I know that a lot of people – fans and media – are shouting about the sky falling on major-league baseball around a year from now, when the owners and players’ association open negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement.
It’s almost certain that the owners will lock out the players next offseason, which is a standard practice in these situations. The two sides would still have plenty of time to cut a deal before 2026 spring training, or perhaps late in spring training. There’s a lot of anxiety about a potential labor melee that could shut MLB down and cause the sport to miss regular-season games.
I’m trying to be somewhat optimistic here, and I am probably more hopeful than most observers. MLB is rolling with momentum. All of the popularity indicators are thriving, from paid attendance to local TV ratings, to national TV ratings, and an increased presence on streaming platforms.
Are these people – both sides – dumb enough and overloaded with excess petulance to harm themselves and the sport that enriches them? Even by baseball standards, that would be incredibly foolish. Why cause a massive loss of popularity and revenue and ruin the good feelings that baseball has cultivated over the past few years?
At least for now, there’s another reason for my optimism.
MLB owners are throwing a staggering amount of money around this offseason. The free-agent market is thriving. Players are getting paid. If the owners want us to believe that they’re in dire straits financially – they’re not – then why would they be investing exorbitant sums of money on player contracts with the potential Baseball Armageddon a little more than a year away? It doesn’t add up.
As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, here are the updated totals from the current free-agent market:
– There have been 64 announced free-agent signings. The salary info hasn’t been released on two of the contracts, which involve relievers, and the prices were low.
– Of the 62 contracts we know about, players have been given a total of 92 guaranteed seasons. This does not include option years, or mutual options. This is just about the guaranteed years in the contracts.
– The 62 contracts have committed just under $1.2 billion dollars. Guaranteed dollars.
Dozens of free agents remain unsigned including some of the heavyweights in this class including Kyle Tucker, Bo Bichette, Alex Bregman. Framber Valdez, Cody Bellinger, Eugenio Suarez, Michael King, Munetaka Murakami, Tatsuya Imai, Ranger Suarez, Kazuma Okamoto, Zac Gallen, J.T. Realmuto, Lucas Giolito — and so many more.
If MLB owners want us to believe the system is broken, they aren’t doing a good job of selling the falling-sky narrative.
Hey, at least the Cardinals are holding the line on payroll!
A CLOSER LOOK AT DUSTIN MAY: The new Cardinals starting pitcher will be paid a guaranteed $12.5 million this season and his contract contains a mutual option for 2027. I was looking at some more numbers earlier today and wanted to gauge his 57 career MLB starts, using the Bill James Game Score.
+ 32 of his 57 starts (56%) were above average.
+ 7 of his starts were exactly average or slightly below that.
+ So that means 68 percent of his career starts were above average, exactly average, or no worse than slightly below average.
+ An average Game score is 50. May has had a Game Score between 60 and 79 in 19 of his major-league starts, a rate of 33.3 percent.
+ Yeah, I think Dustin May is worth a one-season look, especially since he will pitch with increased strength and stamina in 2026 after missing so much time with injuries or a serious illness.
BRENDAN DONOVAN: I like what Donovan said on Tuesday night when he appeared, via livestream, on the annual charity fundraiser organized by our friends at the Dealin’ The Cards YouTube channel. Speaking of his big-league entry in 2022, and comparing it to the Cardinals’ current situation, a rebuild, Donovan had the right outlook.
“I came up and walked into a clubhouse that is nothing but stardom,” he said. “ And you see why the Cardinals have had so much success for a long time. Yes, we are in this bit of transition. Who is to say this next core, whoever it may be, cannot help the Cardinals have a long run of success? We don’t have crystal balls. Who in that clubhouse could help us get to that next level?”
TONY VITELLO IS BUSY: The St. Louis native, who will manage the San Francisco Giants, is wasting no time or energy in getting to know his players after making the direct jump to the majors after managing his successful college baseball program (Tennessee.)
Vitello has traveled to the Dominican Republic to visit with Giants shortstop Willy Adames and will make another trip to the D.R. to see Giants first baseman Rafael Devers. After that, he’ll fly to South Korea to meet Giants outfielder Jung Hoo Lee. He’s been busy texting with a bunch of Giants veterans including third baseman Matt Chapman and starting pitcher Logan Webb.
