St. Louis Cardinals: A week until the trade deadline

Could the Cardinals make a blockbuster deal? If they do, they may want to look out to the east coast.

If the St. Louis Cardinals want to make a splash, they should look no further than the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles have a few impressive pieces, but they are not a team that can compete. Making a big move this year could help them in building for the future, and the Cardinals may have just the right pieces to make that work.

The Orioles have three pieces of great interest to the Cardinals. Manny Machado, Brad Brach and Zach Britton, or any combination of those three, could be just the addition to take this team where they want to go. Of course, it would not come at a cheap price. However, the time to strike an Orioles team that hasn’t been exactly impressive of late is now.

Adding Manny Machado and one of the bullpen pieces would fill two gaping holes for this Cardinals team. The Cardinals could use a true three hitter. Machado would offer that and more. As for the bullpen pieces, that is unquestionably the worst part of this team. Adding either Brach or Britton would go a long way in helping the dumpster fire that has become the Cardinals bullpen. Britton would cot quite a bit more than Brach, but Britton would immediately slide into the closer’s role.

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We know the Orioles look to move Brach and Britton, but Buster Olney believes if this team is going to look into trading Britton, they should also look to move Machado too, to maximize his value. For the Cardinals, this could mean adding Machado a year earlier than they potentially could when he hits free agency.

The cost may be what keeps the Cardinals from truly making such a splash of a deal. To make this kind of deal, the Cardinals would likely have to move three or four of their top ten prospects along with some supplementary pieces. Potentially, a guy like Tyler Lyons could be an additional piece for a team in need of pitching, but you could expect to see a combination of Luke Weaver, Harrison Bader, Delvin Perez, Jack Flaherty and Carson Kelly in this kind of deal.