Ken Rosenthal does a good job covering for the Cardinals wasting money on Yadier Molina:

For starters, everyone in baseball knows that the value of Molina to the Cardinals extends beyond mere statistics. Defensive metrics, in particular, do not fully capture the impact of catchers, especially a future Hall of Famer such as Molina who can transform a pitching staff almost single-handedly.

Yet Molina, even by current measures, has provided a ridiculous amount of surplus value during the course of his current five-year deal, which pays him an average of $15 million per season.

According to Fangraphs’ value estimates, Molina has been worth $92.9 million over the past four years, or $33.9 million more than the Cardinals paid him during that period. Those numbers included a $5.5 million surplus last season, when Molina was 33.

Is it reasonable to expect Molina to remain such a bargain over the final year of his current deal and the next three? Of course not. But his new contract, at least in part, amounts to a reward for his past contributions. And Molina, a fanatic about conditioning, will give himself every chance to succeed in the years ahead.

I don’t know. Albert Pujols produced about $300 million of surplus value on a $100 million contract, and the Cardinals were not interested in paying him for all that savings.

Think about it this way: The Cardinals are paying a player as if he were a 2.5 WAR free agent. He’s a catcher playing 2017 as a 34 year old, and averaged 2.2 WAR over the last three years. I think this move is to simply make the fans happy, and agents should use this contract next winter to demand really big money for younger, better, free agents.

It also looks like Molina’s Hall of Fame case is not all that good. He’s at 33 career WAR right now according to FanGraphs and Baseball Reference. I would think a Hall of Fame catcher would need to be around 60. Molina has a long way to go in a very short time.

All that said, congratulations to Molina. He’s a great catcher, and in the end, there’s nothing wrong with the Cardinals showing him a lot of love. I suspect the rest of the owners won’t be happy with them when this raises the rates for free agents this winter.