St. Louis Cardinals: Four players likely to be traded in 2020

Harrison Bader

2020 is the year that could make or break Harrison Bader. We have all seen Bader at his best and at his worst in the three seasons with the Cardinals. For Bader, it really all comes down to one aspect of his game: hitting against offspeed and breaking pitches.

Against fastballs, Bader had a good .297 xBA and an elite .611 xSLG in 2019. However, against breaking balls, those numbers fall to .148 and .225, even worse, against offspeed pitches, the numbers fall even more to .133 and .172. Once pitchers realized Bader can’t hit offspeed, the pitches Bader saw gradually leaned towards his weakness.

After seeing 59.2% fastballs in his rookie season, that number fell to 58.3% in 2018 and then 52% in 2019. The league is learning how to attack him, and if he doesn’t adjust, it will be hard for him to improve upon his .205 batting average in 2019.

Entering his fourth season, Bader’s defense is consistently Gold-Glove-caliber, but with the talent the Cards have in the outfield, the team can’t afford to have an outfielder who is 19% below average offensively playing regularly.

The Cards have given Bader chances to reset his swing at AAA, it just seems that in year four, it’s make or break time.

Daniel Ponce de Leon

Daniel Ponce de Leon has never really gotten a fair shake at the MLB level. After a ball was lined off of his head in a freak accident back in 2017, Ponce had his arrival to the MLB level delayed. It’s a miracle that he was every able to play again, but debuting at 26, Ponce de Leon has always done well.

In 2018, Ponce pitched in 11 games, starting four, and had a 2.73 ERA and a 1.121 WHIP. You would think that this performance would get him a greater look in 2019, but it really didn’t. Appearing in just 13 games last season, Ponce did garner eight starts, but his ERA jumped up to 3.70. This jump came from a lack of control, evident in his 4.8 walks per nine innings.

If Ponce could get that under control, his 9.6 strikeouts per nine would definitely play. Looking a little deeper, Ponce ranks incredibly well when looking at expected values. When it comes to xwOBA, xSLG, and xBA, he ranks in the 77th percentile, 86th percentile, and 86th percentile. He also is in the 96th percentile in hard-hit percentage.

This offseason, Ponce spent time at Driveline Baseball’s facility to get a high-tech look at his delivery. Results were good early as Ponce was having a great spring (one earned run in 13.0 innings).

However, the Cardinals don’t seem to have a role picked out for him other than in the bullpen in 2020 and after two years of riding the Memphis shuttle, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the team move on. If he has a good start to the year, he could have some good value as a cheap reliever.

Andrew Knizner

Of all the players on this list, I hope that Knizner is traded the most. This is not anything against him. In fact, he has been one of the most entertaining players to watch rise through the minor leagues. However, the writing is on the wall that the 25-year-old Knizner needs to be moved.

Just like Carson Kelly before him, Yadier Molina has a firm grasp on the catcher’s spot and it doesn’t seem like he’ll be giving it up soon. With a two-year extension in the works and Matt Wieters under contract again, Knizner is going to have to spend a second full season at AAA in 2020.

Given the circumstances, it’s the right move, but the team is wasting the early career of a stud catcher.

At AAA last year, Knizner hit a slash of .276/.357/.463 with 12 homers in just 66 games. Extrapolated out over an entire season, that puts him on pace to hit between 25-30 bombs.

It is just AAA, but an .821 OPS suggests he’s plenty ready for the next step. He just needs time to play. When he was with the big club last year, he didn’t play well because he rarely played.

Again, just like Carson Kelly before him, they need to move on and get some value from Knizner before he finally starts at 28. A catcher with offensive potential can net a lot in the trade market and the Cards would be idiots to let that go to waste.

Dakota Hudson

This trade is probably the most unlikely, but there was one scenario where trading the former first-rounder makes sense. If you are dangling something valuable like Hudson, you have to be going after a big fish like Nolan Arenado. In fact, a package of Hudson and Knizner would be a good start to what it would likely take to land the superstar third baseman.

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I, again, am a huge fan of Hudson’s and in his first full season of starting, he got great results. Starting 32 games with a 3.35 ERA looks great at first, but he had a way-too-high 4.4 walks per nine and his WHIP of 1.408 suggests he benefited more from his infield defense.

He did get groundballs at an MLB-best 56.9% rate, but Hudson is likely due for some regression in 2020 if nothing changes about his approach. Hudson was off to a better start in the spring as he had a WHIP under 1.0 in his 12.1 innings, allowing just four earned runs.

I’m not an advocate of trading Hudson unless the team is getting something huge in return as the 25-year-old sinkerballer has a chance to be a great innings-eater as he matures.

In all, the Cardinals can’t afford to sit pat at the trade deadline (whatever that may look like) in 2020 as they have the past few years. If there is a clear need, even if it’s addition by subtraction, the team needs to make a move on it and these players would likely be among the first to be moved.