Cardinals ARB/Pre-ARB contracts on 27' books $13.5M

[45s]

That's right.

Not counting the ARB's and Pre-ARB's the 2027 Cardinals will only have $13,500,000 on the books!

And that $13,500,000 isn't for 2027 Cardinals players, it's the money owed for NADO & WillyC trades + a potential $500K for D. May if they decline his option.

Mission accomplished BDWJr, you've stripped the payroll down to almost nothing prior to the new CBA being negotiated and then
ratified.

Two questions: 1) Do you think this was unwise? 2) Do you think BDW Jr is the sole beneficiary of this?

While we can quibble about what a new CBA might look like, I think we can agree that one of the primary features of it will be some type of mechanism to curb spending. Maybe that's a salary cap, maybe it's just steep penalties for exceeding the tax threshold. Personally, I think the owners hold out for, and get some kind of cap.

If they get some kind of mechanism to curb spending (for this write I'm just going to refer to it as a cap), and the cap works- what are we looking at? Already for the 2026 season these teams are over the luxury tax: Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Phillies, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Padres, Braves, Cubs, Astros, and Giants. What if these teams had payrolls that were already "capped" out and couldn't participate in free agency in any meaningful way? Or, more radically, what if they had to divest their payrolls down by a certain time? That seems like a great time to have about 40M in obligations to your arb and pre-arb guys and that's it. Doesn't that also seem like a better environment to try to extend players you already have?

Seriously, think this through, the ramifications are huge.

If the CBA produces a real spending floor, we are going to be far from compliance.

Well, we'll just have to get ourselves into compliance won't we?

Which leads to foolish spending…..

I've been on the board for awhile and I've been seeing your posts for years. It seems obvious to me that you are an intelligent guy. It's also obvious to me that you are also very knowledgeable about baseball, and Cardinals baseball. I would love to talk baseball with you. I would actually be interested in hearing your point of view on things. You have much more to offer the board than you do. I, for one, wish you would.

Thank you for the kind words….I would suggest you are alone in that opinion.