In Holliday’s case, the Cardinals have until 12/1 to offer him arbitration, which he will certainly turn down by the 12/7 due date. Then, they will get two picks if he signs elsewhere. If he signs before 12/1 (unlikely), the Cards will get two picks just as if they later offered arbitration.

What the offer of arbitration means is that the Cardinals are making a firm, one-year offer to Holliday. If he accepts, he is considered signed. The only open question is how much he would make. If they cannot agree on that by February, each side would present to an arbitration panel. The arbitrators would decide on one of the two submitted amounts for his one-year contract.

Having said all that, it is very, very rare for a veteran free agent to go that route and for Holliday, I would say there is almost zero odds of it happening.

The Cards might try to be the top of the market for Pujols, but few other players. DeWitt made it known he would not be high bidder on Holliday. If it only becomes about money, we say thanks for the memories and move on. If Holliday does not sign by tomorrow, he will not be returning, but will be serving the Union’s efforts to pump up the salary scale by looking for a top of the market deal.

Holliday will be one of the financial pace-setters this winter. He will probably sign by mid December or earlier, helping define the market for smaller fry.

RC, DeRosa is a the truest sign of change. The meaningless announcement of Freese having the inside track had only one purpose.

I’m fully with WC regarding Smoltz. Sign him to something reasonable. Install him as closer and move him into the rotation if absolutely needed.

If you offer Holiday 5/80. His wife, who just deliver 6 weeks early, might step on some toes. If the market stays complicated and the Yankees get him for 6/100, or even 6/90, where were we? All talk. I’m saying this to make a point. We never intended to keep Holiday. Why say he is still your priority, even into January, and then make excuses about why you missed all the other opportunities. Offer Smoltz something. He strikes people out.

I hardly ever post on sports message boards. I like the blog format, where there’s a single subject and you can give it some thought before you weigh in. I’ve been reading this one for months, and really enjoy the quality of Brian’s posts and the readers’ responses. Message boards, it seems to me, encourage a different level of discourse. It’s remarkable to see a thread get three or four responses without anyone being called an idiot or a Nazi. I get enough yelling and name-calling from my kids; I don’t need it on the Internet.

I’m sure the Scout board is better than most, but IIRC, at the time I stopped reading and posting, there were a couple of posters who couldn’t let go of their hatred of DeWitt and La Russa, as well as an entrenched resistance to statistical analysis. So if the thread was about David Eckstein, say, the conversation would get stuck on “he’s a gamer,” “DeWitt’s too cheap to win,” “but he hit .309!” or my favorite, “He throws funny.” For some weird reason, I remember a poster putting that into every thread.

Not that I was contributing anything special. I just lost interest.

Tthere is a thread over at the Scout message board about “old” posters that we would like to see come back. I can’t remember your screen name but I was thinking of you when I read that thread. We could use your input over there.

“Moneyball: Dead, Alive, or on Life Support?”

You make some strong points, but it is only natural to look for something quick and dirty to make comparisons.

However in some past discussions, I have seen it badly misused. Folks with an agenda bent on attacking ownership purposely continued to make payroll comparisons off the Cardinals’ 2005 base that included Walker and Cedeno. Despite being shown the reason for the discrepancy, they used it over and over to “prove” ownership was cheap because it appeared the payroll was going down. People like that don’t respond to reason, while others too gullible or too busy to take the time to understand just accept it as gospel. Drives me nuts…

Here in 2009, the Cardinals made good on their “keeping some powder dry” pledge and added considerable salary during the season. After what happened during 2008 (nothing), I was skeptical. But this time they came through. As you note, the database history will never reflect those moves.

Kind of a peripheral issue, but still something I wonder about whenever I see articles about MLB payrolls:

It’s hard for me to justify attaching much significance. In addition to the excellent point you raised about players who are being paid by their previous teams, the numbers don’t reflect in-season personnel moves in either direction. Teams don’t just add salaries, as you noted. They also shed them if the team isn’t in contention. And some players have much of their compensation tied up in performance bonuses, which is also left out.

In addition to all that, there’s no accounting for how much teams pay their managers and coaches. When Torre and TLR get paid millions more than most of their counterparts, and have the leverage to demand highly paid coaching staffs, we’re looking at the equivalent of a mid-range free agent.

An accurate opening-day payroll assessment would probably give us a glimpse of how teams see themselves going into the season — you figure teams with the highest payrolls expect to be in contention — but the current numbers don’t even seem useful in that very limited context.