The Angels and White Sox may have helped the Cardinals’ trade deadline outlook

By keeping Shohei Ohtani and dealing for Lucas Giolito, the Halos helped tilt the market for starting pitchers in the Cards’ favor

Assuming the Cardinals are indeed headed for an extension with Jordan Hicks, their two most valuable trade pieces leading up to the Aug. 1 deadline are starters Jordan Montgomery and Jack Flaherty. The market for deadline additions – and starting pitchers in particular – was already a fairly accommodating one for the Cardinals’ purposes thanks to the paucity of sellers. Then Wednesday’s events happened. 

Thanks to what happened Wednesday across baseball, the Cardinals may be in position to get a bit more value in trade for Montgomery and Flaherty than they were on Tuesday. I don’t want to sell this as some dramatic market shift because that’s not what it is. However, John Mozeliak and company may have a bit more leverage now. Mostly, this is because of the Angels and the White Sox.