The St. Louis Cardinals – Lessons learned from deadline deals

The 2026 Trade Deadline produced some new talent for the St. Louis Cardinals organization, leveraging expiring contracts into (potential) future assets. As much as we don’t like to see favorite players depart (a lot like geting rid of those old shoes we love), smart organizations do this every year. This churn, or perhaps more euphemistically written as “renewal” is essential for the on-going health of the organization. In baseball, any business really, statis leads to decline.

Four new minor leaguers plus an MLB capable LHRP was the return for dealing away Dustin May, JoJo Romero, Lars Nootbaar and a bit of cash in the form of International Bonus Pool money. Others, led by Jake Wood have the low-down on the specific attributes of each player acquired. If you are here, you’ve probably been there already. If not, check it out. Good stuff.

I won’t repeat that stuff. Later this year, after season’s end and we’ve had a chance to see these players up close (including recent draftees), I will wander down the aisle of re-assessing the Cardinal pipeline. Certainly, though, a strong pipeline got stronger. But what else can we learn from the deals that were done (and the ones not done)?

I believe we can take from the aggregate of the draft and deadline deals that the Cardinals saw fit to invest more heavily in building position player talent, which tells me that the pitchers they inserted into their pipeline over the last year and a half have produced enough to provide management confidence to be able to concentrate on the player side. I like this sign. Sometimes a management team will express confidence verbally, but their actions can indicate more unease. Not so in this case.

This is good, because the position player prospect pool below AAA is pretty thin, as described The St. Louis Cardinals – Lessons. I could find 12 total prospects on the position player side. That number will certainly be higher when the updates come out this fall.

There was less pressure to move Lars Nootbaar, as they had full control through 2027 over this player. Their willingness to move him for two lesser pitchers seems more about clearing space for young players to ascend than it was getting value from an expiring contract. I suspect they could have waited until the off-season (even with CBA uncertainty) and gained a bit more value from trading Noot, but they appear to value the playing time they freed up to get a look at Joshua Baez at the MLB level and perhaps to move up a chain of players higher into the minor league hierarchy that might include Tai Peete, Won-Bin Cho, Ragsdale, etc.

If you line up potential runways, you probably can see where even if Baez struggles into early 2027, Cho or Chase Davis will likely get an opportunity and if they struggle, Cho might be ready for later 2027. What I get from them moving Nootbaar now is that they have some confidence that at least one of these guys will produce what Nootbaar was, if not more. I really like Lars as a player, but his actual production doesn’t create a high bar, and all three prospects appear to have some secondary skills (glove, base running) that have a higher ceiling than Lars. We’ve all heard the rumblings that the Cardinals look to become competitive late 2027 or early 2028. This kind of runway map begins to corroborate that assessment. I really like it when words and actions align. That’s just me, I guess.

I was initially underwhelmed by the upside of the pitchers returned for Noot. I’d kind of gotten used to whiz kids coming in. This seemed more like a high floor, low ceiling kind of deal. After considering it some and researching it a bit, it struck me that one of the benefits of this deal is that the Cardinals seem to have deliberately deepened their pool of reliever prospects (not the sexiest thing) but in a way that may allow them to not have to convert an existing starter to reliever out of need (and the need is real). That may tell us a couple of things … one, they are viewing the guys in the starter pipeline as guys who can stay on that track and two, the more marginal starters they have (say, Mautz or Thompson) may not really profile well into the reliever model they want to develop (high SnW, pin-point command not essential). In the larger context, I can see where this deal resulted in a more balanced system. Maybe there is a place for high floor, low ceiling transactions (if used sparingly).

Throughout the trade deadline speculation period, we’d periodically see suggestions that the Cardinals might consider moving Burleson or Herrera. Such a move would have resulted in a very good hitter being leveraged into multiple future value prospects. That they didn’t make such a move suggests to us that the front office doesn’t feel any pressure to make such a “rebuilding” kind of trade. Another indicator that, in the aggregate, they are gaining trust in their advancing prospects.
was willing to sacrifice a bit of future for a chance to win it all now

The trade with the Cardinals was a totally un-Milwaukee like move, for sure. I find it interesting they were willing to do this, because of downstream math. If either Frias or Ragsdale ascend to MLB (or get leveraged into other more near-term assets), the wins they produce will both subtract future wins from the Brewers and add future wins to the Cardinals and will likely be a higher win total than what May and Romero will provide them over the next two months. There is no better way to close the gap with your local competition than to acquire their future talent. Smart move, this.

Is this the Brewers time? Does it suggest to us they see their window closing? I can’t quite discern. I can definitely see the notion that Romero and May might be enough to push them over the top, when they focus on Brewers vs. Dodgers in the NLDS or NLCS. Sometimes teams have to narrow their vision that way, when the opportunity arises. The brass ring doesn’t come by often. This is completely the opposite of the big-picture view the Cardinals are focusing on today.

When the Brewers re-assess in the off-season (and widen their view), it might be a different look. Woodruff appears done. May will depart, as will Romero. Yelich is in serious decline. Contreras appears destined to be traded this winter. Now might be their best, and perhaps only, near-term chance. That is what their willingness to trade in the division suggests to me. A smart front-office, though. Never count out this team.

I’m not quite sure how to discern this, but one thing we can take from this is that Caleb Ferguson is viewed as a better stopgap solution for the LHRP side of the bullpen (to replace Romero) than Brycen Mautz would be. Is this because they really expect/need Mautz to remain in a starter role? I’m a bit skeptical. Not because I’m down on Mautz but more looking at the talent that is catching up to him (Cijntje, Doyle, Franklin, maybe even Lin). Perhaps as things line out, he needs to remain a starter in case one goes down between now and season’s end as he appears to be the “next man up”. Perhaps.

Some folks expected Pages to be moved, given the demand for catchers in the market. Not for lack of opportunities in the market, it would appear that the Cardinals are yet uncertain about their direction at this position. What is Crooks? Is Bernal ready? Will Herrera remain at catcher or seek other locations? Since they didn’t move Pages, this tells us they don’t quite yet feel confident they have answers to these (and perhaps other) questions. If the Cardinals were 10 games under .500, I’d suspect they’d just play Crooks at least every other day through season’s end so they have better answers. But they appear to be still in mode to try and win with this roster, which means more mixing-and-matching at C (and DH) to maximize results, reducing Crooks’ runway. In this runway season, this area needs to become better defined in the next 2 months (if it can).

The renewal cycle is never ending. All the new players from the draft and trade deadline will need placed and then we get a few weeks to see them in action. Most, if not all, the draftees are assigned to Palm Beach in the FCL Instructional League. I can’t tell the difference between the complex league and the instructional league, so if someone could help with that, much appreciated.

All the new talent coming in the bottom of the organization pushes more veteran prospects up or out, and we’ve seen a number of those transactions. I suspect there are a few more such as Baez to MLB, Doyle to AAA, etc. This might occur over the next week or two.

After that, seven players will go to the Arizona Fall League. I’d guess Hjerpe, Ixan Henderson and perhaps Roby will be among them on the pitching side. The player side is a tougher call…thinking some combination of RainRod, Levenson, Cho, Peete, Ragsdale, maybe Jesus Baez. Tough calls here. Players needing 40-man decisions will get priority (ie. tie-breakers) if there are more players than spots.

All this will culminate in two major areas this winter: 1) the 40-man roster decisions need to be ironed out and 2) it strikes me that the organization is primed to trade a little bit of future value for present value to improve the 2027 club.