Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak met with reporters (including Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat) at the team’s Winter Warm-Up event today, and discussed several topics related to quiet St. Louis offseason. In general, Mozeliak didn’t have much new to offer on the Nolan Arenado trade front, other than to say that “I think priority one, two and three is still Nolan” in terms of how dealing the third baseman is the clear focal point for the rest of the team’s winter plans.
Mozeliak has been open abut the team’s intentions of cutting payroll and giving more playing time to younger players in 2025, even if the PBO and other Cardinals’ officials have stopped short of officially considering next season a rebuilding year. During the Winter Meetings, Mozeliak candidly said that “It’s my intention to try” and trade Arenado to aid in this process, and Arenado was tacitly on board with these endeavors, though Arenado ultimately has control over his own fate via his no-trade clause.
The eight-time All-Star already used this influence to reject a proposed deal in December that would’ve seen him dealt to the Astros, with Houston taking on — according to conflicting reports — at least $45MM and as much as $59MM of the $60MM still owed on Arenado’s contract. (The full total is $74MM, but the Rockies are covering $10MM of that figure and the other $4MM is reduced due to deferrals.) In the wake of that scuttled deal, the Astros moved on entirely by signing Christian Walker to address their corner infield needs, leaving St. Louis still in need of a trade partner.
Later reports suggested Arenado hadn’t entirely closed the door on joining the Astros, but just wanted more time to evaluate the situation considering that Houston had just dealt Kyle Tucker to the Cubs earlier that same week. Mozeliak admitted today that he “was a little bit surprised” Arenado turned down the trade, and suggested that the Cardinals were hampered by the timing of the Tucker deal. “It was almost more like order of operation. Had we been a few days ahead of that, I think there would’ve been [a trade]….So yeah, things happen.” Mozeliak said.
In regards to the lack of other interest in Arenado, Mozeliak said “I would imagine the free agent market would be what’s slowing that down,” referencing the fact that Alex Bregman remains unsigned. Some movement on the Arenado front could happen once Bregman chooses his next team, and Mozeliak said he hadn’t yet spoken with Arenado or his camp about possibly expanding the third baseman’s list of preferred trade destinations.
In fact, Mozeliak said he hadn’t directly spoken with Arenado for close to a month, as the two last had contact before the holidays. Given the calendar, their next conversation might also have to address the scenario where Arenado isn’t traded prior to Spring Training, so he’d have to go through his normal spring routine under the weight of a potential change of scenery.
“There’s the mental side of this too, right?” Mozeliak said. “He’s probably thinking, like, OK, if I have to come to camp, I want to start preparing for that, and maybe he wants to be committed to [staying in St. Louis] at that point. So I don’t want to speak for him at this point, because we have not discussed that. But clearly, as we get closer to Jupiter, that is something we will have to touch on.”
In a piece for MLBTR Front Office subscribers earlier this week, Anthony Franco described the Cardinals’ winter as “a half-measure offseason,” given how the team hadn’t dealt any of its higher-salaried players, let alone Arenado. Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray left the Cards’ hands tied by refusing to waive their own no-movement clauses, yet impending free agents Ryan Helsley, Erick Fedde, and Steven Matz all seem like obvious trade candidates, and all remain on the roster here in mid-January.
Mozeliak provided some explanation for not moving Fedde or Matz today, noting that the Cards “don’t really love [the] idea” of potentially leaving the team short-handed on the pitching front. “We really feel like we have some depth in our rotation right now, so I really don’t want to start preparing tearing away from that, in terms of thinking about moving a position player to achieve some financial goals,” Mozeliak said. “That would be something we could consider as well, but we really don’t want to.”
Fedde is owed $7.5MM in 2025, while Matz is owed $12MM and would likely be more of a salary-dump candidate given his injuries and struggles in recent years. Helsley will receive $8.2MM in his final season of team control. While all have substantial salaries, the $27.2MM total is only slightly less than the $27MM owed to Arenado in 2025, when Colorado’s $5MM contribution is subtracted from his $32MM price tag. Between that math and the $27MM also owed to Arenado in 2026, it seems like the Cardinals simply want to exhaust all possibilities in moving Arenado before moving onto other payroll-cutting moves.
The more salary St. Louis is able to unload, the more the team can also add to the roster. Mozeliak suggested that if the money becomes available, the club could look at “obviously [the] bullpen” or possibly “a right-handed bat with some thump, something like that.” The Cardinals have a decent amount of lineup balance already, but with Arenado on the move, the team would presumably be looking to replace him with another righty bat at a much lower price tag. In theory, this bat might come in the outfield — right fielder Jordan Walker is right-handed, but Lars Nootbaar, Victor Scott II, and Michael Siani all swing from the left side.
