The Cardinals have long linked their payroll to their ticket sales, arguing that 3.4 million fans through the gates at Busch Stadium III allows them to punch above their market size. (Cubs officials have described the Cardinals as a small-market team with big-market muscle.) In July 2015, when the Cardinals and Fox Sports Midwest agreed on a new rights deal, one of the examples a Cardinals official gave me for how that would augment their spending was the extensions and raises the team expected to have to pay Wacha, Rosenthal, and Martinez. The forthcoming rights deal would give the team the finances to retain in-house talent.

“We have forecasted increases over the next three to five years that will accommodate what we need to do with the young players we have,” DeWitt told me in 2014. “We knew as younger players matured at the major-league level they would get to arbitration and into free agency. We wouldn’t be able to retain them at the current payroll level, so we’re forecasting fairly significant increases in the next three to five years.”

The Cardinals finished 2014 with a $115-million payroll.