Cardinals reach deals with five, leaving an arbitration debate with Edman ahead

The St. Louis Cardinals announced on Thursday that they’d reached agreements on 2024 contracts with five of their six arbitration-eligible players, setting up a pending exchange of figures and then a hearing with Tommy Edman.

Relievers Andrew Kittredge (third-year eligible), Ryan Helsley (second), John King (first) and JoJo Romero (first), as well as outfielder Dylan Carlson (first) all agreed to terms, which the Cardinals did not disclose.

Major League rules do not prevent teams from continuing to negotiate with players after Thursday’s noon central deadline for an agreement, despite Thursday evening’s structured exchange of salary figures.

The Cardinals, however, have taken the tactic of many other clubs and adopted what’s known as a “file and trial” policy. After not reaching an agreement with a player, they are committed to seeing the process through to a hearing, suggesting a pending salary showdown with Edman.

The exception to that policy is agreement to a multi-year extension. Edman, who can be a free agent following the 2025 season, would seem to be a prime candidate for such a deal if the team is confident that he can maintain a strong enough performance at the plate to justify continuing to rely on his superlative and flexible defense.

This winter was the second time Edman was eligible for arbitration. He and the club settled on a $4.2 million salary last winter, and while he endured a somewhat below average season at the plate, he continued to prove his value defensively, transitioning into becoming the club’s starting center fielder.

That plan has sustained the team throughout the winter, even as Edman has been recovering from arthroscopic surgery on his right wrist. MLB Trade Rumors, which models the arbitration market over an extended sample to project likely salary outcomes, anticipated that Edman would make $6.5 million in 2024.

Thursday’s agreements with Carlson and Helsley were both approximately 25% higher than their projected salaries, suggesting some eagerness on the club’s part to avoid a hearing. Helsley in particular represented an important case, given that he did undergo an arbitration hearing last winter in which the club was victorious, and after the fact, spoke candidly about the challenges inherent in that process.

Under the current arbitration setup, players and teams present their sides of a salary dispute to a panel of arbitrators who often have little to no intimate knowledge of baseball. Each side, with the player speaking first, presents their case for an hour, followed by half an hour each of rebuttal.

It’s in these rebuttal periods where conflict often spreads, as teams fight to keep salaries down even at the cost of insult to some of their most important players. Helsley, last spring, spoke of being disheartened as the team questioned his availability to pitch throughout the season, even as that plan was developed in concert with trainers to keep his arm as healthy as possible.

That animus is not unique to the Cardinals, but is rather a baked in part of the system, preferred by players at least to an alternative which would see salaries set either by teams or by an algorithm set by the league. Neither would give players and their agents the opportunity to argue their cases in front of the panel of arbitrators.

In recent years, the Cardinals have held arbitration hearings with pitchers Génesis Cabrera and Jack Flaherty and outfielder Tyler O’Neill as well as Helsley; those three have since moved on from the organization, with Cabrera and O’Neill losing their cases and Flaherty winning his. The only other hearing attended by the team since 1999 is that with Michael Wacha in 2017, which the club won.

Notably, none of the five players with whom the Cardinals have gone to a hearing in the last quarter century have signed contract extensions with St. Louis which took them beyond the minimal amount of club control. Cabrera, Flaherty and O’Neill were all traded before reaching even that point.

Edman remains an essential component to this year’s team, though his place in its middle-term future is a matter of some debate.

Hearings will run from the end of this month right up to and through the report date for pitchers and catchers at the beginning of spring training; those hearings will be scheduled in the coming days as the finalized list of players who haven’t reached agreements is created.