A team finally decided to try to be the best at NL Central.
The cardinals were about to acquire Nolan Arenado from the Rocky Mountains on Friday night. Since $ 50 million would be transferred from Colorado to St. Louis and as Arenado would be gaining an additional opt-out after the 2022 season, in addition to what he has after the 2021 season, the deal will need to be approved by the MLB and the Association of Players. The hope is that this can be done as early as Sunday or Monday and the negotiation can be finalized.
If so, it would mark the first significant import of talent into NL Central after three months of an off-season in which the talent just flowed out.
Josh Bell, Yu Darvish, Raisel Iglesias, Jon Lester, Joe Musgrove, Jose Quintana, Kyle Schwarber, Jameson Taillon and probably sometime soon Trevor Bauer will have left NL Central. Until Friday, when Adam Wainwright re-signed with the Cardinals and Joc Pederson agreed to an agreement with the Cubs, the entire division had agreed to spend less than $ 3 million on a free agency. The Reds have yet to sign a major league free agent and Wainwright was the first for the Cardinals.
But now St. Louis was on the verge of a seismic movement. The Cardinals would send five candidates to the Rocky Mountains – but none of their elite secondary league players. Arenado owes $ 199 million for the next six years and, as Jon Heyman of MLB Network first reported, he will have an additional $ 15 million for an aggregate seventh year if this deal is completed.
There is risk beyond money. Arenado already had the right to cancel his contract after the 2021 season and now he has the same after 2022, and there has always been a feeling in the game that he would love to find a way to his roots in Southern California. St. Louis, however, is a baseball-crazy city and players often fall in love with playing in front of such a positive fan base for a regular candidate.
For now, Arenado is a winner if the trade is approved because he escapes a toxic situation in Colorado. He signed an eight-year extension, $ 260 million after the 2018 season. He believed that the Rockies were not only making a commitment to him, but also trying to be perennial competitors. So Arenado was frustrated when the team did not continue to invest in payroll to pursue better players. He ended up in a feud with GM Jeff Bridich and it became clear that he wanted a divorce.
In the reduced schedule of 2020, Arenado had its worst season, reaching 0.253 with a 0.738 OPS while struggling with a shoulder injury. The Cardinals would be betting that it was an aberration and that Arenado is the player who finished in the top eight in the 2015-19 NL MVP vote. Even last year, he won his eighth gold glove in eight years, as he established himself as one of the best third baseman of all time.
For the Rocky Mountains, they are giving up their franchise. They are sending a lot of money to the Cardinals to escape the weight of the contract, potentially making room to retain shortstop star Trevor Story, who is a free agent after the 2021 season, and essentially buying potential customers, which should include pitcher Austin Gomber, first baseman Luken Baker and outside defender Jhon Torres.
There are implications in this business for when the Marlins switched Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees after the 2017 season. Stanton and Arenado are represented by Joel Wolfe. Both signed mega contracts to stay with the team that drafted them in the second round. Both were disillusioned with organizations that would not continue to pressure after signing them. The Cardinals did negotiate with Stanton, but he invoked his no-trade clause and – like Arenado – initially hoped to end up in Southern California with the Dodgers.
Stanton accepted an exchange with the Yankees, who extracted $ 52 million in savings from the Marlins, who ate $ 30 million and took the remaining $ 22 million from the Starlin Castro contract.
This time it was at Cards for St. Louis to get that kind of star looking to escape a deteriorating situation.