Cardinals offseason targets 2025: Trade options, Nolan Arenado’s future as St. Louis enters weird gray area

By their own planning and admission, the 2025 season will be one of transition for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Coming off a losing campaign in 2023 – their first 90-loss season since 1990 – and then a 2024 that saw them miss the playoffs again and be out-scored by the opposition by almost 50 runs, the Cardinals are undertaking an organizational “reset.” Longtime lead decision-maker John Mozeliak is in his final year atop baseball operations, and his replacement-in-waiting, Chaim Bloom, is overseeing a rebuild of the entire player-development apparatus, which has been woefully neglected by ownership in recent years.

The upshot of all of this, at least for these purposes, is that the Cardinals won’t be trying to improve the major-league roster for 2025. It’s within the realm of possibility that the Cardinals will be better in 2025 than they were in 2024 and 2023, but that will be because of improved performances of players already in place. External help is not forthcoming. In related matters, the club passed on their 2025 options on veteran starters Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson and also declined to make stalwart first baseman Paul Goldschmidt a qualifying offer.

What’s going on in St. Louis doesn’t qualify as a deep teardown on the scale of what happened in Houston and in Baltimore in recent years. That said, the Cardinals are exploring trades for the veteran contributors. Some of these potential moves, however, are complicated by no-trade clauses in place. For instance, catcher Willson Contreras, who’s transitioning to a first base/DH role, and ace Sonny Gray have indicated they wish to remain in St. Louis, at least for the time being. Others, however, seem more willing to consider being dealt to a team with stronger designs on contention in 2025.

All that is prelude to what follows, and what follows are three moves the Cardinals should make this winter – or attempt to make in one instance – with a nod toward current organizational realities. Those realities are that ownership is not going to invest heavily in the current roster and that they’d like to shed some vets in exchange for youth, upside, and years of control. To be sure, ownership could do the overdue work on player development while still spending to improve the big-league roster and contend – especially in the National League Central – but that’s almost certainly not going to happen. With all this in mind, here are three efforts the Cardinals should undertake this winter.

Explore a trade for Nolan Arenado

Dealing Arenado would not be straightforward for a number of reasons. One, he has full no-trade protection. Two, he’s under contract through the 2027 season and owed $74 million over that span. And, three, his contract is a complicated one with notable deferred money at interest and contributions from the Rockies still on the ledger ($5 million from Colorado in 2025 and 2026).

On the first point, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently reported that the Cardinals are expected to explore trade talks regarding Arenado and then circle back to the veteran third baseman for his approval or lack thereof. In light of the Cardinals’ current condition, this makes sense. Arenado in 2025 will be going into his age-34 season, and he’s shown signs of decline with the bat. He remains, however, a standout defender at the hot corner. He’s also not a liability at the plate, at least based on 2024 levels of production, and that in tandem with Arenado’s defensive value make him potentially of interest to win-now teams. For instance, should Alex Bregman sign elsewhere, then perhaps the Astros would have interest, especially since Arenado’s pull tendencies would be a good theoretical fit for the Crawford Boxes.

Would Arenado as he presently looks fetch three years and $74 million on the open market? Probably not, given the uncertain status of his bat moving forward. As such, the Cardinals should be willing to include cash in any deal for Arenado so that they can get some noteworthy young talent in return.

Besides getting young talent in return, the other motivation for the Cardinals in any such trade is clearing a space for more young players to be core contributors in 2025. Infield prospect Thomas Saggese has the potential to be one of those for the long-term at second base. Moving Arenado would allow the Cardinals to shift Nolan Gorman from second back to his natural position of third base and thus raise his comfort level and allow him to devote more headspace and training time to developing as a hitter.

Trade Ryan Helsley

The standout closer Helsley may be the most appealing trade chit the Cardinals have right now, and the expectation is that he will indeed be swapped this offseason.

Helsley, 30, is coming off a standout 2024 in which he pitched to a 2.04 ERA in 65 appearances, clocked 49 saves, and struck out almost 30% of the batters he faced. For his career, he owns an OPS+ of 157 across parts of six MLB seasons, all with the Cardinals. The 2025 season will be his final year of team control before reaching free agency, and that’s part of why the Cardinals are looking to move him. Helsley will be in for a substantial raise in his final trip through the arbitration process, but it will be far from an onerous commitment for contenders in need of high-leverage relief help (this describes almost every contender).

You’re probably never again going to see a 2016-level trade return for a closer, but Helsley’s excellence should fetch the Cardinals a nifty haul as such things go.

Hold on to Erick Fedde for now but re-evaluate leading up to the 2025 trade deadline

The Cardinals acquired Fedde at last year’s deadline in a three-player swap. He remains an alluring trade candidate heading to the final year of his contract and after having retooled himself during his 2023 season in Korea. This past season, the 31-year-old right-hander pitched to a 3.30 ERA (126 ERA+) and a 3.86 FIP in a combined 31 starts for the White Sox and Cardinals. That added up to an impressive 2024 WAR of 5.6. So he was highly effective this past season, and the overseas reboot raises hopes that it’s sustainable for the near- to mid-term.

Speaking of the near- to mid-term, Fedde brings with him an exceedingly modest commitment. He’s under contract for 2025 at a cost of just $7.5 million. That’s a deep discount rate for a player who figures to be a strong mid-rotation presence this season. As such, he’s going to have significant trade value to St. Louis. For now, though, the Cardinals should hold on to him in order to maximize their chances at contention in 2025. If after the first four months of the regular season the Cardinals find themselves comfortably out of playoff position, then Fedde – provided he’s healthy, of course – can be flipped at the deadline. Sure, you’d probably get more for him by trading him this winter, but the Cardinals are trying to thread a certain needle here, one that balances long-term interests and the possibility of mattering in the 2025 standings. The returns of Contreras and Gray make placing a hold on Fedde an easier choice.

So let’s say the Cardinals’ Opening Day rotation goes like this:

1. Sonny Gray
2. Erick Fedde
3. Andre Pallante
4. Michael McGreevy
5. Quinn Mathews

That gives St. Louis stability at the front end and middle (Pallante is probably a legitimate No. 3 starter moving forward) and space at the back end to on-ramp young arms. McGreevy’s development of a cutter helped him address his platoon issues, and he has real promise going forward. Mathews is one of the fastest risers among all pitching prospects. Tink Hence probably enters this discussion at some point reasonably early in 2025. That’s not an exhaustive list of candidates.

If the Cardinals decide Mathews needs a bit more seasoning, then Steven Matz and Miles Mikolas are also still around. That said, Mikolas doesn’t really merit a rotation spot at this stage of his career, and Matz should be used out of the bullpen or traded in advance of his walk year.