For whatever it’s worth John Heyman is reporting the cards are expected to finalize a deal with Sonny Gray today. I haven’t seen anything on numbers yet but this offseason is feeling pretty on brand so far.
[Reply]

Explains the announcement last week that Mo is turning Ballpark Village into an assisted living facility
[Reply]

Yeah typical move, overpay for an aging pitcher.
[Reply]

3 for 75 for Gray. 25 million per season
[Reply]

:-)
[Reply]

Why am I even pleasantly surprised that it’s only three years when I expected Mo to give even more. Ugh.
[Reply]

Eh, they kept it to 3 years at least. He should be a solid pitcher for about 425 innings over those three seasons and has a little genuine upside to be a fringe 1 or strong 2 for 500+ over that stretch.

Their youngest SP is 33 (Matz).

Eh, it could've been worse. But we'll see what Yamamoto goes for. If the AAV is close and the term is 6-8 years, that was the way to go. Then again, it's possible they just couldn't get him to come to the Midwest.

We'll see.
[Reply]

3 years isn't even that bad. I was thinking someone was going to give him 4-5. He was a 95 percentile pitcher. If he can stay healthy, probably a good chance the Cardinals come out ahead on the deal. I guess the main issue is that they've committed themselves to a retirement age rotation.
[Reply]

I'm shocked they went free agent route. I figured they would trade for Glasnow.
[Reply]

The Cardinals will lose their second-highest pick in the 2024 draft and $500K of international bonus pool space due to the signing of a free agent that received a qualifying offer.
[Reply]

If he makes 80 starts over the life of that deal, they'll probably come out ahead or roughly break even.

That should probably net them about 9 WAR. I think to truly come out 'ahead' on the deal I'd want to see them get nearer to 11/12 WAR over that term but I don't think that's terribly likely. He'd likely need to get to 90 starts for that and I'm not seeing it.

Ultimately I think it's just a pretty high floor deal in that Gray gets hurt quite a bit but rarely catastrophically. It's just some 3-5 week absence that costs him 6-8 starts and otherwise he's gonna go throw 6+ innings/start and be 25-30% above average in those starts.

Not much ceiling there; certainly not as much as Yamamoto and likely not someone that's going to anchor a meaningful post-season run. I mean ultimately the stuff's just not there for that; he's a crafty righty who leans into his breaking stuff. As an undersized righty there are some breakdown concerns there but they're lessened by the fact that he's not really a max-effort, fireballer type.
[Reply]

That's a great singing if you need more pitching depth to get over the top and he can slot in as a #2. As your #1 coming off of a career year at 34, that's classic Mo. He's basically 3-3.5 WAR per year over the last six seasons.
[Reply]

I like the three signings individually, but not collectively. Gibson and Gray are good together. They need to either bring someone else that slots at possibly a 1 or 2 (unlikely) or additional depth that can eat innings as needed (competition with Lynn).
[Reply]

There is extreme value in having starting pitchers that can go 6 innings every 5 days.
[Reply]

What is key is that they didn't get murdered on term. That keeps the floor intact. You make that a 4 year deal and the downside increases substantially.

But you look at what the Phil's inked Nola for, they essentially got Nola for ages 31-37 at less than $25 million/season and we gave $25 million/season for 35-37 for Gray. So we effectively bought the last 3 seasons of the Nola deal without the remaining pitcher prime seasons at the front end of it at a higher AAV.

Then again, I don't think Nola's aging particularly well. Its possible that the next 3 years for Nola and the next 3 years for Gray are very similar with the back half of the Nola deal being a real problem. At least Gray's adjusted to his aging nicely and seems to be working with the age-related decline really nicely. Not everyone proves they can do that, so signing someone that has can really work out nicely. Especially when you're not as worried about innings limits at that point.
[Reply]