So you wouldn't have signed Holliday due to the payroll % spent on him and hopefully Pujols? Sure there's risk involved in committing those dollars for the long term, but I think Holliday is a risk worth taking. The Cards could just fill in with marginal players as they've been doing in years they didn't make the playoffs. They did pretty well in the years where they invested in the right players like Pujols, Edmonds, and Rolen. IMO, the worst moves the Cards have made this decade have been the Mulder/Haren trade, the Lohse extension, and possibly the Carp extension (in terms of playing time missed). As far as long term FA participation, I'm not optimistic about production from our prospects in the immediate future, so that could hurt, but I have faith in the core. It's a nice deal for the Cardinals. Holliday's proven his worth, has no glaring red flags about his ability to live up to the contract, and should be well worth the money spent on him. My point in a previous post in the thread(which was discussed at length at GRB if memory serves), is that with as star heavy as the team already is, they might have been better served distributing Holliday's money and value across more than one player if they could. Maybe that wasn't possible this season(even with trade possibilities), and I don't mean to say that there's a right and wrong answer. But the reality they have now is a top heavy roster where they aren't getting much in the way of bang for the buck(Wainwright and Lohse countering each other essentially) save Rasmus. They get hit with injury or ineffectiveness to one or more of those stars, they won't have the financial resources to compensate, nor does it look like they have the resources on the farm to compensate. It's a similar gamble that the Cubs took before 2009, and the lack of depth(relative to 2008) came back to haunt them,among other things.