Yes, it's time to sell
The Cardinals should -- and almost certainly will -- be sellers leading up to the Aug. 3 trade deadline
The Cardinals on Wednesday night will try to avoid a fourth straight loss, but what they can’t avoid at this point is a trade-deadline sell-off by Chaim Bloom and company.
Tuesday’s blowout defeat to the Cubs dropped the Cardinals to below .500 for the first time this season and positioned them to trade away perhaps multiple veteran contributors in advance of Monday’s deadline. This is what the Cardinals will do, and it’s also what they should do.
To be sure, this was probably always going to be the case, and Bloom hasn’t wavered from his long-term vision, while also respecting that such trades are difficult on the human beings that populate a roster, especially in the face of on-field success. In the second half, though, that on-field success has been erased. The Cardinals are 3-9 since the break, and they’re 9-16 since the calendar flipped to July. Going back to the three-game skid that began on June 17 – tidy end-point, I’m aware – they’re 13-23. Only the A’s have a worse record over that span.
If there’s any upside to these untimely struggles, it’s that the clubhouse can’t really claim Bloom’s forthcoming moves are undercutting a team on the rise. (No, that’s not really much of an upside.) The sell-off to come has been “earned” in recent days and weeks. The Cards are still within spitting distance of playoff position, but that says more about the low bar set by the third wild card spot than it does anything about the team’s present merits. It’s also a crowded queue, and every team ahead of them, save for the Padres, projects better than the Cardinals moving forward. So, yes, a sell it is.
That brings us to this week’s temperature check:
