How The Other Half Lives
The deals have started and the Cardinals, for once, are on the other side.
This is weird.
Trade deadline time around the St. Louis area is usually an intriguing time. Who are the Cardinals going to bring in? What’s the price? How can these pieces bring the club closer to the ultimate goal of a World Series?
All those questions are still relevant this year but their answers are not as immediate as normal. In the past few weeks, we’ve had an idea of who was going out and that started yesterday with Jordan Hicks heading to Toronto and Jordan Montgomery and Chris Stratton going to Texas. Instead of St. Louis paying a price, though, they were the ones extracting it. Instead of adding to the major league roster, they were subtracting from it. Instead of helping toward the 2023 World Series, these pieces may be more relevant in the push for the 2024, 2025, and 2026 trophy.
Figuring out whether these deals are good or not isn’t the purview of this missive. There are plenty of other places where you can find much more reasonable and informed takes on the trades. If you have a subscription to The Athletic, there’s numerous looks at both of these moves and the current consensus seems to be while the Cards didn’t dominate their trading partner or extract a heavy toll, they did well with what they received. David Jones and I looked at both of them on Gateway to Baseball Heaven last night, if you want to listen in there.
Whether the Cardinals “won the trade” or not won’t be determined this year, though. We aren’t going to be eagerly anticipating this new fact to make his first start or relief appearance (because it’s almost always a pitcher, many times more than one, that gets added) in the next few days. So far, the only new face that will be on the roster is John King, who seems more of a throw-in by Texas as a person that can help cover the upcoming shortfall of innings than someone that was specifically targeted by the Redbirds.
Now, if you live close to Memphis or Springfield or you have MiLB.tv, you may be looking forward to getting some glimpses of Adam Kloffenstein or seeing the at bats of Thomas Saggese. Given what will likely be the state of the Cardinals in August and September, there may be a lot of folks tuning their TV to the minor league Redbirds to see some of these new guys and start getting a feel for what the club acquired.
Of course, the most notable name won’t be seen anywhere for a while. Tekoah Roby should pitch at Springfield (most likely) some time this season but will start out in the rehab program at Jupiter, well away from any curious eyes. Given the dearth of top level pitching currently in the minors, I imagine Roby will draw a lot of attention once he’s cleared for regular play.
The changes aren’t done, of course. The odds of Jack Flaherty making a start for the Cardinals Tuesday aren’t less than zero, but they are close. Paul DeJong still would make sense for a number of contending teams. There are rumors around Dylan Carlson and Tyler O’Neill, though neither are guaranteed to move. Smaller pieces like Alec Burleson and Juan Yepez might be able to find a place where they could play more regularly.
What we as fans will be left with is not the normal strengthened roster, that post-deadline Cardinal squad that tends to put up more wins than they did beforehand. Instead, it will be like the off-brand Cardinals—still recognizable as the team but not quite the same. The pitching rotation will be remade—only Miles Mikolas will stay where he was—and the bullpen becomes even more dangerous than before. The Cardinals didn’t make these moves because they had people waiting in the wings. They are making these moves, in part, because they don’t. They aren’t going to be able to bring back much in the way of established major league talent, either, so the next couple of months are going to be….interesting.
Guys like Jacob Barnes and Casey Lawrence will probably get their moment in the sun and become one of those 0.02% options on Immaculate Grid. Arms likely will be cycled through as the club tries to see what they have. Complaining about Oli Marmol’s tactics should subside because it’s not about trying to win over the next 60 games, it’s seeing which pieces will help the club win in 2024. If that means an unproven arm in a big spot, so be it. If that means Jordan Walker playing every day to work on his outfield defense, so be it. Information is needed and so repetitions are given.
Hopefully this is the aberration year. Hopefully in 2041 the TV announcers are saying, “The Cardinals haven’t been sellers at the deadline since that weird 2023 year.” Hopefully Roby and Kloffenstein and Saggese are big parts of the next World Series team. Hopefully.
That’s all we have at this trading deadline, hope. We won’t see the results immediately as we have most every other year. All we can do is hope that the Cardinals made good choices and can develop these guys into major league players soon.
I’ve often said that rebellions are built on hope but it’s not the best way to run a baseball team. This year, though, there’s no choice. Hope for the future is all we’ve got.