I think the problem with age is there is a fear among fans that those older guys will suddenly start playing the way we expect older guys to. In other words Barry will start playing like Mets vintage Wille Mays, Clemens and Johnson will start having to pitch like Charlie Hough.

It does seem like more old guys are at the top of the game, but it seems like that increases injury risks. I can't say that the age of some of the Cards players (Walker, Jimmy Eds, Sanders) doesn't worry me. Especially with Walker and Edmonds' injury histories.

Clemens obviously maintains himself very well physically, so that one we can understand. Whether you suspect Bonds is taking steroids or not, you have to agree he's in the best shape of his life. As for RJ, I have no idea. I thought after his knee surgery he'd be done, but he came back as strong as ever. I have to think that the success of all these older guys combining to happen at the same time is probably coincidence.

By the way, does $18million for Clemens seem like a bit much to anybody else? I guess Houston is making up for the measly $5mil they gave him last year (plus another $1.825 in incentives).

When I first heard about this deal (especially the part about him being the highest paid pitcher for the 5th time), I went to baseball-reference.com and looked up his salaries over the course of his career. Including next season, he'll total $121mil, and that doesn't include the incentives from last year, so maybe there were other bonuses along the way that got left out. Rounding up to $125mil, has the Rocket been worth it? Every penny.

Morris - $2.5 mil + $4.5 mil incentives
Mulder - $6 mil
Carpenter - $2 mil
Marquis - $3 mil + $25k incentives
Suppan - $4 mil (?)
Ankiel - $400k + $175k incentives

If I'm right on my salaries, and addition, that's a total base salary of $17.9 million for the Cardinals' starting rotation, plus $4.7 million in incentives, totaling $22.6 million -- for SIX guys.

Pick Clemens ($18 mil) plus either Oswalt (between $6 and $7.8 mil, TBA with arbitration) or Pettite ($8.5 mil) and you've got two guys who're more expensive than our ENTIRE rotation. Yikes. I'd say we got the better deal.

Sean, that's an interesting piece about the connection between ages (in terms of average age) and general competitiveness for a club. Hmmmmmm. It does seem to drop off quickly though, doesn't it? I think SF is one of the worst run franchises around, and Philly too. MN, one of the best.

MOB, I agree, I think the Cards have a much better pitching setup from a financial perspective, and maybe even just on a flat out talent setup as well (considering all 5 rotation pitchers). I saw the piece on the local news citing Clemens as last year's Cy Young award winner, which he probably didn't deserve (Schmidt) and which means less than it sounds anyway, like starting in the all star game or something, and it became clear to me that Clemens is not 3x the pitcher Mark Mulder is, putting next year in its own dish.

John, I'd argue that Bonds is not in the best shape of his life. He constantly says how he'll go to the AL to DH, since playing defense in the corners is such a drag. He doesn't run anymore and often times sits out 1 every 5 games. As explosive as ever? As keen as ever? Yes. But he's a shade of the total player he used to be.

Calvin, I think you're touching on a potential goldmine, and maybe the reason Sean's teams are coming out that way, which is that as training and health become better understood, better players are lasting longer. Quite honestly, I expect Johnson and Clemens to have great years next year (but some old guys are faded, like Maddux). But what gives these clubs the ability to invest large sums of money in them is the risk factor, which appears to be lower now than if history were a great indicator.

People are lasting longer, our average life expectancy is much longer than it was 30 years ago, 60 years ago, 85 years ago. You'll see talent clumping higher in the age brackets, typical "prime years" (maybe 26-28, now becoming more like 26-30) elongating, and more talented players who extend their careers through prime injury periods lasting at high levels longer.

The common thread is that they're naturally talented, work-a-holics, competitors, consistent and dominant. And in their cases, they are worth the large investments, not because their raw output is so much higher, but because their risks are oddly lower.

Next 5 years, I'd rather have Ben Sheets and Jason Schmidt. Next year only, I'd have to take Johnson and Clemens.

If you're talking potential for injury, I'd much rather have Clemens for the next five years than Jason Schmidt. That guy's arm has fallen off, what, nine or ten times?

Ryan, I'm curious as to your reasoning for naming the Giants as one of the worst run franchises. They sure seem to put a contending team on the field just about every year.

Steve T., that came out a little hastily. Let me rephrase that I think SF underachieves in terms of what they should be accomplishing with the money they spend and their division competition (heck, even throw in new ballpark).

I don't have a full blown analysis, and some of my opinion comes from my distaste for Barry Bonds, but one way of looking at it is how STL and SF have approximately equal payrolls, so which franchise spends it better? Uh, should we ask Mike Matheny?

However, my remarks came off slanted, there are other franchises I think are far worse run, CWS, NYM. Also, it's difficult to begin with to judge how well any franchise is run. If efficiency (as is the sort of new ideal thanks to Moneyball) is most important, as in wins/dollar, then maybe the Yankees are the worst and the Twins are the best. But if win totals over decades + WSChips matter, and not how you do it, then it's different. I think the Braves are about as good as it gets under any standard.

