Lookout Landing

I didn't really know much about John Mozeliak before. Now I do. He is bad.

The Cardinals expected to finalize a four-year extension with Lohse this morning. Lohse skipped his scheduled start Sunday for a physical and said afterward he hopes a deal is on the horizon.
...
General manager John Mozeliak declined to discuss details but confirmed negotiating with Lohse's representative. Multiple sources indicated that the deal could be similar to the four-year, $48 million contract signed by Carlos Silva with Seattle last winter, and that the average annual value of Lohse's deal will exceed $10 million.

The Cardinals have scheduled a news conference for 4:30 p.m. today (FSN Midwest).

The Cardinals grabbed Lohse off of the scrap heap last March and were rewarded with a sub-4 ERA over 200 innings. The lesson they learned from this is that, if dipping into the bargain barrel works once with a player, you better make damn sure he never gets away.

Kyle Lohse is the same pitcher he's always been. Nothing's different about the way he pitches. He gets a couple more groundballs now, but those come at the expense of infield pop-ups, and he just posted the lowest swinging strike rate of his life despite having spent the majority of his career in the tougher league. He turns 30 this weekend.

Stupid. Kyle Lohse is a #4 starter being paid like someone way better than that, and while he may not be as thoroughly unlikable as Carlos Silva, his contract is likely to be almost as much of a problem down the road. If not immediately.

Facing an offseason in which there's more talent on the free agent market than there has been in ages, Kyle Lohse is on the verge of signing a monster four-year contract. Either the Cardinals are batshit insane or the league's front offices have communally looked at last year's reasonable spending and decided that that was really silly of them. Whatever the case may be, I don't know if I've ever been happier to be in a Bavasi-less position. God only knows what kind of ideas he'd be getting.

I can think of less ominous contracts to begin the winter.