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Ranking the St. Louis Cardinals biggest X-Factors post-trade deadline
By Josh Jacobs
No. 2: Jordan Montgomery
After a shocking, buzzer beating deadline deal that sent Yankees’ lefty Jordan Montgomery to St. Louis for center fielder Harrison Bader, Montgomery has become one of the biggest pieces to the Cardinals puzzle down the stretch.
In 22 starts this season, Montgomery has thrown 119.2 innings with a 3.53 ERA, with the majority of those games coming in the difficult American League East for the Yankees. In his first start for St. Louis, he shut down his former team and one of the best lineups in baseball, going 5 innings while allowing just 3 base runners and no runs. He was removed from the game with leg cramps but proved he has what it takes to pitch on the biggest stage.
This series in easily the most important the Cardinals have played in all season, and the club set a stadium record for attendance with 48,581 present to watch the left hander deal on Saturday.
Now St. Louis has Montgomery, Miles Mikolas, and Adam Wainwright to rely upon come post season time, as well as Jose Quintana and perhaps Flaherty. It is actually mind boggling how much better the Cardinals rotation got in just a weeks time. Montgomery gives the Cardinals the arm they need in big playoff series, something the club should be a part of now.
Big props have to go out to John Mozeliak and his team for pulling off one of the best deadlines in recent memory, which says a lot considering they were in conversations for Soto as well.