For all the waves surrounding Billy Beane's portrayal of himself in Moneyball, I'm not so convinced the A's are a great franchise, just stingy, first out of the "Saber-gates" and maybe a little lucky.

Cmon, the A's are a fantastic franchise. I'd personally rank them 3rd in MLB right now, just behind the Yankees and the Cardinals. They have a great history, and a really impressive (relatively recent) track record, essentially starting during the "Charlie Finley" period

I don't think San Fran has as much money to play with as you might think. Don't they have one of the only (if not *the* only) entirely privately funded ballparks in all of MLB? I'm pretty sure they're spending a large sum every year to pay down the construction debt. And Barry Bonds doesn't come cheap either.

As for the Cy Young in the NL last year, I still find it hard to believe how much RJ was penalized for having horrendous offensive support. Check out the numbers of all the Cy contenders. The only category (besides wins) that Johnson didn't lead is ERA, where the only two better scores came from relievers, who logged less than half the innings (nearly 1/3). In fact, if you set those two guys aside, the next most deserving pitcher is Ben Sheets, whose record also suffered because he played for an otherwise dismal team.

Once again, depending how you look at it. The A's are a fantastic franchise recently, if you look at the efficiency with which they spend their dough and create output. They are up there with the Twins. But they are quite possibly equally lucky. How often in a lifetime do 3 pitchers called Mulder-Zito-Hudson come together? Now I love the statistical tools Beane and Depodesta used to find bargains, but the fact that not even the mighty Yankees could put together as good a starting 3 makes me think the A's benefitted greatly from luck as well as cleverness.

So OK, I'm not speaking of Finley's whole legacy here, more Post-Moneyball, saber-awareness.

In fact for all these teams, I'm speaking really really recently, current day. I don't care much for history.

So when I get to Fitz's comments about the Yankees being the best franchise, I think we just use different ways of judging them. Historically (back to day 1) yes, the Yanks are the best. Recently, and with an unlimited bank account, the Yankees could be viewed as a pretty mediocre franchise, something possibly on par with a federal fiscal program. It is effective to the point where if you just insist at throwing gobs of money at something, you get it to move, you get it to work in some way. But the Yanks are not being run as efficiently as other teams who are also legitimate contenders. I choose the BoSox, the Cards and the Braves over the Yanks easily.

John, I had a remarkable amount of trouble finding quickly payroll information for MLB teams. After being wrong 5-6 times, I found one with info for 2004, but it didn't break it down into "salaries for current players" and "other stuff". If you could find that out, that would be really cool. The site I found had the Giants/Cards payrolls approx in the range of $[83-85] million for 2004.

However, I don't get them off the hook for sinking all that money into Bonds. Bonds is so phenomenal, that not even we chattering experts can describe well/accurately what he's doing overall to his team. But I have a hunch, that much like Sean's piece shading Brock's reputation, soon, interpretation will find that this-era-Bonds is not the best use of money.

Is anyone brave enough to entertain why the Cardinals were sort of "less than" during the McGwire era when logically they should have been great? This seems analgous to my current opinion of Bonds' value (he's a drain, not a plus) to his team.

John, by the way, I couldn't agree more with your comments about the NL Cy Young.

Is there any phrase in baseball more over-used than "moneyball"? Billy Beane did not portray himself as anything since Moneyball was written by Michael Lewis - not Billy Beane. Beane has suffered the same kind of backlash Tony La Russa received after George Will wrote about him years ago in Men at Work. (I think that was the title).

If any organization is to be characterized as cheap, in my opinion it has to be Minnesota. Their owner has stuffed his pockets for years with revenue sharing money. The Twins and A's share a common trait; early postseason exits. I'm guessing it's more the lack of veterans (read that playoff experience) than anything other than possibly luck.

John, I agree with you about the Cy Young and pay little attention anymore to the postseason awards based on voting. The voting has about the same reliability of All-star voting or those incessant Internet polls.

Ryan, there's a handful of good payroll sites out there. Baseball-reference has individual payrolls, but they don't total it for the teams. USA Today has a great sortable salary database (http://asp.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/salaries/default.aspx). According to that, the Cards and Giants have both been right at $82-83 million the last couple years. But as recently as 2001, the Giants were spending nearly $15 million less than the Cards. In fact, in the 5 years between '98 and '03, the Giants payroll nearly doubled. Keep in mind that their first season at Pac Bell was 2000. Now, I said that with their loan payments they don't have as much to spend as you might think, and that's not the full story. Obviously when they built the new ballpark, it brought in more revenue, which is why they were able to expand their payroll. However, my contention is that if they had been able to get some public funding, they may have then expanded payroll even further. Whether they would have or not is completely unknown though.

For the record, another good salary site is DugoutDollars (http://dugoutdollars.blogspot.com/), although lately it's not being maintained very consistently.