The St. Louis Cardinals have a need to make some upgrades at the trade deadline, and need to deliberate on the future of these players.
This season has not been the one St. Louis Cardinals fans dreamed of during Spring Training. It's not the storybook season for Adam Wainwright to go out with (yet, anyway), and the new addition of Willson Contreras has panned out as anything less than ideal.
All that said, the Cardinals — after nosediving down to the bottom of the standings in the NL Central — are on their way back up. Just four games out of first place in the division, the No. 1 spot in the NLC is still well within reach given how much time is left on the schedule.
That is, if the Cardinals make smart strategy decisions, and especially if they make the right moves at the trade deadline.
The deadline is August 1st, so there is plenty of time for the Cardinals to give things some time to see how they continue to improve. Perhaps they want to see how this iteration of the roster pans out. That's certainly valid.
But even if the Cardinals decide there's no need to make a major move or shake-up, it's not OK to at least not consider making a move. Front offices have to consider every possibility.
These four following players are bound to come up in trade discussions. The first question, really, is to decide whether a team should or shouldn't pursue trading that player if the package is right.
Players the Braves need to consider trading: Tyler O'Neil, OF
Tyler O'Neil, unsurprisingly currently on the 10-day IL, has struggled to stay healthy. He played 96 games last year, and, save for 2023 and 2021, hasn't appeared in even half the games of any given season.
O'Neil was also put on the pine by Oli Marmol for what he deemed to be an "unacceptable" base running effort earlier this year. In a year where struggles have plagued the Cardinals, that's a bad look and it's hard to justify keeping someone with that red mark on their resume around.
The bigger picture with a move like this, though, is to unleash someone like Lars Nootbaar, who is getting the bench role more often than not. His bat has been better than O'Neil's and he's one of the two outfielders on the team that has a positive outs above average rating with a success rate 7 points higher than O'Neil. Furthermore, the Cardinals have several years left of team control with Nootbaar. It certainly wouldn't hurt to get one of Shohei Ohtani's buddies out on the field more… right?
This one is nearly obvious, and in fact, my colleague Cody Williams tabbed him as a player who certainly won't survive the deadline. I have to agree.
Players the Cardinals need to consider trading: Nolan Gorman, utility
This one will need a lot more deliberation from the front office before they actually pull the trigger. The Cardinals need to ask, though, whether they're using Nolan Gorman effectively, and if not, if they could get more value from liquidating his spot on the roster in the trade market.
The other question to ask is what they gain from moving Gorman in terms of lineup flexibility since he usually occupies the designated hitter spot in the offensive nine.
Gorman, not unlike previous years, is seeing most of his opportunities as DH and playing the field as needed. So far he's only seen the defensive side of the game in seven contests.
But Gorman could be one of the most attractive pieces of trade bait that the Cardinals have. He's more tangible than a prospect, yet young enough to envision a path where he gets even better than he is already (he exceeded rookie limits just last year). Plus, Gorman can be a bat at DH, or teams can use him as a second or third baseman. His fielding is about average, but an average fielder with a good bat is not the worst thing to have.
Gorman's .981 OPS happens to be the highest in the National League right now as well…
For many of those same reasons, there's a strong case to be made to keep Gorman. He's providing offense to a team that surely will need it, and there is team control through 2029. Trading him has the potential to be one the Cardinals look back at and think they made a massive mistake for the rest of the decade.
Ultimately, expect the Cardinals to hold here even if there are attractive offers on the table. But it is something to, at the very least, consider.
Players the Cardinals need to consider trading: Jack Flaherty, P
Jack Flaherty started this year telling us he was going to be a cynical menace on the mound, but ultimately, the joke was on the Cardinals… Flaherty's ERA this season is the second-highest of his career, and his WHIP is the second-worst among the four Cardinals starters that have made 10 starts or more.
The curveball has completely escaped him. Last year it had a -3 run value, this year it's +3, a change six runs in the wrong direction. Last year batters were hitting that with an average of .150, this year, .212, though it remains his best pitch in terms of swing & miss percentage at nearly 50%.
Flaherty, like many starting pitchers, utilizes a 4-seam fastball as his most-used pitch, but he is on the slower side at 92.9 miles per hour on average. The only Cardinals starter with a slower four-seamer is Wainwright, who throws his less than five percent of the time.
Excluding Wainwright who has missed a large portion of the year, only Steven Matz (0) has fewer quality starts than Flaherty (3), whereas Montgomery has five such starts and Miles Mikolas has four.
Looking solely at his arsenal, Flaherty actually might be better positioned as a relief pitcher if any team has the willingness to change his role mid-season.
Trading Flaherty, or really any pitcher, would be incumbent on the Cardinals getting an incoming upgrade to the rotation. Yesterday we discussed how the White Sox's Lucas Giolito has been rumored in connection with St. Louis, who would be the kind of player they need to get in to make a compensatory outgoing deal involving the rotation.
Giolito is performing better than every member of the Cardinals rotation this year, and he brings one of the deadliest fastballs this year that would be far superior to Flaherty's, despite it clocking at the same speed.
One player the Cardinals can't trade: Jordan Montgomery, P
The case is there for the Cardinals to trade Jordan Montgomery. It's already being suggested as something the team could very well consider by insiders around the league.
Montgomery is a piece of the struggling starting rotation that just can't seem to get it going. He's also a free agent at the end of this year, meaning if the Cardinals are going to move on from him in the open market, there's a case to be made that they should get something rather than nothing before he potentially walks.
That narrative gets even more compelling if the Cardinals are able to find a better pitcher, like Giolito, in the trade market as an incoming piece.
But someone like Flaherty, discussed earlier, must be the outgoing piece, not Montgomery. The reasoning is that there's reason to believe the results in Monty's starts can actually get better.
For one, Montgomery has shown proper ace potential, despite results not exactly displaying that sentiment. Monty has been truly unlucky this year and last. In New York, he got no run support. In St. Louis, the defenders behind him aren't pulling their weight.
The difference between Montgomery's field independent pitching and his ERA is 0.52, the third-highest on the starting staff.
He may never pan out to be a No. 1 pitcher, but I firmly believe he's capable of being a pitcher managers have confidence rolling out as a starter in the middle of a playoff series.
St. Louis should be trying to figure out how they can keep him in St. Louis for years to come. There are other pitchers worth moving on the roster well before Monty.
