Ranking the 10 best contracts in recent St. Louis Cardinals history

The St. Louis Cardinals have received some incredible value from recent free agency signings and extensions. But who were the top 10 since 2013?

Recently, I took a look at some of the worst contracts in recent St. Louis Cardinals history, opening old wounds for the Redbird faithful while creating quite the stir of who should have made that list. In an attempt to take a glass half-full approach this time, we will look at some of the best contracts the Cardinals have handed out since 2013.

This list will only include free agency signings and contract extensions, not arbitration, contract renewals, or contracts traded for. The contract also must have been signed in 2013 or later, so if the deal began before then, it did not count toward the list.

First, some self-critique. On the worst contracts list, it was mentioned that Matt Carpenter just barely missed the list due to past performance on his deal. That was an oversight on my part, not taking into account the two-year extension tacked on to the end of his original extension. Since that was a new deal, his last contract with the Cardinals should have made the top five.

In an effort to create this list objectively, I have used a tool FanGraphs that measures player value in comparison to their WAR. FanGraphs defines the “Dollars” stat as “WAR converted to a dollar scale based on what a player would make in free agency” (Ex. Nolan Arenado, scroll down to the final category called “value” and see dollars stat). This stat gives a market value to each player, allowing you to compare their actual pay to what FanGraphs would project their market value to be.

Now, this isn’t a perfect tool, but provides a more objective approach to measuring how a player performed compared to their contract value. For this list, I calculated the total “Dollars” value over their contract, subtracted their actual pay, and found how much the player played “over” their contract value (contract values used from Spotrac).

Going back to Nolan Arenado as the example, Arenado’s “Dollars” value in 2021 was $32.1 million, while his actual payroll value was $35 millions (although the Cardinals did not pay a significant amount of that deal thanks to the Rockies sending money over). But compared to payroll value, he would have been worth $2.9 million less than his contract for that year. 

Since this article deals with the positive value over an entire deal, one-year contracts may rank lower on the list, when in reality their contract was an absolute steal. Since long-term deals carry much more risk, I wanted to reward the team for long term deals that panned out well, rather than the one-year fliers. There is no perfect way to measure that kind of value, but this is the method we will use.

Now, onto some awesome contracts.