Will St. Louis Cardinals take any ‘short-term gambles’ at the trade deadline?
There were no world historical declarations issuing forth from John Mozeliak in the visitors’ dugout at Wrigley Field on Friday morning, but the St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations was nonetheless prepared to spend his holiday hoping fireworks returned to a team that is currently professing a desire to balance its “moving parts” ahead of the July 31 trade deadline.
“When you look at where we are, that week leading up, or 72 hours leading up to the trade deadline may affect how we make our decisions,” Mozeliak said. “If we just use today as a point in time, we have been able to create a lot of opportunity for the guys who we wanted to see go play.”
That declaration is important inasmuch as it, taken at face value, would seem to allay any concerns that the team would hesitate to upgrade its offense based on trying to secure additional opportunities for the young position players who were prioritized throughout the winter and in the season’s opening months.
Fresh off a stretch of three consecutive shutouts in Pittsburgh, the Cardinals are acutely aware that they are in need of offensive thump, and should their record and position in the standings demand it, there is at least some desire to add.
“As you approach the trading deadline, usually it’s always about, you gotta find more pitching, gotta find more pitching,” Mozeliak mused. “I think the one thing that, as we stand here today, it’s like, are we going to have the ability to score runs consistently? Hopefully getting healthy, getting some guys back will allow us to do that.”
Third baseman Nolan Arenado (right index finger strain) and first baseman Willson Contreras (left hand contusion) were both in the lineup for Friday’s series opener at the Friendly Confines after being held out of the series finale in Pittsburgh. Iván Herrera, out since June 19 with a strained left hamstring, is likely to start a rehab assignment within the next week and a half, Mozeliak said. That would slot his return shortly after the All-Star break, and with enough time for the Cardinals to weigh his availability into their acquisition decisions.
The dilemma for the Cardinals will come in the lack of obviously available right-handed position players who fit their positional needs. Entering play Friday, the Cardinals ranked 22nd in MLB in slugging percentage against lefty pitchers. Since June 1, they’re also 22nd in on base percentage against that same group, and part of their struggles to score over the last 10 days has been fighting through health challenges that have impacted all of the above listed players as well as Jordan Walker, who missed a chunk of last month with wrist soreness before succumbing to appendicitis, though he could return as soon as the start of the next homestand on July 8.
Trade deadline options
Luis Robert Jr. of the Chicago White Sox is expected to be traded before the deadline and could perhaps be a fit in right field, though that would come at the expense of playing time for Walker, Alec Burleson and others. Taylor Ward of the Los Angeles Angels would come with similar positional restrictions, but has had more recent success than Robert and plays primarily left field, which could shift Lars Nootbaar back to right.
Robert is making $15 million this year with a club option covering the 2026 and 2027 seasons at $20 million per year. Ward is making just under $8 million this season with one more year of arbitration and team control to come before hitting the free agent market after 2026. The cost for both would be significant, in both dollars and talent. The Cardinals, though, are seemingly prepared to make additions – if they fit.
“I do think ownership, if they saw we were in a spot where it made sense to do something, I think they’d support it,” Mozeliak said when asked about the potential of adding payroll. He did add that he “(hasn’t) really gone too deep into” a conversation about adding significant dollars, perhaps a sign that a middle of the road strategy is one which the club views as its best fit.
“That’s why the trading deadline has become so much fun,” Mozeliak said about teams, like his own in 2024, which seek to both add and subtract late in the summer. “Now you’re just seeing a lot of moving parts, and part of that’s because (teams are) kind of in, kind of out.”
If that path is fun for fans, it runs the risk of being disastrous for franchises and executives unless they’re broadly aware of their true direction. For these Cardinals, short term gambles which could push the team into a wild card spot may well be worth taking if for no other reason than it avoids placing young players into a negative environment as the season winds down. They lived that path in 2023 and are hesitant in some ways to walk it once more.
“You always know there’s sacrifices when you blow up a club,” Mozeliak admitted. “Some can take years to recover. Some can take months. Yeah, that wasn’t fun to watch, but we added a lot of asset value to the franchise.”
As those assets – players – mature, there are questions around finding spots and putting all involved in a position to succeed. This is likely to be a deadline where, to use one of Mozeliak’s most common buzzwords, the Cardinals will be in a position to pursue pure arbitrage, attempting to swap strength to fill a weakness.
Seems simple, until it’s time to do it.
“If there is something that the franchise can benefit from, should we do something? And it’s also, do we feel comfortable with the depth we have to allow us to still be competitive,” Mozeliak explained. “Those will be the sort of variables that go into how we think through that.”
