St. Louis Cardinals: Winter Meetings primer and predictions

The St. Louis Cardinals trade an outfielder for a reliever

This trade screams Cardinals and I don’t have a name for you here, but if I had to guess what truly realistic trade might happen, this is it. The Cardinals have a huge logjam of mid-level prospects in the outfield and while a lot of them are in line to get the chance to step in and replace Marcell Ozuna in left field, not all of them are going to be able to be on the MLB roster.

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For that reason, I believe that the Cardinals should and will flip one or two of them for that ever-exciting middle-inning reliever. This is never fun, but a Grichuk-for-Leone-esque swap is something that the team does almost yearly, and it’s something to keep the bullpen competitive and fresh.

With Carlos Martinez moving back into the starting rotation, there is a hole out in the bullpen for someone to step in. With Ryan Helsley, Daniel Ponce de Leon, and Junior Fernandez on the roster, they are the first picks for the spot, but there is never a bad time to acquire more pitching and there are plenty of guys out there to choose from.

It’s not exciting, but again, it’s necessary and it fits the Cardinals bill.

Most of us know that this offseason is going to be one of the more boring ones that Cardinals fans have had to suffer through in the past few years. This is mostly due (as Anthony Stalter of 101 ESPN often says) to the fact that the Cardinals don’t have a glaring hole they need to plug. In those cases, they often just wait and see what they have then adjust from there. It’s financially prudent, but it’s not exciting.

There may be some action, there may not. For me right now, I’m just excited to dream about what could happen, even if it doesn’t. That’s what makes all of us baseball fans. The dream of what things could be, even if they aren’t the best move to make. Either way, we won’t have to wait long to see what the team does, and before you know it, it’ll be time for Spring Training again.