Cardinals approach the trade deadline with many needs
Playing the Nationals sets up a weekend of deadline intrigue
Tuesday, August 2nd. That is the Major League Baseball trade deadline this season and it is fast approaching for teams looking to adjust their rosters heading into the final two month stretch of the season before the playoffs.
In my opinion, teams should always be looking to do something at the trade deadline. If not making moves to improve the roster for the current season, unloading players who aren’t in your plans for the future to improve future rosters. The last several seasons, the Cardinals have been the latter team.
I think that this is always something that fans get wrong when they approach the trade deadline, and that’s likely because of the optimism of fans, but it’s not always about improving your team to making a run. Sometimes teams aren’t worth betting on and are too far away that a handful of deals at the trade deadline aren’t going to make the difference between you and the teams you’re chasing.
I like to make the poker example. Are the cards you’re holding worth betting on? Is it worth pushing some chips to the middle of the table to play this hand? Or should you hold those chips to play another? That’s the question front offices of teams who are on the edge are asking themselves.
Through 99 games this season, the Cardinals have 52 wins and are three games out of an NL Central lead they held just over one month ago. You have to go back to the 2015 season to find a Cardinals team that had more wins and was better positioned in the standings through 99 games than the 2022 Cardinals. That July the Cardinals added Brandon Moss, Steve Cishek, and Jonathan Broxton.
Moss put together a strong finish to the season with a 109 wRC+ as the Cardinals hunted for someone who could be an above average first baseman. Meanwhile Broxton had a 2.66 ERA over 23 2/3 innings and Cishek had a 2.31 ERA over 23 1/3 innings. And the guy they aquired at the 2014 deadline, John Lackey, was the team’s top pitcher with a 2.77 ERA in 33 starts.
Those trades represent the Cardinals’ typical approach for trade deadline. They are more tactical than flashy. But they are a perfect illustration of why you should always be doing something to address your team’s needs, present or future, to some extent at the deadline.
The Cardinals had 53 wins and were a game and a half up in the NL Central the last time the Cardinals acquired a true star player in Matt Holliday during the 2009 season.
The trouble for the Cardinals at the deadline has always been teams asking for players that the organization is not willing to part with or that they don’t value as much. Such as a couple years ago where the Mets wanted Harrison Bader or Tyler O’Neill for two months of Zack Wheeler. Of course, there are also reports of their own crazy offers that got rejected as well, Jack Flaherty for a year of Josh Donaldson comes to mind, though in hindsight that one may not have been so bad. Regardless, trade deadlines can present situations that are difficult to read because there are teams with competing interests and motivations and sometimes those even defy common sense logic.
The Cardinals’ big-league club clearly has needs. The front office does appear interested in addressing some of those needs as the baseball operations department has met in Washington, D.C., this weekend as they work the trade lines. There are even reports that Bill DeWitt Jr is coming to DC, which has the link being made to a potential Juan Soto pursuit.
The Cardinals definitely have a full cupboard of prospects that they can use. They have graduated guys like Brendan Donovan, Juan Yepez, Nolan Gorman, Matthew Liberatore, Zack Thompson, and Andre Pallante to the majors this season. In addition to Liberatore, they have six other players on the midseason update to Baseball America’s Top-100 Prospects list. So, they have the prospect capital to make whatever moves they want.
The organization clearly seems to have an interest in Juan Soto, which would help the team both now and going forward at least the next two seasons. I wrote about my opinion of that pursuit earlier this week.
This team’s biggest need would seem to be a starting pitcher. And I don’t mean a pitcher who can start. I mean a starting pitcher. Someone you can hand the ball to every five days and trust that it’s not going to turn into a bullpen game more often than not.
There were reports during Spring Training that the Cardinals were interested in the A’s Frankie Montas, which may still be an option. The Marlins are listening on Pablo Lopez and same with the Guardians and Zach Plesac. The Reds’ may move Luis Castillo before the deadline, but trading inside the division seems unlikely, and that would apply to his rotation mate Tyler Mahle as well. But there are options for the Cardinals in this market.
There are a lot of people rolling their eyes at the talk about Soto instead of starting pitching. “Great, we can lose games 7-5 instead of 7-1,” is the basic complaint. But don’t discount the affect an addition of Soto can have on a pitching staff that would be energized at the prospect of having more offensive support in the lineup. It would also fit the Cardinals’ approach of piecing together a pitching staff with their young arms while spending on offense.
But I also think that there are benefits to the Cardinals being publicly involved in the Soto trade talks as they talk with other teams about other players. The reports that their baseball ops team and principal owner is heading to DC is great publicity to ratchet up the pressure on other teams. The Cardinals could leverage potential Soto negotiations to increase the pressure on a potential trade partner to pull the trigger or they may not be able to get the prospect they want if they wait, and a Soto trade goes through.
I just come back to what I’ve said several times over the last couple years. What’s the point in bringing Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina and Albert Pujols back, if not to make a push to go for it? What’s the point in bringing in Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, who are both on the wrong side of their decline curves now, if not to make a push to go for it?
The Cardinals have both prospects and money to spend this season, as their Opening Day payroll is the lowest it’s been since the 2017 season. They’ve cleansed their books of their bad contracts. With the right moves this weekend, the Cardinals could easily set themselves up as legitimate contenders for the next few years. The question is always whether ownership is willing to part with what it will take to make it happen.