Cards Notebook: Welcome back, Lance Lynn; the Herrera Era; No on Nola; Brandon Woodruff is a risk worth taking

There's a lot of Cardinals stuff to talk about, so let's talk about a lot of Cardinals stuff

The coils of the hot stove are officially warm to the touch, so let’s jump into an array of matters concerning the One Team To Rule Them All …

Old friend Lance Lynn

The Cardinals got some pre-Thanksgiving clarity with a one-year deal plus an option for veteran right-hander and former long-time Bird Lance Lynn. The 36-year-old right-hander endured a rough 2023 both before and after being deadline-dealt from the White Sox to the Dodgers, but there’s real hope for positive regression in 2024. 

Lynn in his age-36 season of 2023 struck out 191 batters in 183 ⅔ innings, and that comes to a better-than-league-average K% of 23.6. What largely explains his unseemly 5.73 ERA is the fact that he surrendered an MLB-leading 44 home runs (!). That’s almost certainly an aberration that will be partially corrected even before you account for the fact that Busch Stadium has a knack for suppressing homer rates. Lynn this past season allowed home runs on 19% of his fly balls, which is far out of step with both his career norms and league standards. The Cardinals are banking – wisely, I think – on improvement on the home run rate for Lynn. That’s to be expected even in a vacuum, and, again, pitching his home starts in Busch will likely help matters. Throw in the $10 million price tag for 2024, and the Lynn signing still allows them to do the other, bigger things they need to do in the rotation and still satisfy the likely payroll budget. 

Let’s acknowledge the obvious qualifier: The Lynn signing is a sound and sensible one only if he’s the third-best starting pitcher they acquire this offseason. If he winds up being any higher than that in the hierarchy, then this is a half-measure. Lynn as a back-end depth piece is a wise use of resources, and until further notice let’s assume that’s precisely what he is. 

Aaron Nola is off the board

The Phillies over the weekend re-upped with Aaron Nola on a seven-year, $172 million pact. That removes one of the top rotation arms from the free-agent market, and as Derrick Goold reported the Cardinals never made a serious run at him. It’s easy to interpret that lack of activity as a dereliction of duties, but I wouldn’t take that route. It’s possible the Cardinals’ approach to repairing the rotation has crystallized further, and Nola wound up not being a tip-top priority. It’s also possible the front office realized a return to the team where Nola has spent his entire professional life was a fait accompli, and they put their attention elsewhere. If, however, Sonny Gray and Yoshinobu Yamamoto land elsewhere and we learn that the Cardinals weren’t materially involved in pursuing them, then that will be the time for thunderous denunciations.

There’s another reason the loss and preceding lack of activity on the Nola front doesn’t trouble me, which is that I have been a board-certified Nola Skeptic for some time now. His sub-par velocity and steadily declining strikeout rates worry me, especially against the backdrop of a contract that will run through his age-37 campaign. Low velo plus plunging strikeouts is a poor aging profile for a pitcher, and then there’s the fact that Nola has been worked hard throughout his career. Being a “workhorse” is a merit right up until it exacts a cost in health, and it usually does. 

I certainly would not have loudly complained about the Cardinals’ landing Nola, but I would’ve side-eyed it a bit for those reasons just stated. As such, I’m OK with not landing him or even pursuing him, assuming the plan to add a pair of frontline, better-than-Lance-Lynn  starters remains intact. 

Has the Herrera Era arrived?