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I think the Cardinals should have non-tendered McClellan. I think they offered him arbitration for reasons beyond his pitching talent. It didn't have anyting to do with WAR per win or whatever other contrived [expletive] stat tells us exactly what a player is worth. I don't believe McClellan's presence on the roster is handicapping the team in a significant way, whether signing Oswalt or keeping Sanchez or whatever. It's just a tiny part of the picture.

Sometimes these discussions make my head hurt.

jagtrader wrote:I think the Cardinals should have non-tendered McClellan. I think they offered him arbitration for reasons beyond his pitching talent. It didn't have anyting to do with WAR per win or whatever other contrived [expletive] stat tells us exactly what a player is worth. I don't believe McClellan's presence on the roster is handicapping the team in a significant way, whether signing Oswalt or keeping Sanchez or whatever. It's just a tiny part of the picture.

Exactly.

vinsanity wrote:

Jmodene wrote:I really don't think McClellan's salary, such as it is, is standing in the way of Roy Oswalt. There are $10MM other reasons why he hasn't been signed.

Then why would, at least as it appears, Mo be shopping McClellan in light of Carp's potential injury?

I would assume because at the time, we didn't know for sure how healthy Sanchez was going to be come ST. As the Carp situation has shown us, you can never have too much pitching in ST.

Vidor wrote:

cpebbles wrote:

Vidor wrote:This still makes no sense. First, as noted many times, there is no salary cap in base all and the Cardinals were, are, and will remain free to pay Oswalt $8M. So stating the McClellan prevents them from signing Oswalt is factually incorrect. Second, even if it were true that they can't give Oswalt eight million, linking that to McClellan makes no sense. What if they paid Schumaker less, or non-tendered him? What if they'd extended Westbrook for less? Or Lohse? What if they talked Holliday into deferring four million of his 2012 salary? What if they'd handed RF to Craig instead of signing Beltran?

McClellan seems to be turning into one of those internet whipping boys. Like Aaron Miles.

My last attempt:

No salary cap does not mean teams have no limitations on spending, no matter how many times you say it.

Yes, yes it does. They do not have a limitation on spending, and saying otherwise is factually incorrect. They choose not to expand the payroll sufficiently to sign Oswalt.

The Schumaker deal probably should not have been done, but at least he is a better player than the alternatives (Chambers, Robinson, Brown) for his roster position, which is not the case with McClellan.

I don't believe anyone here has denied that the Westbrook extension handcuffs the team. It's just a bad decision well in the past, whereas the McClellan contract was a bad decision made while Oswalt was available and interested. There has still been plenty of complaining about it.

It's a little ridiculous to presume that Holliday would be willing to agree to any contract revisions that decrease the present-day value of his contract by $2.5 million or so.

If they hadn't signed Beltran, they would be a significantly worse team.

I do not cite X, Y, and Z to argue that they are better options--although the Schumaker contract was one that most seemed to dislike but is now oddly forgotten now that McC is the whipping boy--but to point out the fundamental illogic in deciding McC's $2.5M out of $110M or so is the reason we haven't signed Oswalt. Even if one pretends that we can't sign Oswalt, which of course we can. Roy Oswalt isn't a Cardinal b/c ownership doesn't want him badly enough, full stop. Whether or not they really need him is a judgment call; I think not but it would be nice.

I don't understand all this whipping boy talk. To me it seems like there are two kinds of "whipping boys", the first being guys that should barely be sniffing ML roles and are overused like Miles and Theriot, and the second being guys who fans feel their contract money could be used more efficiently like McClellan and Schumaker. The collective opinion here seems to take issue with the latter because we're luckily not dealing with the former. Two completely different scenarios.

I should point out that when we re-signed Westbrook, the consensus seemed to be that we were lucky to get him at 2/16 and that it was a good signing. Since he didn't have a good season, though, the consensus seems to have changed to that noted above, that it somehow is now a bad contract.

Jmodene wrote:

vinsanity wrote:

Jmodene wrote:I really don't think McClellan's salary, such as it is, is standing in the way of Roy Oswalt. There are $10MM other reasons why he hasn't been signed.

Then why would, at least as it appears, Mo be shopping McClellan in light of Carp's potential injury?

I would assume because at the time, we didn't know for sure how healthy Sanchez was going to be come ST. As the Carp situation has shown us, you can never have too much pitching in ST.

Right. The team needs an excess of starting pitching. As of now those options are Lynn, Miller and McClellan.

If you need as much pitching as possible, why does it appear they are currently shopping McClellan after Carptenter's health becomes a concern? My guess would be to clear payroll to make room for Oswalt or are hoping for someone like Guthrie in return.

vinsanity wrote:

Jmodene wrote:

vinsanity wrote:

Jmodene wrote:I really don't think McClellan's salary, such as it is, is standing in the way of Roy Oswalt. There are $10MM other reasons why he hasn't been signed.

Then why would, at least as it appears, Mo be shopping McClellan in light of Carp's potential injury?

I would assume because at the time, we didn't know for sure how healthy Sanchez was going to be come ST. As the Carp situation has shown us, you can never have too much pitching in ST.

Right. The team needs an excess of starting pitching. As of now those options are Lynn, Miller and McClellan.

If you need as much pitching as possible, why does it appear they are currently shopping McClellan after Carptenter's health becomes a concern? My guess would be to clear payroll to make room for Oswalt or are hoping for someone like Guthrie in return.

No, more likely they're satisfied with what they see out of Sanchez now - in terms of whether he was going to be healthy or not - and thus are willing to let Baltimore scout McClellan and (maybe) make us an offer for him.

Besides, if we had non-tendered McClellan, he'd already be an Oriole and we wouldn't have gotten anything for him (assuming that a deal even happens).


It occurs to me, BTW, that we've been extremely fortunate as fans that the so-called "bad contracts" we're discussing are McClellan's and Westbrook's, which together total less than $20MM. It could be much worse - we could have been the ones paying for Alfonso Soriano or one of the other $100MM+ busts.

Jmodene wrote:Besides, if we had non-tendered McClellan, he'd already be an Oriole and we wouldn't have gotten anything for him (assuming that a deal even happens).

Except we would have had more payroll free to sign someone like Oswalt...I'd take that trade.

I also forgot that Guthrie was just traded to Colorado.

Jmodene wrote:I should point out that when we re-signed Westbrook, the consensus seemed to be that we were lucky to get him at 2/16 and that it was a good signing. Since he didn't have a good season, though, the consensus seems to have changed to that noted above, that it somehow is now a bad contract.

The consensus among most of GRB, IIRC, wasn't so much annoyance regarding the AAV or length of the contract that Westbrook signed - most people believe Westbrook was a good bet to earn the deal. He was a solid bet to be a league average pitcher, as he has been for the majority of his career. He wasn't likely to significantly outperform the contract, but a solid bet to at least earn the contract. There's nothing wrong with paying market price when you need to.

The annoyance and arguing came from the fact that Mozielak did it at the very beginning of the offseason, a few weeks after the WS was over. In doing so, he spent the majority of the (then) available free agent money before the going rate for pitchers had been set, when there were several other pitchers still available who were projected to provide similar value to Westbrook at a cheaper price.

Mozielak blowing pretty much his entire offseason load at the very beginning of November has happened for a few years now.