Arenado arrives in camp as Cardinals adjust their plans for his return
Nolan Arenado and John Mozeliak had gone a long stretch without speaking directly with each other, so the two hopped on a phone call on Friday to clear the air of any potential awkwardness ahead of Arenado’s anticipated Sunday arrival at St. Louis Cardinals spring training.
At the end of that call, the ice well and truly broken, the president of baseball operations made a particular request of the third baseman that he spent the winter attempting to trade.
“I joked,” Mozeliak said, “‘when I see you, I want a hug.’”
Message received. Hug delivered. First camp hurdle overcome.
Arenado returns to a team which sought to trade him as part of a winter strategy centered around cutting costs and providing opportunities to younger players. They accomplished some of the former by allowing veterans Paul Goldschmidt, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn to depart in free agency. The latter remains an ongoing process, but one that now must occur around the imposing figure of an all-time great third baseman planning to return for his fifth season in St. Louis.
“Do I wish the direction was ‘all in?’ Of course,” Arenado said Sunday morning through a smile. “But is this probably what’s best for the Cardinals? Probably. I think they do need to reshape some things here and do some things, but at the end of the day I’m a ball player. I’m a Cardinal until I’m told I’m not.”
On Thursday, speaking at a gathering of front office executives and field managers for the five teams located in this corridor of Florida, Mozeliak expressed a belief that he had “exhausted” the possible trades to teams on Arenado’s preferred list of five destinations, which includes the Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees.
Arenado largely confirmed the existence of a list of that size, calling his preferred destinations, “somewhere right around there.” He declined to name the specific teams – “it doesn’t really matter anymore” – but sounded entirely disinterested in expanding it to open up additional possibilities.
“I don’t see myself really changing that list ever,” he said. “I’ve got a family now, and I don’t feel like moving them everywhere just to move them everywhere.”
Still, neither Arenado nor Mozeliak closed the door on the ongoing conversation despite multiple opportunities to do so.
“I don’t think that’s something that I have to, like, focus too much on,” Mozeliak said. “If something presents itself, I will present it to him, and if it makes sense, we’ll consider it. If it doesn’t, we won’t.”
Arenado used his no-trade protection in December to scuttle a deal that would have sent him to the Houston Astros. Mozeliak declined to comment on whether any other trades over the winter got close enough to fruition that he would have, at the time, considered them more likely than not to be completed.
Another player who was not traded, closer Ryan Helsley, admitted to having followed the unfolding saga over the winter closely. Helsley, who is set to reach free agency following this season, surmised that he and Arenado might be packaged together in an attempt to ameliorate some of the financial burden that a team would necessarily undertake in picking up the remaining years on Arenado’s contract.
Instead, Helsley and his representation were told early in the winter that the Cardinals intended to hang on to what might otherwise have been the most attractive reliever available for trade in the offseason, and in the process, took a load of concern off of Helsley’s mind.
“It’s gotta be tough,” Helsley mused of the long uncertainty around Arenado. “That’s why you hire agents and stuff, I think, to try to keep it off your mind as much as possible. We found out pretty early in the off season that there was a high chance of me not getting traded, So that helped. But still, there’s a possibility to get traded, so you still think about it a little bit.”
For now, those possibilities are fading into the background. Arenado’s entrenchment at third means Nolan Gorman will not shift there full time, instead gathering the majority of his at bats at a combination of second base and designated hitter.
Brendan Donovan is an everyday player; if he’s not at second, he figures to be in left field, which would push Lars Nootbaar to center and likely Michael Siani to the bench.
Or perhaps Donovan remains the primary second baseman and Gorman soaks up at bats as the designated hitter, creating space for Siani but cutting down on opportunities for Alec Burleson. The team intends to use spring to solve that puzzle, working the pieces in a manner that may not be the one they intended, but that nonetheless makes them a better team on the field with Arenado than without him.
“He has a fire that burns hotter than just about anybody for baseball in the game,” Helsley said. “He wants to be the best he can be, you know? That kind of energy is infectious. And having him here is gonna help everybody.”
“I think he has a chance to be very exciting,” Mozeliak said. “I certainly was nervous with the fact of having to consider trading him, because I think those kinds of players are- they’re great. I mean, he’s been a great player his whole career, and I think he expects to be great again.”
And so, against odds and expectations, a gray equipment bag from the 2022 All-Star Game in Seattle sat on Sunday morning, perhaps a placeholder for an all-time great player who might never have expected to use his red, Cardinal-logo-adorned gear bag ever again. A trade could still occur, but the Cardinals are no longer planning for one. Twice in the last four days, Mozeliak has emphasized that Arenado is the team’s third baseman. What’s left is simply for the games to play themselves out.
“I think I’m a better ballplayer if I’m me,” Arenado said. “I think I just make any team better, to be quite honest with you. And if I’m here, I’m gonna give everything I’ve got, and I can make this team better, for sure.”
This story was originally published February 16, 2025 at 9:19 AM.
