The hot stove season doesn’t kick into gear until five days after the end of the World Series, but that period of time represents a significant enough flashpoint in the future of the St. Louis Cardinals that President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak boarded a plane to southern California earlier this week in order to guarantee all would go smoothly.
On the receiving end of that visit was third baseman Nolan Arenado, who must decide in that period of days whether to opt out of the five years and $144 million remaining on his current contract. Arenado has given no indication that he plans to opt out, and Mozeliak said Wednesday he remains “optimistic.”
“Very hopeful there’s a resolution here shortly,” Mozeliak said. “I’m optimistic that this will have a positive resolution, and I hope that’s something we get some news on sooner rather than later.”
One way to expedite that resolution could be agreeing to a longer or restructured deal that would improve Arenado’s guarantees. Mozeliak, however, said that, “I don’t think it’s about reworking the deal. I just think it’s, he’s just trying to use his time and sort of sort through some things.”
Mozeliak described a conversation with Arenado about the future of the club and the commitment to winning which eluded him for so long in Colorado.
Indeed, it was several similar discussions with management there which laid bare to the third baseman the need to seek a new situation, and in finding an insufficient commitment to winning with the Rockies, he instead was an active participant in engineering the trade which saw him become a Cardinal before the 2021 season.
To the extent that commitment can be measured in dollars, what Arenado heard from Mozeliak during their meeting would seem to have reflected well on the team.
Several times during Wednesday’s press conference, he asserted without equivocation payroll in 2023 would increase from the approximately $170 million the team laid out in 2022, which put them just outside MLB’s top 10 highest spending teams.
“We anticipate our payroll going up next year,” he said. “I mean, I know it will. Obviously, we had a lot of success at the gate this year, so thank our fans for that.”
Later, in an answer to a question about adjusting the team’s strategy in the free agent market, Mozeliak emphasized, “I’ve already said our payroll’s going up.” And still again, later: “That’s a fact. Our payroll’s going up.”
With Adam Wainwright agreeing Wednesday to a contract for one final season which carries a salary roughly in line with the $17.5 million he made in 2022 (exact terms weren’t disclosed), the Cardinals would have approximately $50 million in annual salary to spend after the arbitration process, assuming a 10% increase in payroll and utilizing the offset provided by deferred money owed by the Colorado Rockies to help pay down Arenado’s contract.
Where, then, will that money likely be spent? Mozeliak reaffirmed the need for a catcher from outside the organization, even as he praised the work done by Andrew Knizner and the strides in development taken by Iván Herrera.
The Cardinals, evidently, prefer to view Knizner as something in the mold of a traditional backup, leaving them in the market for an offensive contributor who can minimize the defensive downgrade inherent in Yadier Molina’s retirement.
Given the state of modern catching, that is no small ask.
“It’s going to be very difficult to say, oh, we’re replacing Yadi,” Mozeliak conceded. “There is definitely some offensive upside, possibly in that, but we don’t want to take a huge step backwards defensively because we’ve built our club around defense.”
Potential targets from Oakland, Chicago
Oakland’s Sean Murphy, the American League’s defending Gold Glove winner and a finalist for this year’s Silver Slugger award, is first-year arbitration eligible this winter, and two of the Athletics’ top prospects are catchers, creating a natural fit on the trade market.
Former Chicago Cubs star Willson Contreras’s questionable defensive skills were hampered further by a high ankle sprain suffered in July, but he has reached out to former teammate José Quintana for information about St. Louis and received a favorable report.
His bat, certainly, would qualify as an upgrade, perhaps providing time and space for top prospect Jordan Walker to emerge and assert himself as a force in the outfield.
Asked to identify the team’s primary offensive concern, Mozeliak pointed to the retirement of Albert Pujols, followed closely by the lack of production from the outfield.
“When you talk about protection to (Paul Goldschmidt) and (Arenado), that’s a real question,” he said.
O’Neill, Carlson, Nootbaar
Tyler O’Neill plans to spend the winter mostly in St. Louis working through a plan of action that should allow him to remain productive and on the field in 2023.
Dylan Carlson is resting a wrist and thumb injury which will not require surgery but which will, the Cardinals hope, serve as an important lesson in the necessity of communicating the full scope of an injury at the time it’s suffered.
Those two, Lars Nootbaar, and despite Mozeliak’s hesitation to set expectations high, Walker, currently comprise most of the competition for playing time in the outfield ahead of any potential hot stove action.
From there, it’s easy to see both motive and opportunity to improve.
The Cardinals — they have declared unflinchingly — certainly have the means to do so. The fun of filling all the holes — and the necessity of not letting a new one develop — begins as soon as the World Series ends.
