Hiroki Kuroda accepted a qualifying offer — and seeing how this is playing out, seems to have made a smart move. The Sox made a QO to Big Papi, then signed him to a 2-year deal at roughly the same salary ($26 million for 2 years).

Now my question would be, what did the MLBPA think they were gaining for their members by agreeing to these rules?

Assuming, whether correctly or incorrectly, that the $ allocated would go something like:

old Budget – IFA expenditures – MiLB expenditures = total amount for MLB players
new Budget – less IFA expenditures – less MiLB expenditures = way more total amount for MLB players

Except most likely it just lead to more money in the pockets of owners…

“He’s 34″ really doesn’t change the strangeness of Lohse’s situation, not when you got older guys like Ryan Dempster (age 36) and R.A. Dickey (age 40) signing two-year deals with about the same or more compensation. Without the draft pick compension, he would have at least fielded some offers by now, if not signed with a team.

Dempster – 2/$26.5 ($13.250.00 AAV)
Dickey – 1/$5M (extension 2/$24M $12M AAV with an option for 3rd)

First, both those guys signed deals under what Lohse is looking for considering Lohse turned down a guaranteed $13.3M arbitration offer. The draft compensation lost is huge, obviously but there are other factors. Maybe he’s looking for a $16M AAV deal?

Lohse was a legitmately good pitcher before he showed up in St. Louis who got a bit better

He really wasn’t. Before he got to STL he put up:

1164 IP, 4.82 ERA, 98 ERA+, 5.7 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 1.2 HR/9, 10.1 H/9 averaging 28 GS a season with 166 IP. That’s below average, not good.

Now comes the big question- IF Bundy and Gausman come up and IF we bring Saunders back… how do we fix the logjam in the starting rotation- Hammel, Chen, Tillman, Gonzalez, Saunders, Wada, Gausman, Bundy…that be 8 bodies. Assume 1 gets bitten by the injury bug. 7. Assume one of the Bundy/Gausman duo isn’t quite ready. 6. STILL too many bodies and not worth relinquishing one to the BP that is jammed as well….trade?

But I gotta say, looking at the vast majority of the group- age is on our side. Wada and Saunders would be the only 2 in their 30′s. The rest are 28 and under. Not too shabby.

They used to use the ranking system that classified FAs into A, B, or C type FAs to determine pick order in the sandwich round. I don’t know how they’ll do it now.

While teams may be concerned about losing the money associated with the draft pick….agents have already realized that the draftee does have leverage and teams will have to spend most of that money on the pick…because if the pick isn’t signed, they’ll lose ALL of that money from the draft purse. The best most teams can hope for is to save a couple hundred thousand on a late first rounder to spend on someone else.

Do you suppose they missed all of the details on it? If so, some lawyers would need firing.

If the Redbirds didn’t have such a plethora of young talented arms waiting in the wings, I wouldn’t have minded the Card’s FO signing him to another 3+ years.

What doesn’t happen anymore is that the team “losing” the FA doesn’t get the pick of the team that signed the FA. The team that signs Lohse will lose their first (or second) round pick and the draft allocation $ that goes with it and the Cardinals will get a sandwich round pick an a commensurate increase the the $ they can spend on their draft..

Lohse actually has been good the majority of his time in St. Louis; his two bad seasons were due to a strange forearm injury that no pitcher apparently has ever suffered and took a while to figure out how to properly treat. He probably won’t repeat his success last year, but it’s still highly likely that he would be the same pitcher who delivered a 14-8 season with a 3.39 ERA in 2011 in 30 starts and 15-6 with a 3.78 ERA in 33 starts in 2008, the season before his “motorcross” injury.

And yes, Duncan wasn’t there last year. The idea that the pixie dust goes away with Duncan or the Cardinals in general is a narrative that is beyond stupid at this point. Lohse was a legitmately good pitcher before he showed up in St. Louis who got a bit better. This isn’t the same situation as Joel Pinerio, who was toast as a starting pitcher when the Cardinals picked him off the scrap heap (and was still pretty bad in the first year of his two full seasons with the Cardinals).

He is a “young” 34, in excellent shape, a good athlete, an excellent fielder, not bad with the bat and a pitch to contact, control artist who still hits 91 on the gun. Certainly, Duncan was a positive influence on his career, it is the Cardinal doctrine to pitch to contact, throw strike one, and do not walk anyone. And it isn’t like he is going to forget what has made him one of the better pitchers in the NL for the past few years, nor is his age going to matter that much due to his style.

The truth is, he has been quite successful since coming to St. Louis, and those who claim he is some kind of one year wonder, haven’t witness his career as a Card. He came to St. Louis in 2008 and posted a very good first season, 15-6, 3.68, in 200 innings pitched as he learned his knew approach. Then in 2009 he got off to a great start but suffered two weird injuries, one fielding a slow roller on a wet turf, and the other on a HBP, the latter which was initially misdiagnosed, and unfortunately led to a surgery of the forearm sheath, a particularly strange injury for a baseball player, not to mention a pitcher. He tried to pitch through it in 2009, but was ineffective, and it took all of 2010 to recover the strength need to grip a baseball. But he was healthy in 2011, and returned to form with a 18-8, 3.39 in a watchful 188 innings.

2012 proved to be a banner year, but not really that surprising. 24 quality starts, a MLB leading 33 games started, and an MLB best 16-3, 2.86 ERA, in 211 innings, which would be the optimal year to search for a long-term deal for the remainder of his career.

Teams like Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles (either) or New York (Mets), who possess large pitcher’s parks are nuts not to sign him to a 3,4, or 5 year deal. He always takes the ball, is a great teammate, and has proven, when healthy, which he has been throughout the majority of his career, that he is a dependable, innings eater, who always keeps you in the game, walks no one, and while seldom great, is almost always very good, which is exactly what a contender should want from perhaps MLB’s premiere #3 guy. Ideally he needs a good-sized park, and solid defense, though St. Louis was only average, in his successful years there. He would be less successful in a band-box, since his forte isn’t K’s,

All I know, and I believe most Cards fans would agree, he is miles better than a pitcher named Jackson who the Cubs just handed a lucrative multi-year deal who is susceptible to blowing up at any moment. Some GMs are sleeping out there, enraptured by strikeouts, I guess when the answer to their teams pitching woes is waiting patiently for the call, one he always seems to answer.