Morning Rundown: St. Louis Cardinals continue push for starting pitching, more pitching rumors
The starting pitching market continues to thin out.
After a last-place finish in the NL Central in 2023, the St. Louis Cardinals are trying to ensure they won’t have a repeat performance.
They kicked off their offseason by signing Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson to one-year contracts, with a team option for the 2025 season.
Now they AL Cy Young Finalist Sonny Gray to a three-year contract worth $75 million.
Collective, the Cardinals brought in 559.2 innings, 551 strikeouts, 36 wins, and a Wins Above Replacement (WAR) of 8.4 for $46 million during the 2024 season.
All three had an xFIP of 4.50 or lower, and each pitched 180 innings last season.
The Cardinals were in the middle of the pack when it came to innings pitched by their starting pitchers last year (14th) while posting the 19th-best WAR (9.6) and 27th-ranked xFIP (4.75).
They join a rotation featuring Miles Mikolas, Matthew Libertore, Drew Rom, Zack Thompson, and Steven Matz as options. The latter two spent time in the bullpen as well.
The Detroit Tigers signed Kenta Maeda to a two-year $24 million contract late Sunday. After missing the 2022 season, Maeda returned and tossed 104.1 innings while posting a 4.23 ERA (3.98 xFIP).
He was listed as an option for the Pirates here due to his Stuff+ on FanGraphs, which included having the league's highest-rated splitter.
The more free agent signings that happen, the more the likelihood of a trade happening at some point.
Dylan Cease has long been a part of the trade rumor discussion, and this offseason has been no different. According to Bob Nightengale, the Atlanta Braves have joined the Dodgers ‘and several others’ who are talking to the White Sox about Cease.
Every Monday during the offseason, we will be doing a mailbag article. You can send your questions to bucsondeckqa@gmail.com or leave a comment with ‘mailbag’ written in it. The email would be easier to track, but you can comment, and I will add it to the list.
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Everything goes towards making the site as good as possible, with eyes on a few trips out to see games live, like Greensboro at the end of this past season.
My off-season checklist:
Acquire (preferably better) players
1. Erod 2. Lugo 3. Severino 4. VV (in terms of priority) then belt, cutch, and idk Michael A Taylor or someone for CF. After that is done, we can do the real heavy lifting of ohtani and a burnes trade to round out the squad
Man dreaming is a lot more fun than reality when thinking of our offseason lol