Major League Baseball’s annual general managers meetings began on Monday in San Antonio, and as landmark dates begin to roll off the game’s offseason calendar, the St. Louis Cardinals are diving headlong into the task of first disassembling and then assembling a roster which will represent a cost savings in the team’s pursuit of what they believe to be a more sustainable, competitive model. The baseball offseason is littered with dates which act as pressure points around those roster adjustments, and Monday at 4 p.m. Central is one of the largest. After that hour, free agents are eligible to sign with other teams, and decisions are due regarding the offering of qualifying offers to free agents.
The Cardinals, who declined team options on the contracts of Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn and Keynan Middleton, have six players hitting the open market. Matt Carpenter, Paul Goldschmidt and Andrew Kittredge joined that trio, and the Cardinals opted not to tender a qualifying offer to any of those players. As a result, upon signing free agent deals with another club, the Cardinals will not be compensated for their losses. The qualifying offer is a universal one-year deal which carries a salary equal to that of the average of the 125 highest paid players in the league. This winter, that amounts to a hair over $21 million.
Goldschmidt is the only player of the six who the club might have considered qualifying, but his poor 2024 season has put him in a position where he’ll likely receive a deal well below that number in free agency. As the team continues to seek out ways to cut salary, bringing Goldschmidt back at that number is simply an untenable proposition.
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