Will new pitchers elevate the Cardinals to a championship-level team?

The Cardinals are saying this year what most of of said last year during the off-season. They need pitching. The difference this year is they are forced into it. Adam Wainwright retired, and they traded Jordan Montgomery and Jack Flaherty leaving three holes to fill. If the Cardinals decide to just replace those three, will it make any difference? If they only sign pitchers that project as one, three, and five starting pitchers for our team, we have gained nothing. They need to not just replace, but upgrade and upgrade in a significant way if they want to get to a World Series. Business as usual is not going to cut it this year.

Just look at what these teams went into the championship series with:

Diamondbacks: Zac Gallen (210 in/220K /4.4 WAR), Merrill Kelly (177 inn/187K/3.9 WAR) Combined WAR: 8.3

Rangers: Scherzer (152 in/174K/3.2 WAR) Eovaldi (144/132/3.1 WAR) Combined WAR: 6.3

Phillies: Wheller (192/212/4.2 WAR), Nola (193/202/2.1 WAR) Combined WAR: 6.3

Astros: Verlander (162/144/3.5 WAR), Valdez (198/200/3.1 WAR) Combined WAR: 6.6

The Cardinals had Mikolas with 137 strikeouts and Montgomery with 108. Their combined WAR: is 4.0. It’s hard to compete with other teams' ones and twos when our one and two would be their three and four.

Comparing the Cardinals to the four teams that were fighting for the World Series we can see the gap they have to overcome.

Looking at the table above, the Cardinals need to find a way to more than double their WAR for pitching. They can’t just get three replacement pitchers equal to what they lost and call it a day. The Cardinals want to fix this roster without tanking. The only way to do this as far as I can see is to be bold. Bolder than they have ever been. By bold I mean do something that might be outside their comfort zone. The first thing is to decide how much they want to spend. Josh Jacobs wrote that they need to spend an extra $30 million over last year. That is to get us back to where we should be. I think we can and should even more, but working with that number let’s see what can be done.

Wainwright, Montgomery, and Flaherty cost the Cardinals almost $33 million last year. If we add the $30 million that seems to be the current theory, we have $60 to $65 million to play with. A good scorecard to gauge talent is WAR. I wanted to find out if $60 million would be enough to get our pitching WAR at least to the playoff team averages.

Jim Bowden of The Athletic (subscription required) went into detail about rankings for the top free agents and estimated the going rate for almost each one. Spotrac also has estimates of market value. For this exercise, I will not guess at the years, just the average annual salary.

SALARIES

WAR

Wainwright (-2.0), Montgomery (2.1), and Flaherty (1.4) had a combined WAR of 1.5. Subtracting that from the 6.6 their staff had is 5.1. That means to get to the average pitching WAR of the four championship teams we need a combined 13.45 WAR from their new pitchers and stay within the $60 million dollar limit. That is Mozeliak's mission.

You will see a difference in WAR for Montgomery. His WAR with just the Cardinals was 2.1 and with Texas after the deadline was 2.1 meaning for the year he almost had a 4.2 total. This also means that in only 11 starts with Texas, his WAR was the same as 21 games starting for the Cardinals. Pitching coaches make a difference. But I digress.

If we try to get the 13.5 WAR the Cardinals need to sign Blake Snell, Sonny Gray, and Michael Wacha. The problem is that eats up all the $60 million and there is nothing left for the bullpen which also needs to be replenished. We probably need to lower our sights.

If we go after Yamamoto and his estimated$ 30 million, then we round things out with Paxon or Gibson. Again, that eats up the budget.

I hope this explains why most are going into this offseason expecting the Cardinals to trade for at least one of the three pitchers. If they trade for someone like a Logan Gilbert who will make the minimum salary that helps. Gilbert had a WAR of 3.1. That means a combination of Snell and Rodriguez would work just fine. There will be a lot of dominoes falling just right.

This works only if no other team is bidding on the same players that we are and if those players really want to come here. If those dominoes fall the wrong way we will be looking at 2025.

They won’t sign Ohtani. Blake Snell is from Seattle. Talking to other writers that cover the Marineers like Jeff Nooey, they will be all over him. I can see Jordan Montgomery staying in Texas with Mike Maddux. When you start to whittle away at some of these names and as the signings start to happen it is easy to see that the Cardinals’ lofty goals may not be realized this year. The math just doesn't work unless the Cardinals get very creative.