An Early Opportunity For Change

Claiming Lucas Giolito could be a signal to the fan base that things are going to be different

Talk about throwing a boulder into the pond. When Josh Donaldson was let go by the Yankees earlier today, no one really batted an eye. We didn’t know that it was the warmup act for the show stopper.

Look, we all know that the Angels are fairly nuts. They pushed all in trying to show Shohei Ohtani that things could work in LA, only to fall out of the race and see Shohei face elbow surgery and most likely will never wear an Angels uniform on the mound again. So they finally cut bait and put everything out on the curb with a “FREE” sign.

Most of this doesn’t really impact St. Louis, given that they are the fifth-worst team in baseball and aren’t exactly looking to buff up the 2023 team so they can finish sixth- or seventh-worst. However, there’s a possibility here for an interesting September.

It’s Lucas Giolito.

Let’s be clear, Giolito isn’t going to save this season. He also had a terrible time in his brief stint in Los Angeles, giving up 10 homers in 32.2 innings and a whopping 6.89 ERA. However, there are still reasons that the Cardinals should flex their waiver muscle and grab him up for the last month of the year.

1. It’s cheap. I saw the calculations on Donaldson earlier today and it would cost a team $100,000 for the rest of the year to bring in a player on waivers. That’s the pro-rated amount of the minimum salary. We talked earlier about bringing up Masyn Winn so that he got a taste of the bigs and was prepared for 2024. If Giolito is one of your off season targets—and he should be—this is a great way for him to get acclimated to the system and see if things are sympatico. (EDIT: After reading more, I realized that this is only if he cleared waivers and the Cardinals signed him. Picking up the contract means they’d owe him a little over $1.7 million. Still not a big deal!)
   

2. It could be an investment. Giolito has been traded and now designated for assignment. A man that has only played in one spot in his career will be in his third in just over a month. Might he now be interested in stability? Might he also think that his free agent stock took a hit with his time with the Angels and be a little more open to an extension before hitting the market? I don’t imagine the chance is high, but it’s there, especially since I don’t think he’s a Scott Boras client. If nothing else, you get the window of October to talk with him and see how things might play out.
   

3. There’s a need. Look, Giolito’s 6.89 ERA from Los Angeles would still not be the worst ERA in this rotation. His K/9 is still around 9.5, which is the sort of thing the Cardinals are needing overall. If nothing else, he might bring a little spark or buzz to the club which has seemed so flat over the past two weeks. I appreciate what Drew Rom did last time out but he’s got like three AAA starts. Sending him back to Memphis isn’t going to be the worst thing. Or, since rosters are about to expand, go with a six man rotation and give Adam Wainwright more rest between starts.
   

4. There’s nothing like experience. Yes, the club has all the scouting reports, but there’s nothing like seeing a guy go through his day, see how he gets ready for a start. You think the club wishes they’d had Willson Contreras for the last two months of 2022 before making the commitment to him this winter? They might have realized things weren’t going to mesh. It could be he comes in and just doesn’t click with the organization. If that’s the case, you know to look elsewhere in November and December. It’s also possible that he thrives in St. Louis, perhaps Dusty Blake has some advice, and there is a mutual interest in continuing.
   

5. It signals something other than business as usual. Right now, there’s a large section of the online fanbase that doesn’t believe that the Cardinals are going to do anything significant this winter. They aren’t buying this idea that they will be shopping in the deep end of the pitching pool. “The club never does that,” they say, “and I’ll believe it when I see it.” While this obviously isn’t an expensive move—we’ve established that—it’s also not the sort of move that the Cardinals would usually do. They wouldn’t reach out and start thinking a few steps ahead. They’d just say, “we’re happy with what we have, we need to see these guys throw.” Being aggressive like this would at least be a data point toward them being aggressive this winter.

I imagine it’s all moot, that Giolito will wind up on a contending team because no other also-ran has this sort of need, but this is a open opportunity for the Cardinal front office to get out of their comfort zone and be a little original. I hope they take it.