Arenado trade shows Cardinals’ commitment to rebuilding from ground up
On the day Nolan Arenado officially became a St. Louis Cardinal in February 2021, Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. was eager to share what he then believed was a guiding principle of the franchise.
“When you have an opportunity to get premium players from other clubs for whatever reason,” DeWitt said that day, “it’s incumbent upon us to bring them to St. Louis.”
Five years later, it’s the Cardinals putting the pedal to the metal in an attempt to shed players from their roster who might once have been described as premium, and Arenado’s time in St. Louis ends without a single playoff game victory—and with fewer playoff games played than during his frustrating and competitively fruitless tenure with the Colorado Rockies.
“There’s no hard feelings about it,” president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom said. “I think it’s just where everybody was. To us, and to Nolan, the situation just was really pointed towards a fresh start for him and just moving forward for us.”
Half a decade ago, moving forward meant pursuing Arenado, even with the knowledge that his substantial contract might become a burden as he aged. At the time, with a premier player inbound who was not quite 30 years old, Arenado’s arrival signaled a sustained commitment to the present, a player who might round out a championship roster.
Now he’s the third player over 30 to be shipped out this winter, with a significant price tag attached. The Arizona Diamondbacks, who acquired Arenado in exchange for a minor prospect, will cover just $11 million of the $42 million still owed to him over the next two seasons.
Research by FanGraphs’ Jon Becker, who oversees a database of salaries and contracts, highlights how unusual it is for the Cardinals to pay other teams this much. The net salary being paid by St. Louis to other clubs in 2026 is the second-highest single-season total by any major league team since 2020, topped only by the New York Mets’ more than $60 million in 2024 to unload Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander.
Those Mets then used at least some of that financial flexibility to sign Juan Soto to the largest contract in North American professional sports history. The Cardinals, meanwhile, will be spending $46 million of their currently estimated $103 million payroll on players who will play elsewhere.
Dustin May, signed to a one-year deal earlier this winter, is now the only Cardinal set to make more than $10 million in 2026. The team’s next highest-paid player, Brendan Donovan at $5.8 million, is being aggressively shopped in trade talks and is expected to be moved in the coming days or weeks.
The Cardinals currently have no players signed to guaranteed contracts covering the 2027 season and beyond. To say that Bloom has kickstarted a rebuild by tearing the roster down to the studs ignores the possibility that he’s also been willing to take down a few load-bearing walls along the way.
“A lot of what comes with this chair is not to let emotion and sentiment and nostalgia even override executing on what’s best for this team and being fully committed to where we need to go,” said Bloom, whose own five-year deal to head baseball operations begins in 2026. “I’ve talked a lot this offseason about, if we are committed to this, the more we commit to it, the quicker we’ll get there, and the better we’ll be when we do.”
Shipping out a group of veterans will undoubtedly get the Cardinals to a different place more quickly. Whether they will be better when they arrive depends on the success of the players being developed in the system to replace those who have moved on. Bloom did not commit to a new full-time third baseman on Tuesday, instead referencing both Nolan Gorman and Thomas Saggese as players who will take on a larger role at third base in Arenado’s absence.
JJ Wetherholt was mentioned Tuesday only in passing, but he too will be part of that equation. It’s likely that his primary opportunity will come at second base after Donovan is moved, but if the Cardinals don’t find a deal they like for one of their last remaining veteran leaders, then the team’s top prospect will jump right into the mix with the other candidates—likely rising above it, assuming spring training goes as planned.
Assuming things go as planned is, ultimately, the underlying challenge of a rebuild, and it falls firmly on DeWitt, Bloom and the rest of the leadership group to ensure that success to the best of their collective ability. After all, the plan would have seen Arenado at the head of a parade down Market Street, celebrating the franchise’s 12th World Series championship.
Instead, he heads to a hitter-friendly, low-stress environment in the desert to search for both his swing and his elusive postseason success. The end result of his time as a Cardinal is perhaps not the worst-case scenario, but it’s likely not many degrees removed.
That plan did not work. The Cardinals cannot be faulted for deciding it’s time for a new one.
