Rants Daily: Terms of Molina deal beginning to formulate

The St. Louis Cardinals and Yadier Molina are reportedly set to ink a five-year/$75 million contract which would begin in 2013 according to CBSSports.com’s Jon Heyman. As of yesterday, we only knew of the range of the contract to be between $70 and $75 million. There was no indication as to when the deal would actually begin. If the report is true, this means, barring a trade, Molina will be a Cardinal through 2017. When the contract ends Molina will be 35 years old. The Cardinals nor Molina and his agent Melvin Roman have confirmed the report.

I will provide a thorough analysis of the deal later today in my column, The Numbers Game. I’ll provide a full break-even analysis to determine what it will take for the Cardinals to recuperate the money based on Molina’s performance.

FREESE RECEIVING A BREAK FROM DRILLS

David Freese is not exactly Brooks Robinson. His bat is more valuable than his glove. He knows it and the Cardinals know it. As such, he has been getting a lot of work in at third so far this spring as reported by St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Joe Strauss. Jose Oquendo has been paying a lot of attention to Freese as well. In order to limit the amount of time he has been seeing at third, manager Mike Matheny has started to give prospect Matt Carpenter some time alongside Freese.

WAINWRIGHT FEELING GOOD

Adam Wainwright is certainly under the microscope and everyone seems to feel that he is looking exceptional at the moment. Strauss notes that yesterday Wainwright was able to pitch the equivalent of two innings during live batting practice against teammates without issue. He threw mostly fast balls; the only curveball was bashed for a home run by Molina. Said Wainwright of his command and velocity:

"I definitely feel like I’m at least towards the end of spring training. Now I’ve just got to be smart."

BITS AND PIECES

• Eduardo Sanchez, who spent four weeks in the winter league in Venezuela has been impressive so far this spring according to Strauss.
• Matheny is still uncertain as to how much time, if any, Carlos Beltran will play CF.
• Skip Schumaker has only participated in fielding drills at second base so far this spring as part of the competition with Tyler Greene and Daniel Descalso.

ON TODAY’S SCHEDULE

Only two major league pitchers will be on the mound today in Jupiter, Kyle Lohse and Jaime Garcia, according to Post-Dispatch reporter Derrick Goold. As I type this tweets are coming in that the players have come off the fields due to rain.

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