The case for making painful trades

The Cardinals intend to swing big on free-agent starting pitchers, but the market may not accommodate them

There’s one name that sort of crystallizes why the Cardinals may be in a strong position to make a trade for one of the multiple frontline starters they so sorely need: Cody Bellinger. 

Allow me to explain. Bellinger is generally regarded as the top non-Shohei Ohtani hitter available on the free-agent market. That’s significant because the cavern between Ohtani and Bellinger is a vast one. Yes, Bellinger is coming off a strong bounceback season with the Cubs, but he’s not far removed from a stretch of almost 300 games that saw him put up a roundly inadequate OPS+ of 76. Maybe he did indeed unlock his old self on the Cubs’ watch and will get back to the form that saw him win the NL MVP award with the Dodgers in 2019. That said, if he’s going to do that, then Bellinger will need to continue producing at a level that his frankly dismal quality-of-contact indicators don’t begin to justify. The point – and there is one – is that Bellinger is near the top of every free-agent ranking out there, and that’s despite a spotty recent history and a jarring lack of batted-ball authority. That hints at just how thin the 2023-24 class of free-agent hitters is. 

That brings us to the Cardinals. As we are all ceaselessly aware, the club needs to add two front-of-the-rotation starters and probably a back-end depth piece this offseason. Unfortunately for the Cardinals and their somewhat middle-of-the-fray payroll budget, a lot of other teams – many of them much more well-heeled and nestled on the Coasts – also need one or more ace/ace-adjacent arms. In my mind, this makes it unlikely that the Cardinals are going to land anyone from the tip-top of the market such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Aaron Nola. (I deeply covet Yamamoto, but I’m fine with Nola and his red flags landing elsewhere at what figure to be the going rates.) Sonny Gray, however, I think is a realistic target given that his commitment figures to be more modest and that the Cardinals would satisfy his desire to pitch closer to his Nashville home. Along similar lines, I’m fine with a Jordan Montgomery reunion as a secondary addition. 

The point here is that the market might be such that the Cardinals need to find that No. 1 guy, or at least that co-No. 2 guy, via trade. There’s an opportunity there, thanks to that relative dearth of hitters available via free agency and the Cardinals’ relative abundance of interesting bats and role redundancy in the lineup. 

Now let’s talk about that “painful” part in the headline above. We all expect one or more trades to happen given all the factors just laid out. As is the nature of fandom, we also want these trades to be conducted on our own terms – i.e., get what we need but not at the cost of players we truly covet. This, of course, almost never happens. 

I’m talking about landing a high-value arm who, generally speaking, gives us the velocity, strikeouts, and run prevention for which we’re starved. I’m talking about names like Logan Gilbert of the Mariners, Dylan Cease of the White Sox (with some due diligence on his 2023 dip in fastball velocity), Tyler Glasnow of the Rays (the cost in trade would likely be lower in his case thanks to his $25 million salary for next season), Corbin Burnes of the Brewers (in the perhaps unlikely event they’re willing to trade him within the division), and Shane Bieber of the Guardians (although he has his own share of red flags). With those names and probably others who emerge during the story arc of the offseason, let’s turn back to what we have and put those names in buckets based on how painful it would be to part with them. This is a subjective exercise, of course, but my opinions probably track most of yours in this specific regard. Onward.