photo: Jason Heyward (Billy Hurst/USA TODAY Sports)
According to a media report, the St. Louis Cardinals are reluctant to acquire a walk-year player in trade because of the ultimate outcome of the Jason Heyward acquisition four years ago. Brian Walton explains why the team needs to get over it and be prepared to take some risk to acquire a difference-maker, no matter who he is.
In a Friday article, Mark Saxon of The Athletic shared news about a position taken by the St. Louis Cardinals front office that I find distressing. In fact, his title says it all.
Don’t get me wrong. My focus is on the one-year rental part more than the specific player himself.
I readily acknowledge there are multiple ways for the Cardinals to potentially acquire the middle-of-the-order bat they seek. Paul Goldschmidt, while a fine player, just happens to be the name currently in the news.
What really bothers me is this lingering remorse over the Jason Heyward experience, reportedly the origin of this walk-year fear.
To recap, in return from Atlanta for Shelby Miller (who was non-tendered by Arizona on Friday) and Tyrell Jenkins (who is out of baseball), the Cardinals received one good year of Heyward (117 wRC+, which he has not approached since), dodged what would have been a bad multi-year deal with him a year later and selected a very promising young pitcher in Dakota Hudson with the draft pick compensation for losing him after he signed with the Cubs instead.
P.S. The 2015 first-place Cardinals team (which included Heyward) went 100-62, their regular-season high-water mark since 2005.
Why fret about that outcome now?
Sure, it could have come out better, but it was hardly disastrous enough to alter the organization’s strategy forever more.
Yes, the Cardinals went on to sign another free agent outfielder, Dexter Fowler, after being rejected by Heyward in the 2015-2016 off-season. And yes, Fowler’s contract has turned out badly, though not as badly as Heyward’s eight-year, $184 million deal with the Cubs.
I submit that the Fowler misfortune was not as much due to Heyward walking after one year as it was that the Cardinals made a bad choice as his replacement. The team needed another outfielder to replace Heyward, but Fowler was far from the only apple on the tree.
One final point on the “walk year” reluctance.
Going back to C.C. Sabathia in their 2008 drought-breaking playoff season, the Milwaukee Brewers have not been reluctant to acquire players in their walk year. In fact, a number of these short-term acquisitions helped the Brew Crew win the 2018 National League Central Division – Mike Moustakas, Joakim Soria, Gio Gonzalez, Xavier Cedeño, Curtis Granderson and Jonathan Schoop. Only the latter was not successful.
And the club seemed to do it without mortgaging the future. Even though several of these players have since departed, the Brewers are still favored to finish ahead of the Cardinals in 2019. As the teams are currently constructed, Fangraphs projects the Cardinals to win three fewer games than 2018, 85 in total. That is a likely path to another third-place, playoff-free finish.
As Heyward and Giancarlo Stanton drove home, St. Louis is no longer considered a target destination by top players, making it all the more important for the club to be creative (or dare I say, “opportunistic”?) in its search for prime talent.
If the Cardinals are really limiting themselves because of Heyward, they need to snap out of it right away. They do not have to add Goldschmidt, but they also cannot afford to ignore all final contract year players, if difference-making ones become available. Maybe they even need to shake the trees a bit.
Coupled with an earlier report that suggests the team is reluctant to pay any arriving player more than established star Yadier Molina, evidence is mounting that the Cardinals may be hurting their own chances to improve the team by setting arbitrary and unnecessary limitations on themselves.
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Brian Walton can be reached via email at brian@thecardinalnation.com. Follow Brian on Twitter.
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