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Are the Cardinals playing themselves into a situation where they are going to have to trade Arenado? He hasn’t seemed too pleased with the Front Office this year. I’m convinced that with Ohtani coming off the market the national baseball guys needed someone else to talk about going to the Dodgers. Sure Mo needs to do his due diligence according the Arenado the front office hasn’t told them anything. In this case shouldn’t they let the guy know he’s not on the market. Mo and the Cardinals have seemed to be particularly bad this year with the interpersonal relationships with players and it’s starting to cost them. Montgomery mentioned he felt hurt that the Cardinals didn’t want to talk extension this Spring. I don’t know I’m just thinking. Any thoughts?
If I had to guess I would say Arenado and Goldschmidt are pretty unhappy and would not turn down a trade to a team that will have a chance at a ring before they retire.
Goldschmidt is what? 35-36?
The pitching assembled by Mo this year just boggles my mind.
He got everything wrong – which is really hard to do.
Tough to say for sure how the relationship has gone between Mo and Arenado. Obviously all of the players are not happy with the way the season has transpired after playing well in Spring Training and being the favorite to win the division.
With Walker’s impressive Spring there was even talk of St. Louis being a serious World Series contender. Instead we have what we have seen these last four months.
My guess is things stay status quo with Arenado, Goldy and the key members of the club in the hopes that they can return to glory in 2024. But if things are as bad or worse next year at this time, it will be time to clean house. Maybe Mo won’t even be on the payroll by then if things have not improved.
The front office seems clueless with communication.
BenFred: Nolan Arenado's trade-deadline comments seem to show cost of Cardinals' 'due diligence' https://t.co/URMODae5xC
— STLToday Sports News (@STL_SportsNews) July 29, 2023
My take on the front office not saying anything is different than BenFred’s thoughts. It sounds like not talking to Nolan means the Cardinals are not considering trading him. It is all media fodder to generate interest.
I think Benny is reading too much into this. But then he is media, so it makes for good drama, which drives interest in his column.
I give Arenado credit for standing up and taking all the questions when it is not fun. The problem is that many of the most important ones he cannot answer – unless one believes he is lying.
Mo could put a stop to it all, but he doesn’t want to – or he would do it. The Angels GM stood up and said publicly that he was not trading Ohtani and that ended that. At a minimum, Mo could take Nolan aside and tell him not to worry.
It is too bad Arenado has been put in this situation. All indications are that his only focus has been on trying to help a struggling team win more games. That is a guy I want on my team, not playing somewhere else.
The Cardinals have a great group of core position players for 2024 –
Arenado, Goldschmidt, Contreras, O’Neill, Gorman, Walker, Nootbaar, Edman, Donovan, Winn, Herrera, etc. It will be interesting to see how Mo can keep most of that core intact and use others – Carlson, Burleson, Montgomery, Flaherty, Hicks, Baker, Yepez, Gomez, etc. to firm up the pitching staff. Graceffo, McGreevy, Hence, Hjerpe, etc. are coming on, but maybe not fast enough. Lots of FA bullpen pieces will be available in the off season.I don’t know how many teams would be interested in our mediocre second-line players but I can’t see them buying us what we really need. As Kris said, nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.
CIF – Flaherty, Montgomery, Hicks, and Carlson aren’t mediocre second-line players. A mix of one or two of them plus a Baker might bring us a nice package of young, cost controlled pitching.
The problem with our club is we have some good players, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. That is due to having too many weak defensive guys. Then when you try to play a better defensive unit, you do things like put Edman in the outfield, where his bat is not really “outfield” worthy. Or play Carlson who has not developed as a strong offensive player.
You like Walker and Contreras for offense, but sacrifice defense when both play. We just have an odd mix of talent. And then the pitching has been woeful, although some bad defense has contributed to that.
Question. If we can get Montgomery for Bader, what can we get for Carlson?
Bader was a gold glove every day starting center fielder. Carlson is none of that. He couldn’t even get regular playing time when all of our other center fielders were hurt. The truth is he is a nondescript bench player. As such he is worth little. There is a question in my mind as why his status crashed so bad, from Bader’s heir apparent to bench guy, but it did.
Bader’s issue was health. Carlson’s issue is playing up to his high potential consistently. Still has a high ceiling. Other GMs probably know that.
Just because it is the LA media spreading the Arenado rumors doesn’t mean that talks aren’t happening. How do we know they aren’t? I don’t think the Cardinals are looking to trade Arenado but that doesn’t mean they aren’t listening.
And why is an Arenado trade so far fetched? We have a ready made replacement in Nolan Gorman. We could possibly end up with the top 3 or 4 Dodger pitching prospects. And we would free up $30M per year to spend on more pitching or elsewhere on the roster. I am not saying it will happen but I can see why the Cardinals would at least ponder it.
Arenado is a great player but one thing that has bothered me ever since he got here is everyone worried if he is offended or not by the direction of the front office or if he thinks St. Louis is worthy of him to stay or not. Will he opt in or will he stay? Did Mo’s meeting with him over the winter soothe his anxiety over the direction of the team? Will he waive his no-trade clause? Blah Blah Blah…
To his credit he has answered all of those questions in the positive but the questions never stop.
All of that stuff drives me nuts. That is one of the reasons I like Goldy so much. There is no drama surrounding Goldy. He is all business.
Goldy and Arenado are franchise players. Doubt if they would trade either of them unless it was a huge bundle coming back.
Don’t understand why more attention isn’t given to Baker. 25 home runs and 76 RBI in 73 games. Holy cow.
Line of .330/.437/.679/1.115.
Only Ks 20% of the time.The problem with Baker is that despite doing everything expected of him at Triple-A, he remains unproven in MLB. He gets called up and then does not receive a chance to play. That he is first base-DH only on a team that has those positions tied up every single day (in Goldy and Donovan) totally blocks him. Another team might take a flyer on him, but he remains a question mark in the bigs and isn’t a top prospect at 26 years old. So he won’t fetch much other than maybe as part of a bigger deal.
All of that stuff drives me nuts. That is one of the reasons I like Goldy so much. There is no drama surrounding Goldy. He is all business.
Arenado did not create this drama, the Los Angeles Times did.
The Cardinals don’t leak their trade rumors, the Dodgers do.
And sometimes a GM has to call his Star player and say we aren’t trading you. Just like they did with Ohtani.
Regarding Baker, wasn’t Matt Carpenter and Allen Craig also seen as AAAA guys? They were able to get a chance and prove themselves as Big Leaguers.
Arenado did not create this drama, the Los Angeles Times did.
The Cardinals don’t leak their trade rumors, the Dodgers do.
The drama started before this trade deadline as I outlined.
If a trade happened the Dodgers would get 4 years of Arenado. Would they be willing to pay what was necessary for that? Doesn’t it start with Bobby Miller and 2 other MILB pitchers of our choice plus their Top Prospect and a lower level guy. Our haul would may probably have to be one of the biggest ever in a trade.
The drama started before this trade deadline as I outlined.
And that was media driven, just like this is.
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