclude, this does not sound so bad as 17 foregone draft picks, which if true would be outrageous, in my opinion.
If we could have landed two draft picks for the exit Russ Springer, Mo would have been a dope to miss out on them. But there is a flaw in the Labor Agreement that the teams work around. The classification Type A can be placed on someone of lowish baseball value. This kills salary potential. The Cards valued Springer and do not want to sap his earning power by hanging a Type A on his back. Other teams are not going to surrender their Round 1 guy in June for a 40 year setup reliever and the Cards know this. So they decline to offer him arbitration.
I think money played into the Mulder and Weaver decisions not to offer arbitration. IIRC, Mulder was hurt during the back half of 2006. The Cards probably wanted to offer him a lower salary, because of his injury. They needed to do this outside of arbitration. This might have worked out, except the free agent market was so overheated that there was competiton for Mulder from the Tribe and Diamondbacks, so the Cards ultimately had to give him a two year deal.
With Weaver, he had a $7MM plus salary in 2006 from the Angels. The he had a bad season, overall. The Cards wanted to value him at around $5.5MM/yr, two years. But its hard to reduce a salary much through the arbitration context’s 20 percent limit. So the Cards did not want to offer him arbitration. However, in a broader sense, this gave him a chance to exit without the Cards obtaining a draft pick for his loss.
Money plays a big part in these decisions. The Cards made an easy decision to offer arbitration on Suppan, but mussed up on Weaver, probably made a mistake by not offering arbitration to Marquis too, and may have missed a draft pick on Mulder (not sure if he qualified for a draft pick). These two or three missed opportunities were concentrated after the 2006 WS win, when things were busy and the FA market became hot.
If Holliday and DeRosa leave, the Cards should offer them arbitration to get compensatory draft picks. They could do this with Pineiro too, if his two year average of performance qualifies him as a Type B free agent. Its not impossible the Cards could get 5 extra draft picks in the top 2 rounds next June.