The Cardinals still remain on the lookout for a starting pitcher or two, but the pool is getting shallower the longer we wade in it. Carlos Silva signed a 4 year/$44 million deal with the Mariners yesterday, leaving the market with the likes of Kris Benson, Kyle Lohse, Bartolo Colon, Josh Fogg, Freddy Garcia, Jason Jennings, Russ Ortiz, Odalis Perez, Josh Towers, and Mark Prior. I did a post a while back explaining how Colon, Fogg, and Benson would be a reverberation of the mediocre pitching we've become accustomed to; those were the three pitchers we were looking at the time, before the Edmonds trade freed up $6 million of payroll. Well, with a starting rotation that looks like Adam Wainwright, Braden Looper, Joel Pineiro, Mark Mulder, and Anthony Reyes, where do the Cardinals go from here?
Reyes has absolutely dominated in Memphis the last two times he's been there, and at 26 years old the time is now for him and his development. The Cardinals, after strongly signaling that Reyes would be gone this off-season, are now reconsidering the notion of having Anthony on the team. In what is a rebuilding year for the Cardinals, it would be beneficial to hold on to Anthony to gauge the real talent the flat-billed pitcher possesses - World Series dominating potential or 1.1 inning-5 earned run potential. Especially with the market being supposedly thin for the righty pitcher, it makes sense to hold on to him to increase his value. If he flops, than he didn't improve his trade value from the year before. If he succeeds, he becomes a viable trade candidate and an upgrade to the rotation. Given Anthony's salary and the current market for pitchers, succeeding means a low 4's ERA by the trade deadline.
If the Cardinals decide to go with Anthony into the season, it would be smart for the Cardinals to find a safety net in case Mulder isn't ready or Reyes can't recover. It appears they're already on that route, taking a look at injury-ridden starter Kris Benson (at the end of the article) and supposedly staking out Mark Prior. The implication is that both of these guys could be had at a cheaper price than Kyle Lohse, who likely will command a similar salary to Silva, and on a shorter contract. The amount of interest in the two pitchers makes you wonder at what price that may be, but both present greater upside than the pitchers hoping for double-digits a year. Josh Towers is another low-risk option, but he doesn't have quite the potential of the aforementioned.
Neither Benson nor Prior would constitute a dump of Anthony Reyes. Prior is not expected to be ready to go until May, and nobody knows when Mulder will be ready. Before the Edmonds trade, I was leery of signing Prior to a possible $3.5 million, incentive-laden deal. Now that the money is there, and no real options are surfacing in the trade market, I see no problem with giving Mark a one-year deal. Prior seems like a typical Dave Duncan reclamation project - similar to Joel Pineiro and Todd Wellemeyer last year. Wellemeyer was a victim to some bad mechanics, but he was able to reinvent himself to become a solid long reliever; similarly, Prior needs to refine his mechanics to become successful in the league again (please visit that article by the Hardball Times, it's great). The Cardinals need to spend the $6 million saved on Edmonds in order to justify the trade, but not on one of these 4 year deals being handed out. No, give me someone that could potentially upgrade the rotation, not keep it mediocre for the next half-decade.
What do you think? Is Prior a worthy option? Or should another pitcher be the guy?
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