15 best trades in St. Louis Cardinals history

The St. Louis Cardinals are one of the most storied franchises in all of Major League Baseball, in no small part due to some incredible trades they have made throughout their history.

Many of the Cardinals' 11 World Series Championships, 23 National League Pennants, and 32 playoff appearances can be attributed to players they have shrewdly swiped from other organizations. While they've made their fair share of terrible transactions over the years (you can read about those here), they've ultimately brought in several Hall of Famers, MVPs, Cy Youngs, and postseason heroes via trades.

I wanted to take a look at what are arguably the 15 greatest trades the Cardinals have made throughout their history as an organization. I have spent many hours thumbing through the candidates, considering their place in history, and doing my best to weigh the package given up for said player as well as the production the Cardinals got in return to come up with the best moves they have ever made.

This list is going to be subjective, as I decided against allowing a stat like WAR to determine the ranking, but I did provide that information as context around each deal. I'm going to be honest, though, this list was incredibly difficult to make, and I'm sure you may have your own way of ranking these names.

For each trade, I will include the total surplus fWAR that the Cardinals acquired in the deal, but I am only counting the fWAR that player accrued with the Cardinals and weighing that against the fWAR that the players they traded way accrued for the team they were traded to, not any fWAR they gained with other organizations.

With all of that being said, let's jump into the ranking!

Here are the 15 best trades in St. Louis Cardinals history

First, let's briefly look at some honorable mentions.

Honorable Mentions: Bruce Sutter, Jack Clark, Bill White,  Joaquin Andujar, David Freese, and I am sure many more

Among the names I listed here, there are a combined 15 All-Star selections, seven Gold Gloves, four World Series championships, a World Series and NLCS MVP, as well as a Hall of Famer in this mix. I told you this list was hard to make!

Joaquin Andujar helped lead one of the best rotations in baseball for the Cardinals in the 1980s after coming over from the Houston Astros, placing in the top 10 in Cy Young voting three times and receiving MVP votes in 1982. Bruce Sutter was the closer for many of those teams, and while the Cardinals had to pay a high price of OF Leon Durham to acquire Sutter (who went on to have a great career for the Cubs), Sutter shut the door on games for the Cardinals for many years and was a key cog in their World Series win in 1982.

Speaking of another 1980s hero for the Cardinals, Jack Clark provided the Cardinals with middle-of-the-order production for three seasons, while Bill White did the same for them in the 1960s and helped lead St. Louis to a World Series championship in 1964.

And I feel like Mr. David Freese has to at least be mentioned on this list. Flipping a Hall of Fame-level outfielder at the end of his prime for the hometown kid who led the Cardinals to their most recent World Series seems like a pretty big deal to me!

With all of that being said, here are the top 15 best trades in St. Louis Cardinals history