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Friday, March 24, 2023
A day after a teammate predicted that Miles Mikolas would finish top five in the voting for the National League Cy Young Award with the Cardinals this coming season, the All-Star right-hander finalized an agreement that will assure his next few seasons will also be with the Cardinals.
Mikolas, a two-time All-Star and Jupiter native, as has agreed to a two-year contract extension with the Cardinals, sources told the Post-Dispatch.
An official announcement is expected Friday afternoon.
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1. The Duke Posted: March 24, 2023 at 01:03 PM (#6121267)No, the Pirates made more operating income last year! Cards care too much about winning!
I think so. Some other org. might jump up and have a great stretch, and the Yankees and Dodgers might have better results, but I think the Cards are the sport's model franchise.
he must have laughed as he signed this contract.
"team-friendly deal?"
let's revive this thread in October !
I'm biased of course, but I think that it's a good chance they are tied for first with best run organization in sports. Doing enough to be competitive, enough to keep fans interested in the product while still maintaining a profit for the owners etc. Even when they were having their stadium built and Bud Selig was telling all the teams they must force the city to pay as much as possible, the Cardinals did enough of a self finance of the stadium that didn't tick of the tax payers. They seem to be a bit more aware of nuance than many other organizations. (again a clearly biased opinion from me) I think Howard Megdal's book(The Cardinal Way) touched on a lot of what they do right.
The question is the aging profile of a pitcher like this. History suggests it's not very good but I think a lot of that history suggests he would have fallen apart already. Hendricks is quite similar and he looked pretty toasty in 2021 and 2022 before getting hurt. Matt Shoemaker turned up as a b-r Mikolas age 31 comp but he was already regularly injured by then. Trachsel aged pretty well but still wasn't a guy you particularly wanted at ages 35-36 (i.e. he was a solid 4/5 starter but you don't pay $20 for those). Tim Hudson aged great but he was much better than any of these guys in his prime.
Any negative reaction mainly amounts to "what's the rush?" This deal would likely have been there for the Cards at the end of the year. But they're the Cards, they know what they're doing.
It boils down to the number of local articles already written about how the Cardinals have no starting pitcher other than Matz locked in past this year. Now there is a second, with of course youngsters like Libertore, Woodford, Hudson and others vying for the 3rd thru 5th spots instead of trying to project them to the 1/2 spots. Flaherty is a free agent after this season, so was Mikolas, Waino is retiring etc. This gives the team a bit of certainty going forward, and allows Flaherty to show whether or not he's worth an extension/resigning with lower pressure on the team to get it done. And it reduces the need to promote someone earlier than necessary to give them a tryout.
Obviously it would take more years and maybe a bit more AAV but if you were gonna extend anybody early for certainty reasons, it's Montgomery. (And of course they may have tried to.)
But again, Cards know what they're doing. If their baseball nabobs think Mikolas will be fine in 2024-25, I'm not gonna bet against them.
The reality is Monty is represented by Boras - he's not signing an extension.
- The Cardinals know what they are doing, which is empirically true, given their decades of success.
- This could still be a stupid contract.
I believe that it is dumb, and if they overreacted to the status of the contract situations of their other veteran starters, that would be a very plausible reason why.
Lots of franchises are really smart forever - until they aren't. Nobody gets a lifetime pass.
(and to be clear, this deal - even if it's a bust - isn't going to ruin the franchise. it's not long enough or large enough to accomplish that, and STL has a lot of young and underpriced talent. and that can forgive sins even bigger than this - if it is a sin at all.)
Pirates had Mikolas for 35 days ten years ago, shrewdly arbitraged him from Alex Dickerson into Chris McGuiness.
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