Holliday Gets His Pay On

You heard it here last: Matt Holliday agreed to sign a 37 year contract for 750 billion dollars with the Cardinals on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I only own two Holliday cards in a Cardinals uniform, so I had to recycle the image of the one I posted least recently. Don't let my apparent bitterness dissuade you, however. I'm pretty happy with the signing overall. One of my main rules while evaluating deals like this that my favorite teams make is that in the end, it's not my money. There is no salary cap in Major League Baseball and based on their attendance figures and overall health of the franchise, I'm not that worried about how this will affect the Cardinals financially. That is, as long as the owner does not use this deal as an excuse to not sign anyone or make any moves for the next 7 to 8 years. And how does a 37 year old Matt Holliday making 17+ million dollars a season sound to me? Well, honestly, I probably won't care if he even approaches what he did for the Cards in the waning summer months of 2009 or what he's shown in his Rockies career. I'm worried about other things with this team right now, but I am not going to complain about Matt Holliday wearing the Birds on the Bat at this point.

(Someone needs to figure out why he dropped that ball, however. And... er... I hate to ask, but who is going to be the 5th starter this season? "Take Your Pick" hasn't done so well the past few years, after all.)

Moving onto other news, Brian from Play at the Plate sent over a stack of Cardinals recently including this Blake Hawksworth 2009 Heritage card and a bunch of those dastardly 2008 Documentary cards. Hawksworth... maybe... just maybe... could fill that 5th starter's spot. He seemed to fare much better as a reliever down the stretch, but maybe with another spring's work and some extra Duncaning he'll be set to go. At least, he can't possibly be worse than Brad Thompson, can he?

Here's one of the Documentary cards I received. Now, before you go and get on me for complaining about these cards and this set in general, keep in mind that I did actually go out of my way to request that these were sent to me. I do, in fact, hate this set - maybe more so because it could have been such a great idea - but I am always interested in Cardinals-related cards that I don't have. I do have to say that it was pretty eye-opening to see that most of the players depicted on the Cards in this set are not going to be 2010. The 2008 season doesn't seem far away at all, and yet I'm sure Adam Kennedy at least isn't looking back.