St. Louis Cardinals: Should the team resign Yadier Molina?

Yadier Molina has been a fixture for the St. Louis Cardinals for years. With his contract up at the end of the season, should the Cards keep him around?

In a position where the St. Louis Cardinals have had no problems in the last 16 years with Yadier Molina behind the plate. Molina has been one of MLB’s best catchers, but in the 2021 season they will have to face the consequences of a lack of vision of their President of Operations John Mozeliak

Normally, Molina should be thinking about retirement and engaging in another activity within baseball. He’s a very intelligent guy with great positioning, the ability to read the field, and helping develop his pitchers’ strategies about the hitters of rival teams.

These attributes have made him an innate leader and he’s remained faithful throughout his career with the Cardinals and the team rewarded him by giving him a great three-year contract that ends after the 2020 season.

For this reason, we must analyze the questionable decision that John Mozeliak made when he awarded a contract extension manager to Mike Shildt, who has been very lucky to have gotten the Cardinals to the playoffs as winners of the NL Central (I still think the Cardinals didn’t win the NL Central, Milwaukee lost it).

Mozeliak, more than anyone, should know that he had his future manager on the team already in Molina.

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Molina feels healthy and eager to continue playing without a doubt because of the motivation to obtain greater achievements of the many so far achieved and also because he has closed the short-term way to be the manager of the Cardinals.

This puts the Cardinals in a dead-end. On the one hand, they cannot offer another high-paying two-year contract as Molina wishes because the Cardinals have a predicted payroll for the 2020 season of $158M (the tenth highest in MLB). Half of this figure is paid to only four players: Paul Goldschmidt, Yadier Molina, Matt Carpenter, and Dexter Fowler and in which only Goldy justifies their current salary on paper.

Extending a contract for two more years to Molina financially is not a healthy situation, as this would involve not having the same financial resources for the next two offseasons. Although Dexter Fowler‘s contract expires in 2021 the renewal of Kolten Wong‘s contract will first have to be resolved to find the exact financial situation the Cardinals will be in.

On the other hand (within the team’s rejuvenation) it is also not convenient to continue blocking young prospects who have already matured such as the cases of Carson Kelly, already transferred to Arizona and now with Andrew Knizner.

Should Cardinals let Molina go or should do their best to keep him?

For my part, I would like to see Yadier remain with the St. Louis Cardinals. Whether as the bench coach or as a manager in the minors, no one is better qualified than him to be his future Manager.

St. Louis would have in Molina the ideal man to take the helm in the case Shildt’s command of the team went awry and had to press the panic button. Even in the still-uncertain 2020 season, in which Molina could exercise the role of player-manager with which he has always dreamed.

We hope that Yadier and the Cardinals find a point of agreement that both benefit, it would be very sad for the Cardinals fans to watch him playing in the uniform of another team. If it’s not as a player, a coaching role could be a great fit for Molina, we just won’t know until after the 2020 season.