It’s hard to tell right now if the Cardinals will be buyers or sellers over the next couple of days; the team sits at .500 while they are currently playing, but they are 7-3 in their last 10. They have some big holes on this roster, and adding a rental or 2 might not make them a World Series contender.
Judging by the history of the team, it doesn’t appear they would make a splash anyway. Here are all of the deadline deals that John Mozeliak has made:
The biggest deal they made was for Holliday. The most recent “big deal” would probably be the Craig/Kelly for Lackey deal. The “win now” deal would be Dotel/Jackson from 2011 that led to a World Series Championship.
More recently, the team has been “shifting assets”. They got rid of Pham because he was a “cancer”, Voit because they had just extended Carpenter (and would end up with Paul Goldschmidt), and Mercado because they had a glut of outfielders and needed to clear a 40-man spot (which would also happen to Adolis Garcia and Randy Arozarena down the line). At least these deal did bring back decent players that are impacting the roster now – Gallegos, Cabrera, J Williams.
The most recent deal was sending out Gyorko’s contract while taking on an injured player and a low level minor leaguer.
I think we’ll see more of these types of moves in the next few days. The Cardinals won’t want to give up Nolan Gorman, Matthew Liberatore, or Ivan Herrera for a rental. They also don’t have the depth to get a guy under club control. We’ll see them pick up some more low hanging fruit, like an inning eater for the rotation (a la Masterson) and a bullpen arm or 2 (a la Duke and Broxton). These are needs and will allow the team to say they did something.
They won’t get a Trevor Story, a Max Scherzer, or a Craig Kimbrel. I can’t say that I blame them either; the team would need all 3 to be a true contender. Unfortunately the weakening farm system would be wiped bare and the guys that are close to making an impact are worth too much in the next 2 years to waste on guys that could walk after the season.
The best course of action is to wait until the off-season; they’ll have a lot of money coming off the books and players like Story and Scherzer will be available as free agents.
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