3 Cardinals Players Who Will Be Screwed Most by Owners' Salary Reduction Proposal

MLB's most recent proposal was a departure from their first revenue split proposal, but that didn't mean it was any more popular.

The league lobbed another non-starter at the MLBPA on Tuesday, featuring a sliding scale of salary reductions meant to hit the league's highest earners where it hurt. The numbers are ugly all around, but these are the three Cardinals who would be most affected by the adjustment.

3. Dexter Fowler

Fowler's albatross of a contract would be significantly shrunken in 2020. Last season, he made a hefty $16.5 million, which would've been reduced to $8,351,852 on a prorated basis over an 82-game season. Based on the new sliding scale adjustment, Fowler would theoretically fall down to the $3,427,866 mark. Cards fans will tell you that's justified, but it qualifies as an embarrassment. This simply is not what the players signed up for.

2. Matt Carpenter

Once slated for year two of a $14.75 million/year contract, Carpenter will instead be earning just $3,162,125 for the abbreviated 2020 season, a decrease of just over $4 million, even from his prorated figure. For earners in this range, MLB's pitch truly does seem like a slap in the face. Their mid-to-high-tier expected paydays would suddenly become the type of salaries earned by marginal starters. Would Matt Carpenter have ever signed a two-year, $8 million deal previously? That's Matt Adams money.

1. Paul Goldschmidt

This was supposed to be Year One of Paul Goldschmidt's big extension; he was supposed to earn $22 million, a significant raise from his $14.5 million mark last year. Instead, a prorated version would be hacked down to $11 million, which would be further broken down to about $4.1 million total (using the sliding scale adjustments and available data for Masahiro Tanaka's 2019 salary, also $22 million). Just brutal.