Matt Holliday Agrees To Huge Deal With Cardinals

Viva El Birdos: Holliday Deal Means Cardinals Are Officially A Big Market Team

SB Nation’s Viva El Birdos reacts to the Cardinals signing Matt Holliday to a seven-year, $120 million deal by acknowledging that this now means St. Louis is locked into being a big budget team:

It is more or less self-evident, but the Cardinals are now committed to running expensive teams out there indefinitely—while three players are combining to make more than $45 million, as will be the case in 2010 and 2011, there’s simply no reasonable case to be made for “cheaping out”, even in the pretty expensive, basically meaningless open-the-DeWallet sense of the word. A team that’s paying that same $45 million to two players once Pujols’s existing contract expires is not being run on a mid-market budget.

The ultimate conclusion is that they like the deal, especially compared to similar deals given to other outfielders in recent history — Vernon Wells and Alfonso Soriano.

Matt Holliday Agrees To Huge Deal With Cardinals

The last big name free agent on the market, Matt Holliday, has reportedly agreed to a deal with the St. Louis Cardinals.

According to Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman, it's a seven-year, $120 million deal, complete with a no-trade clause. Holliday's going to be bathing in money. Previously, the two sides had discussed a contract worth "around $16 million" a season.

Holliday batted .353 with 13 home runs and 55 RBIs in 63 games with the Cardinals after being acquired in a July trade from the Oakland Athletics. He helped stabilize their batting order by providing a consistent power threat in the cleanup spot behind NL MVP Albert Pujols. When they added Holliday on July 24, the Cardinals led the NL Central by just 1 1/2 games, but by the end of August their lead had swelled to 10 games and they cruised to the division title.

Early reaction from SB Nation's Viva El Birdos: "For the mathematically impaired, that would be a roughly $17M AAV for Matt Holliday. Seems like a lot for a guy with no other serious suitors."