Derrick Goold speaks with the chairman of the Cardinals, Bill DeWitt Jr. It’s a fascinating discussion about how the Cardinals spend money, and why they usually don’t win a bidding war:
“That’s true. We have chased some free agents, significant free agents, but maybe not got as far down the line as we did,” DeWitt said this weekend in a phone interview with The Post-Dispatch. “We felt like we stretched in the Price situation, and we’ll stretch again if we see the right opportunity in someone who has the characteristics that he had. Those are tough to replicate. … There was a lot going for him. Those are always competitive situations and historically we have not been the high bidder in what I’ll call a ‘bidding situation.’ If the player is going to take the high bid, in general, we’re not the high bid and we think our strategy has proved out to be pretty sound.
“Some of those contracts don’t work,” DeWitt said. “When you have a huge, long contract that doesn’t work out it (binds) you from doing other things.”
One of the reasons they were willing to stretch for David Price is that there was no draft choice attached to him. That allows the Cardinals to keep their pipeline of young players intact. St. Louis also has a new TV deal coming online in 2018, and they are willing to spend that money now.
If you watch how the Cardinals operate, nothing really surprises you in the article, but DeWitt articulates the philosophy extremely well.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/1XM81J9
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