Spending Freese: The St. Louis Cardinals' Third Base Options

Combine the thirst for and subsequent dearth of actual news this time of year with Twitter’s ability to quickly disseminate information and you have a sort of perfect storm.

Consider this tweet Wednesday night from Yahoo’s Tim Brown: "(Jose) Valverde has offers from Cards, Tigers and one other."

Now, even after signing Matt Holliday, I knew the Cardinals had a little bit of payroll room left (I’ve seen somewhere about $6 million and $7 million). But paying retail for a player carrying the so-called "Proven Closer" tag is not the best way to spend your dry powder, especially when the Cardinals would surrender their first-round draft pick and a supplemental pick to Houston as Type A compensation.

Thankfully, the Cardinals' interest in Valverde turned out to be tepid, as he signed with the Tigers for two years and $14 million. While improving the bullpen remains the top priority, there also are question marks in the rotation and at third base.

But those two spots probably will be best filled from within, particularly third base. There has been lots of chatter regarding signing someone like Miguel Tejada, Felipe Lopez or Joe Crede. Doing so would be just as foolish as signing Valverde would have been.

Consider first what kind of production you might get from a Tejada, Lopez or Crede and that of David Freese, the leading in-house candidate:

• Tejada: CHONE, .297/.333/.434; Marcel, .287/.327/.426
• Lopez: CHONE, .273/.344/.381; Marcel, .279, .349/.396
• Crede: CHONE, .245/.307/.426; Marcel, .237/.302/.417
• Freese: CHONE, .269/.335/.442; Marcel, .280/.347/.440

While all these guys have their warts—Tejada hasn’t played even one out at 3B and has his own sketchy PED past ; Lopez doesn’t have enough power for a corner position; Crede can’t stay healthy; Freese still isn’t a sure shot and also seems to have a fondness for the sauce —a quick and dirty look at a couple of projections shows them to all have roughly similar production.

The separating factor is what each player will cost, contract-wise. Tejada, 35, still has name recognition and probably would want a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal. Lopez is five years younger than Tejada but likely is looking for a raise (as well as multiple years) above the $3.5 million he made in a good season last year.

Freese, on the other hand, will be paid the league minimum of roughly $400,000, give or take a few thousand, and is already on the roster. And if you can get a high-700 OPS for the league minimum, why would you shell out millions extra for the exact same production?