4 lessons the Cardinals can learn from the World Series champion Dodgers

Lesson 3 - Nothing will go according to plan. Champions overcome it.

Had Willson Contreras not missed half the year due to injury, and had Tommy Edman been ready when he was expected to be, the Cardinals would not have missed the playoffs, right? Probably, yes. But, the injuries and setbacks suffered by the World Series champion Dodgers were far greater than anything the Cardinals had to overcome this year. Every single member of their Opening Day rotation spent significant time on the injured list, and both Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman suffered major injuries and spent much time away from the team. It seemed like Shohei Ohtani and Teoscar Hernandez were the lone constants keeping the Dodgers running.

I'm not going to try to convince anyone that the Dodgers were somehow a scrappy underdog team, but nothing went according to plan for them and they still won the World Series. They simply had the depth on their roster to overcome the losses they suffered throughout the year. Unlike previous years where the Dodgers fell short, the 2024 Dodgers weren't favored nearly as much by baseball analysts. The Postseason rotation of Jack Flaherty, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Walker Buehler just wasn't deep enough with the need to throw a bullpen game in each series at least once. However, Dave Roberts masterfully managed the bullpen and the offense clicked just enough for the Dodgers to take down the Padres in five games and steamroll their way through the rest of the Postseason.

Building a Cardinals team with so little margin for error was never going to work out. The rotation worked according to plan, but one more injury to a starting pitcher or a high-leverage reliever would've sent St. Louis spiraling into the basement as they did in 2023. They simply couldn't afford to underperform offensively the way they did, and the combined struggles between Goldschmidt and Arenado as well as the injuries to Contreras and Edman were too much to bear. They put together a strong run but fell short because one gear in the cog came loose. The Dodgers fell apart and put themselves back together with supplementary pieces. The Cardinals ran out of extra pieces before the season began. Perhaps the "reset" or rebuild should've come after 2023 instead of right now.

Lesson 4 - Trades can't be judged fairly right when they happen.

When the Cardinals traded Tommy Edman to the Dodgers in a three-team trade with the White Sox in exchange for Erick Fedde, it was considered one of the best moves of the 2024 trade deadline for St. Louis. Trading an injured center fielder for a much-needed starting pitcher brought back memories of the 2022 trade deadline, where the Cardinals acquired Jordan Montgomery from the Yankees in exchange for Harrison Bader.

However, to jump to a similar conclusion regarding the Erick Fedde trade was rash. While pundits all across the national baseball landscape deemed the Cardinals massive winners of the trade deadline for acquiring Tommy Pham and Erick Fedde "for free," this trade was ultimately won by the Dodgers, and it wasn't particularly close.

It's true that Tommy Edman didn't return until the end of August from injury, but the Dodgers also acquired Michael Kopech, a staple in their rotation for the stretch run. Meanwhile, the Cardinals got a diminished Erick Fedde and a few weeks of Tommy Pham before he was put on waivers and sent to the Kansas City Royals for nothing. I'm not saying it was a poor trade by the Cardinals, as they took their shot at getting a flawed roster into the Postseason. For a team that had decided on trying to contend, it was a fine trade, but looking back at it, there's no way the Cardinals can be considered winners at the trade deadline.

Edman started off hot with the Dodgers, slugging four homers in a two-game stretch including a pair off Cubs ace Shota Imanaga, but cooled off towards the end of the season. However, his .237/.294/.417 was extremely respectable considering his splits against left-handed pitching. To the surprise of no one, Edman mashed lefties and recorded a 1.299 OPS against them in his brief regular season stint. For a Cardinals team seeking a lefty killer at the trade deadline, it turns out they had the best one on their team the entire time.

And lastly, in a cruel running joke from the baseball gods, Edman won Championship Series MVP. Again, it's no surprise one of the most clutch Cardinals hitters in recent memory led his team to important Postseason victories, but it was disheartening to watch yet another key player get away and succeed in the playoffs somewhere else. The versatile and underrated fan favorite had become a star on the game's biggest stage in the blink of an eye.

I'm not trying to say that the Fedde trade was a bad idea, or that the Cardinals should be condemned for moving Edman, but rather that it was an even more shrewd deal by the Dodgers that went under the radar until their World Series run. I myself am guilty of this, but in the future, we must wait before jumping to conclusions about trades that haven't fully played out yet. The Cardinals were outsmarted here, and the front office should look to make winning moves like the Dodgers going forward.