Finding trade deadline fits for what the Cardinals have to offer

The Cardinals are probably selling, so let's see which buyers line up the best with the club's leading pieces

It’s still the Super-Important Official Position of Birdy Work that the Cardinals don’t yet need to fully commit to a trade deadline approach. If they barge into the second half and work themselves into spitting distance – perhaps the combined lengths of two spits – of playoff position, then they should resist doing much that weakens the current roster. The value of making the postseason and seeing where playoff randomness takes you is just too high to do otherwise. 

Right now, the Cardinals are in last place in the division and 11 ½ games out of first. The wild-card fray is similarly discouraging, as we’re 11 games out of the final spot and behind seven teams in that queue. If the team is able to whittle, say, four or five games off one or both of those deficits before Aug. 1, then I’d like to see them hold at the deadline or add one or two pieces that help them now and are also controllable through 2024 (the latter is of course easier conjured up in the mind than achieved). In particular, I’m hoping the Cardinals can hold out long enough to see how they fare against the Cubs, whom they play seven times within the 10 games leading up to the deadline. I understand, though, that many deadline opportunities come with an expiration date and that twiddling thumbs until the last day to see how the standings play out isn’t always possible. In other words, it’s entirely possible that the market will force the Cardinals to choose a path before the final hours. 

More broadly, let me state the obvious and say it seems highly unlikely that the club drastically improves its fortunes over the next two weeks or so. I expect they’ll be sellers and see what they can get for their walk-year guys, an outfielder or two, and a controllable reliever or two. Derrick Goold has reported that any kind of deep tear-down is highly unlikely and that deals will be made with an eye toward 2024. That’s good news – and a reminder that local beats and not national rumor merchants are the most reliable purveyors of deadline scuttlebutt. 

So deals will be made (John Mozeliak himself has said as much), and that leaves us the matter of who will be traded and to whom they will be traded. C70’s Hacks recently did a nifty job of laying odds on which Birds are about to be moved, and I think he’s right in his thinking. 

Along those lines, I think Jordan Montgomery, Jack Flaherty, Chris Stratton, and Jordan Hicks are highly likely to be traded. Those are the walk-year guys, and only one of them, Montgomery, would be likely to receive a Qualifying Offer in the absence of a trade. I think Paul DeJong is also probably gone. He’s still a difference-maker in the field at shortstop, and his swing tweaks have helped him get back to being a solid-enough hitter by positional standards. DeJong’s contract has a pair of reasonable club options tacked on beyond this season, which makes me suspect he might command a surprisingly respectable return.

Assuming Tyler O’Neill is activated in the coming days, I think he’s almost certainly gone. I don’t think Ryan Helsley goes, in large measure because he may not come off the injured list in time, but I’ll say Génesis Cabrera is dealt. Performance issues aside, Cabrera is a controllable, hard-throwing lefty reliever, and teams will swing on those this time of year. Giovanny Gallegos probably has some appeal in light of his remaining years of control and still-solid underlying indicators. I don’t quite know what specifically becomes of Dylan Carlson, Juan Yepez, or Alec Burleson, but I think one of them will go. 

This brings us to landing spots. In broad terms, the Cardinals pair up best with contenders who can part with future rotation pieces with velocity and swing-and-miss upside. In keeping with the inviolable principle that there’s no such thing as a good hypothetical trade in which specific players are named for both sides, I’m going to leave the return packages out of this, except in those very general terms just stated. Rather, let’s look at what contending teams have needs that line up with the best tradables that Mozeliak and company figure to be peddling right about now.