Along with Cole Hamels, Zack Greinke has to be the most sought-after player possibly available on this summer’s trading block. Greinke is a true ace, and he has the credentials to back it up even if his name doesn’t always command the mainstream respect it should. He leads all National League pitchers in WAR this season at 3.5, he doesn’t walk anyone, he’s a strikeout pitcher with a wide assortment of offerings, and he’s still only 28 years old. Landing Greinke would transform almost any rotation into one to be reckoned with. While I don’t necessarily advocate St. Louis Cardinals GM John Mozeliak piecing together a deal for Greinke, there are admittedly plenty of reasons why a deal for the quirky right-hander makes absolute sense. It’s time to examine those reasons, if for no other reason than that just continually saying never to dismantle the finally ripe farm system is getting boring.
Zack Greinke would be quite the formidable rotation anchor regardless of how many baseballs he spikes.
Obviously acquiring Greinke from a pure “holy shit, we just traded for an awesome pitcher” standpoint would be a good thing for the Cardinals. He would instantly jump to the front of the rotation and give the team a nasty potential playoff rotation as Adam Wainwright continues to improve and Jaime Garcia returns from injury. Throw the now solid Kyle Lohse in there and runs could be hard to come by for any team forced to oppose such a group of pitchers. So yeah, picking up Greinke would represent a big step up in the rotation and an improvement to the club’s playoff odds. No one’s disputing that. But what about the cost of acquiring such a talent?
The Brewers are going to want premium talent if they intend to part with their ace. I would be much more comfortable as a Cardinal fan if a package for Greinke included only mid-level prospects, and a higher number of them, rather than top-shelf guys like Shelby Miller or Oscar Taveras. I just don’t think that’s going to happen, though. One of those two would almost have to be included in a deal to nab Greinke, and that’s reasonable of the Brewers to ask. In reality, I’m not comfortable with trading either of them, especially when Greinke could easily test the free agent market at season’s end, but let’s continue along this path for the sake of exploring all angles.
So let’s hypothesize that he Brewers want either Miller or Taveras and a couple of low-to-mid level guys to get a deal done for Greinke. Such a trade would put a big dent in all the work that’s been done in the past few years to rebuild the farm system, but does that matter if the trade puts the Cardinals in a better position to seriously contend for the next five years? The Cardinals have an enviable stock of hitting talent, much of which is young and cheap. Aside from the emerging Taveras and Kolten Wong, just look at the players who have made Major League appearances and, in some cases, huge contributions in 2012. Allen Craig, Matt Carpenter, Matt Adams, and David Freese are all players who are still cost effective (even if Freese is nearing arbitration) and hold plenty of value. Craig and Freese have even been well above-average in what they have given the team this season and are big pieces of the overall picture. The star veteran hitters on the club (Matt Holliday and Yadier Molina) are already locked up for the long haul, and Carlos Beltran is back for another season in 2013. The Cardinals have a lot in the way of Major League offensive talent, so would it be that rash to deal a top outfield prospect to land an ace?
Perhaps, and this rests heavily on how the Brewers intend to handle their situation with Greinke, the package necessary to acquire the starter won’t be as heavy as I expect. Most well-run Major League franchises are really starting to understand the value of young, cost-controlled talent. These are the types of players you just have to have in order to field a competitive team unless you are one of the select few organizations with nearly unlimited resources. Knowing this, maybe the market for Greinke wouldn’t necessitate the inclusion of Taveras or Miller. The Orioles, who have been linked to Greinke lately, are said to be unwilling to surrender either Dylan Bundy or Manny Machado in a deal for the pitcher. If other interested teams feel the same way and the Brewers decide they aren’t going to be able to finalize an extension with Greinke, maybe he could be had for less than many think.
Any deal for Zack Greinke also has to be evaluated in terms of signing him to a new contract. As I touched on earlier, a deal like this (especially if absolute premium talent is involved) has to be done because the team acquiring the pitcher believes he’ll be around for the foreseeable future. Greinke will command a contract with an average annual value in excess of $20 million; that is without a doubt. He’ll also need a deal with something in the way of length, though recent pitcher contracts and contract extensions suggest that the Cardinals wouldn’t have to worry about signing something that is overly optimistic or damning. While position players are getting decade-long deals with alarming regularity any more, trends have been heading the opposite direction when it comes pitchers. Lance Berkman, Kyle Lohse, and Jake Westbrook coming off the ledger at season’s end will mean a lot of cash is freed up. Assuming Mozeliak has faith in his revamped staff to continue developing impact talent and outlining the roster on the cheap, $20 million per season for an ace is probably doable. The team is surely already considering spending plenty of money on Adam Wainwright once his contract runs out after 2013. Once the 2013 season concludes, and this could obviously change as volatile as pitchers can be, would you rather have a 32-year-old Wainwright or a 29-year-old Greinke for a little bit more? I love Wainwright as a pitcher and a human being, but I know my answer to the question posed in the last sentence does not rule in his favor.
The odds of Mozeliak pulling the trigger on a deal for Greinke are probably almost non-existent. The Cardinals are in good enough shape as they are currently constructed and they have plenty of help on the way. Baseball America’s recently-released Top 50 prospects list (the mid-season edition) has four Cardinal farmhands among the group. But to say that trading for Greinke would be foolish may actually be foolish in itself. Greinke is a Major League ace now, not later, and he makes more sense for the team’s current incarnation than surface observations might suggest. None of this will probably matter, but think about it for a little while: Zack Greinke, St. Louis Cardinal. It sounds kind of cool, right?