The St. Louis Cardinals are in agreement with free agent starting pitcher, Sonny Gray, on a three-year 75 million-dollar contract according to MLB insider, Jon Heyman.
Sonny Gray will join the underachieving Cardinals team and improve their starting rotation, which averaged a 5.08 ERA which ranked 26th in the MLB. This is a big move for the Cardinals who have secured a great starting pitcher who will currently slot in as their ace. That could change though as it is being reported that they will pursue higher-tier starting pitcher through free agency or trade.
The 34-year-old is coming off of one of the best seasons of his career. He finished 2nd in the American League Cy Young race, posting a 2.79 ERA in 184 innings pitched through 32 starts for the Minnesota Twins. Also, his phenomenal 154 ERA+ was 54% better than the league average. This resulted in Gray accumulating a 5.3 fWAR for the year, revealing his tremendous value. It is also important to mention that the St. Louis Cardinals’ entire starting pitching staff totaled a 9.6 fWAR value across a variety of pitchers, showing the significance of adding Gray to the pitching staff.
The Cardinals have been very active this past week signing a couple of mid/low-tier starting pitchers, Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson. It’s going to be interesting how the Cardinals will approach the upcoming Winter Meetings in December with a pitching staff with an average age of 35 years old. There are still younger top-tier starting pitcher options the Cardinals are interested in and with the upcoming Winter Meetings, we could see the Cards being very active in Free Agency and perhaps even more in the trade market.
