Viva El Birdos · Nov 5, 2020
Who Else Could Get the Payroll Axe?
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesBehold, the Cardinals slogan for 2021: “we’re going to do more with less.”
Those were the words of encouragement offered by John Mozeliak to his baseball operations team in his post-season press conference. He’s backed up his words with action.
Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina (joining Brad Miller and Matt Wieters) were allowed to go to free agency, freeing the Cardinals of $39M in ’20 payroll. Kolten Wong followed, despite a $12.5M option year that was a relative discount. Wong was worth $29.5M by Fangraphs’ $/WAR estimate in 2019. He was worth $10.7M by the same measure in just 53 games in this shortened season.