St. Louis Cardinals Report: Arenado trade talks are past preliminary stage

Talks between the St. Louis Cardinals and Rockies around third baseman Nolan Arenado are progressing. What’s the latest news?

If you’re like me, you may be getting tired of hearing rumor after rumor about the St. Louis Cardinals’ connection with the Rockies involving Nolan Arenado. At this point, we have broken it down almost every way it can be done, and the basic thought is that: He’s going to cost a ton, but it should be worth it.

Arenado would be a transformative presence in the lineup and in the field. His huge contract is something the Cardinals are probably not looking at with a smile, but Arenado’s body of work speaks volumes about why he’s worth what he’s getting paid. He’s under 30 and in his prime.

Many people fear the opt-out that Arenado has in two years, but in all reality, if he takes that opt-out, that is great. What that would mean is that Arenado has just finished two years with the Cardinals and has been good enough to make him and his camp believe that he is worth more than $35M a year on the open market.

At that point, you no longer have to worry that back end of the contract where Arenado is going to be declining and overpaid. The Cardinals got two great years out of him, then they can both go on their merry way.

Back to the point, this Tuesday has brought another report, not a rumor. This report is from Jon Morosi of MLB.com and is a very reputable source. Earlier this week, it came out that the Cardinals were in “preliminary” talks with the Rockies and that if a trade was going to happen, they would be a frontrunner.

Before that, some (Ken Rosenthal) said that he believed an Arenado trade was “inevitable.” Adding to this, the Rockies’ main broadcaster (Drew Goodman) said that he believes Arenado is going to get traded. 

Now after all that noise, we have this next report.

This report doesn’t mean that a trade is imminent or anything like that, it just means that things are progressing and the Cardinals are in the lead for Arenado.

Some of you may have seen the proposed trade that a Rockies reporter published about the Cardinals giving up Carlos Martinez, Dakota Hudson, Tyler O’Neill, and Matthew Liberatore. That was all but proven false by John Mozeliak himself.

The one name that I believe will definitely be included is Hudson. Based off what Morosi and others have said, He would be a definite starting point. From there, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that Gorman and/or Matthew Liberatore were a necessity and it gets difficult from there.

According to Morosi, the Rockies have “admired [Matt] Carpenter for several years.” So he could be another name we see moved.

At the time of writing, less than 40% of people voting said yes to this trade. Based off talks with the Rockies’ FanSided page, this package is light and the Rockies wouldn’t consider it.

Fans have mentioned this, and I agree. The talks with this trade are very reminiscent of the Paul Goldschmidt trade last winter. We heard about all these steps on the way to a trade and then after all the buildup, it finally happened. This year might be the same way.

The one thing we know is that this trade is going to hurt. There’s no way the Cardinals get out of it without some section of fans being angry. Arenado is a top 10 player and those players don’t come cheap. Don’t delude yourself into thinking the Cardinals are going to get Arenado for nothing.

There is no definite timeline on this trade, but it’s never a bad thing to see things progressing. I don’t have insider sources or anything like that, I don’t know anything more than you do. I just know that the Cardinals are trying to do something big here, and that should be encouraging.