15 best trades in St. Louis Cardinals history

#7 - Curt Flood (1957)

Cardinals acquire: OF Curt Flood and OF Joe Taylor
Reds acquire: RHP Marty Kutyna, RHP Willard Schmidt, and RHP Franklin Wieand

Total surplus fWAR: 36.0

Best known for pioneering modern free agency for professional sports, many people forget just how good a player Curt Flood truly was. Had he not stood his ground and gotten blackballed by MLB for forcing free agency into existence, he would have been a sure-fire Hall of Famer.

That infamous situation occurred after the Cardinals traded Flood to the Phillies following the 1969 season and his refusal to play for Philadelphia, but prior to that, the Cardinals swiped Flood from the Reds in one of the most lopsided trades in franchise history. The Cardinals traded away three pitchers who would do very little for the Reds in exchange for Flood, one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball history, who also happened to swing a good bat.

While advanced defensive metrics do not go back to the 1950s and 1960s, Flood did collect seven Gold Gloves as one of the premier center fielders in his day. He ranks 10th all-time among center fielders in outfield assists due to his rocket of an arm, 14th all-time in put outs by a center fielder, and 23rd all-time in fielding percentage by a center fielder as well.

While his bat lags behind some of the greats in Cardinals history, it was still highly impactful in various seasons of his career, such as 1965, 1967. and 1968. Overall, he was a league-average hitter with St. Louis, but still received MVP votes in six different seasons because of his all-around game, finishing fourth in NL MVP voting in 1968 behind all-time greats like teammate Bob Gibson, Pete Rose, and Willie McCovey.

The Cardinals won two World Series championships with Flood during the 1964 and 1967 seasons, cementing him as a critical part of the Cardinals' history during the 1960s. While Gibson, Lou Brock, Tim McCarver, Orlando Cepeda, Steven Carlton, and Roger Maris get a lot of the praise, Flood was a critical member of that core.

Flood's final season in St. Louis in 1969, and at age-31, there was plenty of time ahead of him to rack up more Gold Gloves and winning, but because of the dispute with the Phillies and Major League Baseball, he would appear in just 13 games in 1971 and then call it a career.

Overall, Flood was a 36.4 fWAR player during his time with the Cardinals, and it is truly a shame that he still has not been inducted into the Hall of Fame. I believe that day is coming, not just because of the way he pioneered player movement in modern sports, but also because of the incredible player he was for many years.