St. Louis Cardinals: Offer Bader for Brad Hand, add to the ‘pen

The St. Louis Cardinals need help in the bullpen. Plain and simple. The San Diego Padres’ closer Brad Hand is on the market and the Cardinals should offer Harrison Bader.

The St. Louis Cardinals‘ bullpen is a problem. A problem that has cost them wins this year and will continue to do so until it is improved. Let me preface this article by saying that I am a Harrison Bader fan. I love the heart and hustle that he has brought to this team this year and I can’t help but hope it rubs off on some of the other players on.

Bader is absolutely outplaying any of the projections that scouts had for him while he was still a prospect. As he rose through the system he was never regarded as anything more than a solid fourth outfielder and right now, he should be starting the majority of the games in right field for the Cardinals. Bader has made highlight play after highlight play this year and gets every ounce of potential he can from his body.

As great as he is, I believe that Brad Hand of San Diego could be an answer for the Cardinal bullpen. As I wrote in my piece about the Cardinals’ trade deadline options, Brad Hand has three years of control and could plug in as a third option for Mike Matheny to trust.

This year Hand is pitching with a 2.25 ERA, 3.18 FIP, and currently has 21 saves. With that in mind, Jon Morosi recently tweeted the below:

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Devers is the Red Sox 21 year old third baseman who is struggling a little in his sophomore season. The former top 20 MLB prospect is currently batting .238 and 11 homers with just a .287 OBP . Even with his average batting line at the moment, sophomore slumps happen and he is just 21 years old.

There are only two names that I would consider young everyday players on the Cardinals: Paul

Dejong and Harrison Bader. I would absolutely not trade Dejong for Hand, but Bader is a different story. I obviously don’t run the Padres, but for this piece I am assuming that they would take Bader for Hand.

So now the question becomes if the Cardinals should trade Bader at all. He is currently batting .256/.317/.398 but has accumulated a 1.6 WAR on the season due to his fielding and his 13 Defensive Runs Saved which would be tied with Brett Gardner for best in the league if Bader qualified for innings played.

According to a poll run by our twitter, Cardinals fans aren’t very supportive of trading Bader:

This is exactly what I was expecting as fan bases always view their players as more valuable than what they may actually be. In my eyes, Bader is a heart and hustle hero who is outplaying his projection and may never be too much more than a borderline 3rd/4th outfielder. I may and I hope to be wrong about that, but the Cardinals are flush with outfield prospects and Bader holds the most value that can be replaced at the moment.

Just as when a stock is soaring up in price, fans tend to think that the price will keep rising and rising, but I believe Bader will cool off and his trade value will drop. The time to trade him is now.

Next: Other players for the Cardinals to target

The Cardinals would be much better off from trading for Brad Hand. Tyler O’Neill could replace Bader on the major league bench and Hand would be able to add to the Hicks/Norris combo out of the bullpen. What do you think about trading Bader?