I was living in the preseason haze. The world around me was happy and excited with anticipation. I have already made plans to skip school for my first visit to Busch Stadium for opening day, my own personal pilgrimage on the holiest day of the year. I am watching my Cardinals win games this spring, a record that although realistically means nothing, allows me to point with irrational confidence towards a successful season. Other than a few low test scores as my daydreaming about baseball beginning, my life was looking up. And then... the Giants go and give Matt Cain $20 million per year for the next 6 years.
At first glance, you may wonder why I have let this destroy my mood in this, the most wonderful time of the year. I was able to point and laugh when the Giants gave an even dumber contract to a talented but already declining 29 year old left-handed pitcher by the name of Barry Zito. I have little difficulty calling the 7 year $126 million deal for what has been worth a record of 43-61 and 4.55 ERA the worst contract given to anyone not named Alex Rodriguez. And now, of all times to not learn from previous mistakes, the Giants decided to over pay for a young pitcher once again, only a year before the Cardinals will be entering similar contract talks with their own right handed ace, Adam Wainwright.
I do not mean this to be an attack on Matt Cain. He is a very talented young pitcher who is durable, consistent, and at times brilliant, but he has a career .486 winning percentage for the San Francisco Giants. To be fair, he has had notoriously low run support, but he has pitched on the same team that Lincecum was able to win 13 or more games during every full major league season. The bottom line is this, however: Cain just signed the richest contract for a right handed pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball. He is now working with a richer contract than the likes of Roy Halladay, Justin Verlander, Tim Lincecum, Felix Hernandez, Adam Wainwright, and literally any other right handed starting pitcher that anyone else could come up with. While Cain is a talented pitcher, he would never be higher than a number 2 starter in a staff with any of these players there.
Adam Wainwright will make $21 million over the next 2 years by comparison to Cain's deal. Although coming off of major surgery, Wainwright’s career 66-35 record and 2.97 ERA far outperform Cain’s statistics. Although Wainwright is 3 years older than Cain, to say that he is worthy of a larger contract than the Giants gave Matt Cain is not a stretch at all. We have already seen this act played out and too recently for my preference. In 2010, the Phillies decided to go out and give Ryan Howard $25 million a year for Ryan Howard, sending the estimated value of Albert Pujols into the stratosphere. There was not a soul alive who did not believe that Pujols was worthy of a large increase on this Howard deal, and it turns out that these people were right. Albert Pujols is now an Angel.
The Cardinals were probably intelligent to not pay an aging Pujols over $25 million a year into his 40’s. The contract flexibility it now gives them is exciting, and the future is bright for this team of young and talented Cardinals. It is impossible to ignore a very real truth though, if the If the Cardinals needed their arm twisted to offer Pujols a deal in the $20-25 million per year range, it is almost impossible to think that they would pay a 32 year old Adam Wainwright similar yearly salaries. I had hoped that the loss of an aging Carpenter would open a perfect amount of salary for Wainwright to get his big payday and remain an anchor of an exciting and promising Cardinal’s staff. The possibility that Wainwright could now require 2 of Carpenter’s salaries makes this seem much less plausible.
There is one universal truth in baseball, and that is the stupidity of the market as it is driven by teams like the Giants, willing to make big mistakes and not learn, destroying the hopes of other teams along the way. I truly hope for Matt Cain’s sake, that he continues to improve and has a long and productive career. He is young, talented, and already a World Series winner, but his sub .500 record is hardly worthy of $20 million dollars a year. As a Cardinals fan, I plan on watching Wainwright and enjoying him over these next few years as a Cardinal. It is only a matter of time until the next version of the Angels come in to overpay for another one time Cardinal. With shades of 2010 as the beginning of the end for Pujols as a Cardinal, I fear that in 2 years we will be looking back at these Giants with malice at how they started the chain reaction that took Wainwright.
