While the St. Louis Cardinals still have the ability to negotiate with both Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha, it appears that the organization will be heading to arbitration hearings with the two pitchers.
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“We do have time,” acknowledged General Manager John Mozeliak. “But our strategy was if we file and exchange, then we would take it to hearing, so yes.”
That is a shift in the organizational philosophy that has kept the Cardinals out of arbitration hearings for nearly the last 17 years.
“We actually changed a couple years ago,” shared Mozeliak. “We just felt like the deadline, when you look at arbitration, was getting to something where if agents felt like you weren’t actually going to take it to hearing, you usually got a much higher filing number, which would directly pull up the midpoint. And this time around, I think you saw a much more conservative filing numbers on both sides and when you look at the delta between both Martinez and Wacha, they’re not huge. Ultimately these will see hearing rooms and we get to find out how good we are at these.”
Representatives for Martinez filed at $4.25 million while the Cardinals were at $3.9 million. The salary for Wacha was filed at $3.2 million with the team submitting $2.8 million.
In particular for Martinez, he seemed to be a prime candidate for not just to reach an agreement before Friday’s deadline to submit figures, but to sign a multi-year extension.
“I will say that we did discuss, at least peripherally, a multi-year (deal),” said Mozeliak. “But we did decide we’d focus on the one-year. We did try to get that but kind of in the final hour of that thing it just never got through the goal.”
The 25-year old right-hander went 16-9 in 2016 and struck out 174 batters in 195.1 innings pitched. He’s gone 30-16 since moving to the rotation two seasons ago.
“My position on this is just to be able to offer the team support and do what I do,” explained Martinez, with the help of Cardinals translator Alex Nobora. “I leave the contract to my lawyers and hopefully, I just try to keep a positive mindset and hopefully I can have a very long career with the Cardinals.”
Asked if he was disappointed to receive only a one-year contract instead of a multi-year deal, Martinez was quick with his answer.
“I want my entire career to be with the Cardinals.”
The contract situation is harder to define for Wacha, who was limited by injury to just 138 innings pitched last year. Whether he will pitch in the rotation or out of the bullpen–and without any scapular issues remains to be seen.
“When you look at role, what he’s done, it was a trickier arb one, for sure,” said Mozeliak. “Especially when you look at his career – his most-robust year was probably his first one, so it’s hard to pin down. Based on even filing numbers, you sort of see that it’s not completely irrational on either side.”
photo credit: Bill Greenblatt/UPI, St. Louis Baseball Weekly