The Cardinals have won at least 86 games in all but three of their last 16 seasons, two of which have now come in consecutive seasons.
Though they bounced back to tie the Cubs with 83 wins in 2024, their 71-91 record in 2023 was their worst in a non-strike or pandemic season since 1990 (70-92).
They haven’t won a playoff game since 2020 and are looking at a roster filled with aging veterans whose individual and collective performances aren’t likely to match up with their salaries moving forward. As such, the club is looking to unload at least three big names this winter.
One complicating factor is that Nolan Arenado, Willson Contreras, and Sonny Gray all have no-trade clauses that limit the Cardinals’ ability to move them.
From the sounds of it, however, all of them would be amenable to joining the right team(s). Jeff Jones laid everything out succinctly in the Belleville News-Democrat, and I’ll try to be brief here because most Cubs fans care less about where these guys are going than simply knowing they could be gone from the division.
Arenado still has three years and $74 million left on his deal, though the Rockies are covering $10 million of that. Still, we’re talking a little over $21 million annually for a guy whose offense has fallen off a cliff the last two seasons.
After posting a career-best 149 wRC+ with 30 homers and 103 RBI in 2022, Arenado finished with wRC+ marks of 106 and 102 in ’23 and ’24. His walk rate has dropped a bit, but the real concern is a .123 ISO mark last season which was the lowest of his career.
A California native, Arenado is believed to prefer the West Coast and has drawn interest from the Dodgers and perhaps the Mariners as well.
Jones mentioned the Phillies as a possible suitor if they want to move on from Alec Bohm. Though they’re on the wrong coast, Arenado is familiar with a lot of their star players and they have a chance to keep winning.
Contreras is owed $59.5 million over the next three years and showed that he can still produce when healthy, plus his defense appears to have improved in St. Louis.
The question here is whether he wants to remain behind the plate full-time, especially after a couple of injuries this past season. This may come down to whether he’s willing to be more of a DH or even first baseman.
Gray’s backloaded deal will pay him at least $65 million over the next two years and could be as much as $90 million over three, not an easy sell for a guy who’s about to turn 35.
Then again, he just put up the second-highest strikeout rate (30.3%) of his career and his velocity — which has never been his calling card anyway — hasn’t really fallen off.
The real complication here is that Gray may prioritize teams near his home outside of Nashville, which could limit suitors to the Reds and Braves.
Would budget-conscious Cincinnati be willing to part with prospects within the division to bring back one of their former stars?
That’s doubtful, though the Cardinals will more than likely have to accept much lower returns on all of these players given their age, cost, and ability to dictate their destinations.
The fear is that even having to take a big haircut would see the Cards unearthing gems from outside other clubs’ top prospects, but I think their ol’ devil magic has worn thin.
Most of the talk now is about how St. Louis has parted with young players who went on to have much greater success than those the Cardinals got in return.
Now they’re coming off of another disappointing season in which they paid a bunch of old dudes to headline their rotation, not to mention Paul Goldschmidt getting very long in the tooth and becoming just a league-average producer. Despite all of that, they still managed to keep pace with the Cubs.
I’m obviously going to be keeping a very close eye on what the Cards do this offseason, but their machinations could loom even larger as the Cubs likewise figure to be active in the trade market.
I wonder if we’ll get a little more early activity, perhaps even starting with the GM Meetings this week. Juan Soto is the clear headliner in free agency, but his super-limited market means most teams could start looking at other avenues for improvement.
Things should start to get fun on Monday afternoon.
