MVN - Most Valuable Network

Cards pick up option on Izzy

John Mozeliak, in his first public payroll move since taking over as GM, announced the club has picked up Jason Isringhausen’s option for 2008.  Izzy will be paid $8 Million for the 2008 season.

Izzy’s a workhorse; Izzy and Ryan Franklin were definite strengths in the bullpen this past season.  Izzy also suffers from an arthritic hip, which he has (at least twice) had off-season procedures done on to fix and allow him to keep pitching.  So paying him 8 million smackers is a risk.  However that’s not what bothers me about this move.

Here’s the current amount of money allocated for the Cardinals roster (all figures are in millions of dollars and are courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts):

Pujols - 16, Rolen - 12, Carpenter - 10.5, Edmonds - 8, Izzy (as of today) - 8, Encarnacion - 6.5, Mulder - 6.5, Looper - 5.5, Kennedy - 3.5, Spiezio - 2.3, Franklin - 2.25, Flores - 1M.  That’s $74.05 Million dollars tied up in 12 players.

Of those 12 guys, three (Rolen, Carpenter, Mulder) are re-habbing from surgery and are a risky bet at best to return to form; one of whom (Edmonds) has really gotten old fast and is probably better suited to be a platoon/bench player at this point; and one of whom (Encarnacion) most likely won’t play at all next year due to injury.  I won’t mention Spiezio here because I believe he’ll get past his substance abuse issues and be fully ready for next season.

This also doesn’t account for the club options (that haven’t been picked up yet) on So Taguchi and Gary Bennett, or the mutual option that’s out there on Joel Piniero. (that’s another $6M total in contracts if all picked up).

The Cardinals have holes to fill in the rotation.  David Eckstein’s contract is up, the club didn’t indicate any complusion to re-sign him, meaning there’s a hole at SS to fill.  Unless Chris Duncan and Rick Ankiel are anointed as the starters in LF and RF, respectively, OR the team has committed to filling those positions from within (see John Rodriguez, Skip Schumacher, Ryan Ludwick, et al) and will compete the positions at February’s spring training, there are also holes in the OF to fill.  With all that need, I’m not sure paying Izzy $8M for 2008 was such a good idea.

It’s great to have your 8th and 9th inning pitching situation settled, but if the team can’t get to them with the lead, what’s the point?

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.