What if the Cardinals had traded more prospects?

Some St. Louis Cardinals fans are questioning the club’s management for not making an impact trade before Tuesday’s non-waiver trade deadline. Their only deal was swapping former first-rounder Zack Cox to Miami for reliever Edward Mujica.

While the rumor mill linked the Cards to a number of prominent players supposedly on the market, only a very few of those names ended up changing homes. Many remained put.

That would imply the asking prices for many top pitchers like James Shields and even lesser ones like Jason Vargas were deemed too high, not only for St. Louis, but for whichever of the other 28 clubs were shopping as well.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t trades of big-name players as the deadline approached. I list nine recent deals below. In each case, prospects moved from one club to another.

Even though we know that all minor league systems are NOT equal, I went through the following analysis for illustration purposes, using pre-season assessments. I included the system ranking from Baseball America’s 2012 Prospect Handbook for each club that traded away prospects in these nine trades.

I then listed the ranking of the traded players within their previous system. For comparison, I also noted the names of the Cardinals prospects that hold the same ranking in St. Louis’ system.

For example, as part of the Ryan Dempster trade, the Rangers, who had the second-ranked system, sent their #8 prospect to the Cubs. St. Louis has the #12-ranked system, so the #8 Ranger may be a better prospect than the #8 Cardinal, but the Cardinals’ #8 prospect is Eduardo Sanchez, according to BA. (I chose BA because their team rankings go 30 players deep and they have system-to-system comparison ratings.)

Again, I realize this work is inexact at best, but can at least serve as food for thought as to the kinds of prospects that may have been required to make comparable deals.

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