Vitello has enjoyed getting to know Dusty Baker and Bruce Bochy, the former Giants managers who are serving as special advisers to San Francisco GM Buster Posey. Both Baker and Bochy endorsed Vitello’s hiring after meeting with him – and they’re staying in touch.
“It was more of a hang up the phone, call somebody and say, ‘Holy shoot, you won’t believe who I just talked to’ —that was literally the immediate follow up to talking with Dusty,” Vitello told reporters. “I don’t know if I should admit that or not, but visiting with him was just an honor in general, but then it was real educational and for me it was more about just asking some questions and, and trying to learn. And then doing the same with Boch was great, but even better because I got to hang out with him in person and we met up and my parents were with me and how kind he was to my family, kind of overshadowed everything that was baseball talk. But the baseball talk was pretty special.”
SALUTE: MIZZOU RUNNING BACK AHMAD HARDY
I’m telling you what you already know (apologies) but with only the Gator Bowl to go, the Mizzou running back is having a special 2025 season. When a dude is a first-team All-America running back, then that’s all we really need to know. I went to Sports Info Solutions to get the full scope of his performance and this is what I put together:
– Hardy leads the SEC in rushing with 1,562 yards. And his average of 130.2 yards rushing per game tops the SEC.
– He leads the SEC with 1,102 yards rushing after contact and can still add to that total in the Gator Bowl.
– The Sports Info Solution database on this goes back to 2016. But over the previous nine seasons, no SEC running back had as many yards after contact than Hardy. The nine backs who led the conference in the yards after contact category averaged 838 yards – or 264 fewer YAC yards that Hardy has rumbled for, so far, this season.
– Mizzou RB Cody Schrader led the SEC in yards after contact in 2023 with 827 yards… or 275 yards less than Hardy’s current total. Hardy leads the SEC with an average of 4.5 yards after contact per run.
– Hardy ranks first in the SEC with 49 broken tackles, and is second with 32 missed tackles. His combined broken-missed tackles percentage (32%) is No. 2 in the SEC.
– He’s also No. 2 in the SEC with 16 rushing touchdowns. And No. 2 for most first downs (77) via the run.
– Among SEC backs with at least 100 rushing attempts this season, Hardy leads with his average of 6.5 yards per carry.
– Hardy is No. 2 among SEC backs in the expected-points added metric, at 38.83. Hardy and teammate Lawrence Roberts rank among the top five SEC running backs in expected-points added per play.
– Hardy has the third-lowest total of runs that were “stuffed” by the defense (15.) His rushing totals are even more impressive when we consider that Hardy has been hit at the line of scrimmage 99 times this season, the second-highest total among SEC backs.
– Hardy is arguably the most disciplined ball carrier in the SEC. He leads the conference for the most number of times, 155, that he used the designed running gap.
I’M TIRED OF THESE CLICHES
— College coaches and players constantly refer to their teams as a “brotherhood.” They’ve basically co-opted a phrase that originated among the service-academy football teams. Where there is a brotherhood because the players have signed up for military service and are willing to die for their country.. Said Navy quarterback Blake Horvath: “It’s kind of insulting to hear other teams throw around the term, say they’re a brotherhood, and meanwhile they’re bringing in 20, 30 guys in the transfer portal, guys are leaving, guys are getting paid more than other dudes. This team is truly a brotherhood.”
— “Outside noise.” For cripe’s sake, come up with something new. Coaches and players who repeat “outside noise” a million times when they’re talking about potential distractions from media and fans in the social-media jungle … Well, the term “outside noise” has actually become outside noise. It’s boring and redundant. You know what’s funny? The people who spit out “outside noise” over and over again really think they’re being original and creative. And the opposite is true. And what’s really irritating and stupid is seeing media people regurgitate “outside noise” thousands of times – and they don’t realize it makes them seem incapable of coming up with anything fresh and descriptive of their own. And, of course, these media parrots who repeat “outside noise” don’t seem to realize that THEY ARE the outside noise.
— Word Salad. A better word is gibberish. Especially if it’s random gibberish … with a lot of words strung together that don’t make much (if any) sense unless, perhaps, the person is addicted to LSD. People who use “word salad” are trying to sound sophisticated.
