The way that the St. Louis Cardinals run their financials can be really frustrating from a fan’s perspective. It seems so simple to us. There are Cy Young and MVP candidates on the free-agent market at positions the Cardinals need to upgrade, so go and sign them! Instead of a gameplan to do that, the team has said, as usual, that they want to keep their 2020 payroll near the $160M spot they were at in 2019.
According to spotrac.com, the total payroll for active and injured players at the MLB level was ~$157M.