The Kyle Gibson signing provides clarity but not necessarily the good kind

They have three rotation vacancies, and two have been filled with back-end arms

A day after adding Lance Lynn to the fold, the Cardinals on Tuesday inked veteran right-hander and Mizzou product Kyle Gibson to a one-year deal plus an option for 2025. Taken together, Lynn and Gibson will make $22 million for 2024, which probably accounts for something a bit less than half of their offseason spending budget. 

I addressed the merits of the Lynn addition not long after the pairing was reported, and Gibson comes in at a similar tier. Like Lynn, Gibson is 36, has spent more than a decade in the majors, and of late leans on his fastball roughly 40% of the time. Lynn’s better at getting strikeouts, while Gibson has stronger ground-ball proclivities. Gibson’s a back-end/middle-on-a-good-day type, who over the last three seasons has pitched to FIPs (What’s this?) in the low 4.00s and is coming off a 2023 campaign in which he made 33 starts and approached 200 innings. There’s nothing wrong with all of that as a fourth or fifth guy, and there’s something to be said for adding a durable sort to any rotation, especially one that includes Steven Matz. 

I will also repeat John Mozeliak’s words at his Wednesday presser and remind everyone that it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, which means we’re but ankle-deep into the offseason. The whole needs to be judged, not the order in which the whole is assembled.

Still, something else Mozeliak said is giving me pause. During that presser – the 07:15 mark linked here – Ben Frederickson asked Mozeliak a most important question. That is whether the addition of two reasonable but hardly frontline starting pitchers means they’re now looking to add four starters instead of the three they initially touted. To this, Mo said: