An early look at the St. Louis Cardinals’ 2022 payroll

The St. Louis Cardinals’ current 2022 salary obligations leave plenty of room for improvement through both pitching and hitting additions.

Matt Carpenter’s $18.5 million option for 2022 was bought out for $2 million. Similarly, Carlos Martinez received a $500,000 buyout instead of a $17 million salary for next year. Andrew Miller’s $12 million contract is off the books. And the St. Louis Cardinals won’t be paying $14.75 million of Dexter Fowler’s $16.5M salary next season.

All told, the Cardinals freed up nearly $60 million from 2021’s $168 million season-ending payroll with those four players departing. But what will they do with this windfall?

Well, a sizable portion of that reduction already has been reallocated. Paul DeJong’s contract is starting to get somewhat expensive, increasing from $4.17M to $6.17M next year before escalating to $9.17M in 2023.  Adam Wainwright will be paid more than double what he received this past season, going from $8M to $17.5M.  And Yadier Molina is getting a small raise, from $9M to $10M.

And then there’s St. Louis’ significant arbitration class. MLB Trade Rumors’ Matt Swartz has a system for projecting arbitration salaries, and for St. Louis, his estimates account for over $21M on the 2022 bottom line due to raises for Harrison Bader, Jack Flaherty, Giovanny Gallegos, Jordan Hicks, Dakota Hudson, Tyler O’Neill, and Alex Reyes.

The next step is to factor in some pro-rated signing bonuses, the recent re-signing of reliever T.J. McFarland, and several million dollars from the Rockies to help pay part of Nolan Arenado’s salary. (Thank you very much, Dick Monfort.)  Then there are the players making the major-league minimum who help fill out the 26-man roster.

Turning to Roster Resource, which does this number crunching for every team, and the result for St. Louis is a current ’22 payroll estimate of $142M.  That’s only $26M less that was spent last season, and the only addition so far is a middle reliever.

Given the price tags of free agent starting pitchers so far this offseason, adding one big-name hurler such as Marcus Stroman would pretty much account for all of that gap.  Or the Cardinals could split that $26M between two starting pitchers, perhaps the oft-mentioned Alex Wood and Alex Cobb, with maybe a little left over for another reliever or bench player.  And there’s also the possibility of making a big splash at shortstop.

Another crazy option would be to increase payroll and do more than one of these things.  However, when the team owner declares, “The industry isn’t very profitable, to be quite honest,” fans have to wonder how much more he’s willing to spend to improve the roster.

Cardinals fans are fiercely loyal and expect a competitive team every season.  This winter, St. Louis brass has the opportunity to demonstrate how fiercely they’re pursuing a World Series-caliber squad.  Time will tell if they’ll put their money where there mouth is.