Cardinals Sign Clement
January 3, 2008 by Geoff Young
Filed under Transactions
The St. Louis Cardinals have signed right-hander Matt Clement to a 1-year, $1.5 million deal with a club option for 2009. He was pretty darned good for the Cubs from 2002 to 2004, but hasn’t done much since.
Clement made just 12 starts in 2006 with Boston and missed all of last season while recovering from shoulder surgery. Maybe he has something left, but I wouldn’t count on it.
This is the move I expected Toronto to make. With pitching coach Arnsberg the mentor of Clement in Florida, he could have have given back confidence to the former Red Sox and possibly have given a strong boost to their #5 spot in the rotation.
That said, Duncan in St-Louis seems do be doing miracles with some of the guys he works with (Carpenter, Weaver) so I’m sure it came into the decision process for Clement.
Toronto would have been a nice fit — good point about the Arnsberg connection. It’ll be interesting to see if Duncan can work another miracle. If not, they didn’t make a huge investment. Damaged pitchers seem to be (possibly) undervalued in the current market, so it’s not a bad strategy to go after them right now and hope for the best.
Geoff,
What’s even better is that you can then watch Bavasi in Seattle pay millions and millions of dollars the next year on a broken arm that has nowhere to go but down.
Heh. BTW, I was doing some research for the book yesterday and discovered that Carlos Silva and Jake Peavy are each due $48M over the next 4 years. That’s gotta sting a little…
Are you saying Peavy is any better than Silva? hmmmm……lol