Now that Jason Bay is off the market, what does this mean for Matt Holliday?  It could mean one of two things:

1.  Jason Bay has set the market price for his year’s free agent outfielders, now Holliday and his agent Scott Boras knows the salary floor.
or
2.  Matt Holliday has lost a big market suitor and lost negotiating leverage.  The Cardinals, who seem to be the only ones interested in Holliday, know the Mets are out of it, therefore they can lower their offers.

In my opinion, I think the Bay signing is great for Holliday.  It has established Holliday’s salary floor.  Let’s assume that Bay meets all of the vesting conditions and earns $80 million over five-years.  That’s $16 million per season.  The St. Louis Cardinals offered a eight-year contract at $16 million per season (total of $128 million).  Now that Boras knows the market value of Bay, and the fact that Holliday is a far superior player (at least in Boras’ mind), he can start asking for base salaries above the $16 million.

In fact Buster Olney of ESPN Tweets:  “Sources: Boras started doubling back to teams to talk about Holliday. Stated asking price in at least one conversation was $18 mill. a year”

You may not see a Mark Teixeira-sized contract (eight-years and $180 million), but Holliday should be able to fetch the eight-years at $18 million for a total of $144 million.  Unless there’s a bidding war, which I doubt since it seems the Cardinals are the only ones really interested in Holliday, expect the Holliday contract to be completed in early January.  The only other upside for Holliday is to make the Cardinals think there’s another team involved, and they could bid against themselves.

You can see Jason Bay’s statistics here.
You can see Matt Holliday’s statistics here.