You want word salad?
This is word salad, courtesy of the Beatles.
Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come
Corporation t-shirts, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man, you've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long. I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus, Goo goo ga joob.
That’s from the song “I Am the Walrus.” And in this instance the word salad was absolutely brilliant. Why? Because John Lennon created the nonsensical song to mock listeners who were overanalyzing Beatles songs.
And then there’s this: according to Psychology Today, the world salad concept originated among mental-health professionals who view it as a formal thought disorder seen in psychotic patients.
As one psychologist noted about media people using ‘word salad’ in their crappy writing and talking and such: “It has a history long enough to have wilted by now. Present-day journalists and pundits may be using the term metaphorically. They should appreciate, however, that they are misappropriating a technical term from the annals of psychiatry that is still in use by mental health clinicians today.”
Translation: shut up, you dumb media people.
FROM THE BITS FILE
— Retired Cardinals pitcher Lance Lynn, speaking on “Foul Territory” has set the price for trading Brendan Donovan to Seattle: Mariners starting pitcher Bryce Miller. Others in the STL media have suggested the same. Which makes sense.
— Since we mentioned Cody Schrader earlier in the column, he’s some good news: he was just signed by the Denver Broncos after their starting running back, RJ Harvey, went down with an injury. Schrader has been a travelin’ man this season, having spent time on three different practice squads: Rams, Jaguars and Texans.
— One intriguing candidate for inclusion in a Seattle-STL trade is corner-outfield power bat Lazaro Montes, the Mariners’ No. 3 prospect. (I only mention this because his name has come up in media reports.) At age 20, Montes bashed 32 home runs, seven triples and 19 doubles last season while splitting the year between High A and Double A ball. He had a .504 slugging percentage but piled up too many strikeouts. That, however, was offset by his 14.5 percent walk rate. As a 19-year old in low Class A ball, Montes clubbed 21 homers and delivered 105 RBIs. And Baseball America named Montes as the best power hitter in the Seattle system – and named him as the best outfield arm in the system.
— “Montes’ calling card is his elite raw power,” Baseball America wrote. “Every swing is geared to do damage, and the ball often leaves the yard when he connects. He had the highest 90th percentile exit velocity of any Mariners minor leaguer in 2025. However, his aggressive approach leads to swing-and-miss issues …after experimenting with a more contact-oriented approach in 2024 that suppressed some of his power, the Mariners shifted Montes back to more of a damage-focused philosophy in 2025 that aligns far better with his natural skills and offensive profile.”
--- Good luck to Blues prospect Otto Stenberg, who is set to make his NHL debut. I'm actually fired up by this promotion, because we've heard so many good things about Otto over the last few years.
--- The Blues haven't given us much to cheer about this season. But one guy we should continue to cheer for -- loudly and frequently and with 100 percent passion -- is the retired Blue, Kelly Chase. This is a tough man in a serious fight with leukemia. God bless Kelly Chase, who has always given his heart and soul -- all of it -- to this franchise and the fans who support it. Chaser ain't about to stop fighting.
— Former Mizzou quarterback Brady Cook will make his second consecutive start for the NY Jets, who play at New Orleans on Sunday. Last week at Jacksonville, in his first career start, Cook completed 22 of 33 passes for 176 yards with one touchdown and three interceptions in a 48-20 loss. But Cook didn’t have much of a shot because the Jets defense was trampled early and put Cook and the offense in a 21-0 hole. In his NFL debut two weeks ago, Cook came off the bench to complete 14 of 30 passes for 163 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions in a 34-10 loss
— The 3-11 Jets are horrendous and Cook’s stats are poor. But … “I feel like I want to continue to evaluate him and see exactly how he’s gonna operate on a consistent basis,” Jets head coach Aaron Glenn told reporters Wednesday. “I like everything that we’ve seen from training camp up to this point, but also him coming into the first game when Tyrod (Taylor) got hurt and we were down 21, that wasn’t a good situation to be in.
“And then, coming back another game and being down 21 early. I want to see him in a situation where our defense, our offense and our special teams complement each other and see exactly how he’s gonna operate there. And I think he deserves an opportunity to do it.”
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.