The St. Louis Cardinals are fighting back into contention, but that won't keep these players on the roster through the trade deadline for various reasons.
Don't look now, but the St. Louis Cardinals are starting to look like the baseball team we thought they'd be coming into the 2023 season.
After the Redbirds got off to a historically bad start to the year, they've now won seven of their last 10 games and are now just six games under .500 and 5.5 games back of the Brewers atop the NL Central. That might not seem great, but it's miles better than where they were earlier in the season. And all of this makes the trade deadline in a couple of months all the more fascinating.
If the Cardinals' awful start had remained the trend for this team throughout the year, the belief was that they could be sellers. But now if this bounce-back effort keeps up, they could turn the narratives and be buyers. No matter which side of the coin they end up on, though, there are some players on the roster who won't be in St. Louis past the trade deadline.
STL Cardinals rumors: 3 players who won't survive the trade deadline and why
Tyler O'Neill looks like the odd man out of the STL Cardinals outfield
This one's been pretty obvious for a few months now, but it's starting to feel like it would be more shocking if Tyler O'Neill is still a member of the Cards past the trade deadline than if he's on another team.
We all know by know that the 27-year-old outfielder was benched early in the season due to a lack of hustle. He's now been put on the IL for a few weeks now but wasn't performing as St. Louis had certainly hoped prior to that, slashing just .228/.283/.337 in 29 games this season with only two home runs to his credit as well.
Even the Cards know that, once healthy, O'Neill is capable of much more than that, largely because he's shown that in previous seasons, most notably in 2021 when he looked to be one of baseball's budding stars with a .912 OPS and 6.3 WAR over 141 games. So there should be a trade market for him.
Given that St. Louis desperately needs to find solutions for their rotation if they plan on continuing to surge up the standings and back into contention, dealing one of their outfielders seems like a formality as the club is loaded at the position with O'Neill, Dylan Carlson, Lars Nootbar, Juan Yepez, Alec Burleson and top prospect Jordan Walker. So if they look to upgrade pitching, it seems like one of those guys is going to be dealt to do so.
O'Neill is the most likely candidate in my eyes. His flashes at the major-league level could be enough to entice some teams, particularly if packaged with another player and/or prospect, to move on from a quality starter at the trade deadline and, on top of that, his early-season woes likely didn't curry him any favor with Oli Marmol and the front office. As such, the safe bet remains that he'll indeed be traded at some point this year.
Jack Flaherty could be pushed out if the STL Cardinals trade to upgrade pitching
The notion of trading Jack Flaherty is a tricky one, but that also doesn't mean it's completely unlikely either.
Injuries had plagued the 27-year-old starter for the three seasons prior to the 2023 campaign, limiting him to just 35 total starts over those three years, though one of those was the COVID-abbreviated 2020 season.
Now healthy, though, Flaherty hasn't been necessarily the same guy. His velocity has dipped alarmingly and he hasn't been performing well either, posting a 5.29 ERA with a 1.59 WHIP over 10 starts this season, a far cry from even when he flashed when healthy in 2021. And in recent weeks, Flaherty hasn't exactly taken well to criticism of his stuff on the mound.
The question with Flaherty, though, is that the Cardinals starting pitching has proven to be one of the primary issues behind their awful start to the year and, as such, trying to bounce back from that. So that could limit the trade market for the right-hander who did flash dominance earlier in his career.
At the same time, though, if he's a malcontent on a roster that's buying into a surge back into contention during the summer and there is a pitching-desperate team willing to part with either a utility player or prospect the Cardinals like, then Flaherty would make sense as a trade chip to float out there to get a deal done. He's certainly not helping St. Louis with what he's been giving them right now, but dealing him might ultimately serve that purpose in the long run.
STL Cardinals could upgrade numerous spots by trading Paul DeJong
To say that Paul DeJong has been a headache for Cardinals fans over the past couple of years would be an understatement. In 2021 while playing 114 games, he slashed a measly .197/.284/.390 only to follow that up with an even worse year in 2022 with a .157/.245/.286 line over 77 games and being sent down to Triple-A a time or too.
But it's been a resurgent 2023 season for the 29-year-old shortstop. In 25 appearances this season for St. Louis, the veteran has been legitimately one of the best hitters on the ballclub with a line of .291/.371/.616 while launching eight home runs and four doubles on the year to go along with 18 RBI.
So why would the Cards be looking to trade a player swinging the bat so well this year? It really comes down to priorities.
The biggest issue that the Cardinals need to address with the way the lineup has started to show life is the starting pitching problem. We touched on that with Flaherty a bit, but it remains an issue for the team as a whole, especially if they continue to bounce back and try to contend. And the organization just so happens to have a surplus at shortstop.
Not only is DeJong competing for playing time with one of the stalwarts of the lineup, Tommy Edman, but one of the best prospects in baseball, Masyn Winn, is inching closer to being major-league ready, which is another player at the position.
If we're looking at that trio, DeJong is clearly the most expendable. On top of that, though, he's helped the Cardinals tremendously this season with his production, raising the floor of his potential trade value, meaning they could package him with a moderate prospect for legitimate pitching help, perhaps with team control still available beyond this year as well. That behooves the organization more long term than hanging on to the odd-man out at a crowded position.