The St. Louis Cardinals had many good things going for them in 2015, but power was not one of them. As such, you can’t blame them for having eyes on the best power hitter money can buy.
We can, however, offer a few words of warning: Cardinals, my friends, here’s where you need to tread very, very carefully.
Amidst the flurry of mid-level trades that went down throughout Friday, Jon Morosi of Fox Sports was on to a different story. According to his sources, the Cardinals are interested in free-agent first baseman and reigning home run champion Chris Davis.
On a scale of “Whoa, didn’t see that coming” and “Duh,” this is a rumor that lands toward the latter.
It didn’t stop them from winning 100 games, but the Cardinals didn’t score many runs in 2015. Of the many reasons for that, arguably the biggest was their inability to hit for power. The Cardinals were 25th in MLB with 137 home runs, and were also in the bottom 10 of the league in isolated power.
This is not a new problem. Over the last three years, the Cardinals have ranked in the bottom five of MLB in isolated power. In this span, they haven’t had a single player top 30 home runs.
So, they could use a slugger. You know, like Davis.
Davis, late of the Baltimore Orioles, has become MLB’s Slugger King in recent years. On either side of a down season in 2014, he led MLB with 53 homers in 2013 and 47 home runs in 2015. And even with his down year mixed in, he’s still first in home runs (126) and 13th in OPS (.891) since 2013.
This would be the main justification for the Cardinals circling Davis, who will be 30 in March. Another is how his ties to draft-pick compensation would only cost the Cardinals the No. 30 pick in the 2016 draft. Another is how the Cardinals are operating with extra spending money after inking a $1 billion TV deal.
But here’s the problem: Just because a team could justify signing a player doesn’t mean that signing said player is a good idea. Reality has been known to show up and crash the party.
And with Davis and the Cardinals, that’s a real concern.
First, consider the cost it would take to sign Davis. By almost all accounts, it’s going to be massive.
FanGraphs‘ crowdsourcing project predicted Davis will sign for five years and $100 million. Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors, however, puts his price at more like $144 million over six years. Jon Heyman of CBS Sports went even higher, putting Davis’ price tag at seven years and $182 million.
Because power is very much in demand, it seems more likely that Davis will land somewhere in between Dierkes‘ and Heyman‘s projections. That is, probably somewhere in the $150-170 million range.
That’s a lot of money—especially for a team like the Cardinals, whose biggest free-agent splash remains the $120 million they gave Matt Holliday in 2010. A contract for Davis is likely going to top that by $30-50 million, which comes off as a leap even in light of the team’s new TV deal.
Granted, Holliday’s contract has worked out very well. He began it in his age-30 season in 2010, and this past season was the first in which he wasn’t worth the money. Knowing this, Holliday almost looks like a beacon of hope for Davis.
But eh, not actually. If nothing else, there’s the reality that Holliday and Davis are two completely different players.
Though Holliday is a big, strong dude who’s hit for a ton of power, he’s always been a great hitter with power rather than a great power hitter. Davis is the opposite, as he’s a big, strong dude whose power is his only elite asset. He’s at best a solid defensive first baseman. And though he takes his walks, his huge strikeout habit effectively counterbalances that. Take away his power, and there’s not much there.
Mind you, Davis’ power isn’t under imminent threat of being taken away. But it should concern the Cardinals that he’s getting up there in age with his age-30 season due up, as few things take away power like age does.
This is something that Dave Cameron of FanGraphs noted in highlighting why Davis is the biggest potential bust of this year’s free-agent class. Courtesy of SaberCoach, here’s the graph of isolated power’s aging curve that Cameron used to make his point:
According to history, power tends to start declining after a hitter’s mid-20s. Once he gets to his 30s, the decline tends to go into overdrive.
If there’s a reason for optimism for Davis, it’s that he’s a late bloomer. He’s always had tremendous raw power, but it didn’t start showing up in games consistently until a couple of years ago. And with only 883 games in his past, he doesn’t have an excess of mileage on his body. It’s because of this that yours truly doesn’t personally think Davis is as doomed as that graph suggests.
Even still, the ideal team to sign Davis is one that has safeguards in place that could help his power age well. One would be a power-friendly ballpark. Another would be the designated hitter.
Because they play in the National League, the Cardinals don’t have the latter. They don’t have the former, either. Per ESPN.com’s park factors, Busch Stadium has generally been unfriendly to power hitters. It’s quite the departure from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which loves it some dingers.
What would make it easy to disregard all this is if Davis’ bat stood out as the one thing separating the Cardinals from being ill-equipped and very-well-equipped to continue winning huge numbers of games. If he looked like their missing link, even I would shrug and say, “Oh, screw it. Just go for it!”
But I don’t know, man. It’s hard to take that stance.
Run prevention was the Cardinals’ meal ticket in 2015, as they used a combination of pitching depth and defense to lead the league in runs allowed. But with Lance Lynn out for 2016 with Tommy John surgery and John Lackey testing the open market, pitching depth is suddenly a question mark. Elsewhere, the inevitable loss of Jason Heyward to free agency will mean a big loss for the Cardinals’ defense.
Could signing Davis make up for these shortcomings in one fell swoop? The answer is not a definitive yes. And because a huge contract for him would hinder the Cardinals’ ability to make additional moves in the short term before likely becoming an albatross in the long term, well, what’s the point?
A better approach for the Cardinals would be to take the money and spread it around. They could acquire more pitching depth and shore up their offense with several solid bats instead of one big bat.
Besides which, Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak might have been on to something when he spoke of his incumbent offense having some upside going forward.
Mozeliak said this last month, via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
You look at our roster and you could argue that there are a couple players who are on the backside of their careers, but you could also argue that there are five or six who could be in that lineup and have a lot more upside. That’s what we need to sort of focus on. We do need to improve our offense. But I don’t think it’s as drastic as other people interpret it.
He may be right. The Cardinals should enjoy full seasons from breakout stars Stephen Piscotty and Randal Grichuk, as well as a healthy Matt Adams and, hopefully, healthier versions of Holliday and Jon Jay. And at 25, Kolten Wong could be ready for his own big breakout.
Basically, our message to the Cardinals is this: As much as you may want Davis, you don’t need him.
This is assuming, of course, that the Cardinals haven’t already figured this out. Being interested in a player isn’t the same as being desperate to sign a player, and their strong track record with free agency says they know when to recognize the difference.
Now’s the time to do it again.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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