Cardinals should be grateful that they didn't trade for this oft-injured pitcher

In the 2023-2024 offseason, St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak tasked himself with rebuilding a starting pitching staff that desperately needed reinforcements. The club was coming off a 71-91 season, and with only Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz returning to the rotation in 2024, work needed to be done to fill out the starting staff.

Mozeliak described it as "yeoman's work" to find three starting pitchers in one offseason. While internal players like Zack Thompson, Andre Pallante, and Matthew Liberatore were options, the organization wanted more strikeouts than what those three prospects could provide. Therefore, Mozeliak was going shopping.

The Cardinals were connected to all sorts of free agents at the top of the market, including Aaron Nola, Blake Snell, and Sonny Gray, whom the Cardinals eventually signed to a three-year deal. John Mozeliak rounded out his rotation with veterans Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson. Thus, a rotation was born.

However, there were whispers and rumors that the Cardinals considered had dipping their toes into the trade market for a starting pitcher.

In the 2023-2024 offseason, several veteran starting pitchers were traded, including Corbin Burnes (Milwaukee Brewers to the Baltimore Orioles), Chris Sale (Boston Red Sox to the Atlanta Braves), and Tyler Glasnow (Tampa Bay Rays to the Los Angeles Dodgers).

The Cardinals were connected to one specific player in the trade pool that offseason.

The St. Louis Cardinals should be happy that they didn't trade for Tyler Glasnow in the 2023-2024 offseason.

Tyler Glasnow was one of the game's best pitchers following the 2023 season. The right-handed pitcher was coming off a career-high 120 innings, and he had a career ERA of 3.89 up to that point. His 11.5 K/9 was one of the best in baseball from 2016-2023. However, Glasnow had averaged just 66 innings per year at that point.

With only Steven Matz and Miles Mikolas on the roster heading into 2024, John Mozeliak may have been hesitant to sign a pitcher who could feasibly miss most of the season at any given time. Therefore, the Cardinals stayed away from the tall righty in the trade market.

Glasnow was instead traded to (and extended by) the Los Angeles Dodgers. In return, the Rays received right-handed pitching prospect Ryan Pepiot and outfielder Jonny DeLuca from the Dodgers. Pepiot, 26 at the time, was under control through the 2028 season, and DeLuca was still in his pre-arbitration years.

Finding a comparable trade from the Cardinals for Tyler Glasnow would be difficult, but this would probably have taken a pitcher like Matthew Liberatore, a former Ray himself, and an outfielder like Alec Burleson.

In his first year with the Dodgers, Glasnow threw 134 innings with a 3.49 ERA en route to his first All-Star nomination. Glasnow struck out 168 batters, and his 0.948 WHIP and 2.90 FIP prove that his success wasn't a fluke. Big things were expected out of Glasnow heading into the 2025 season.

He won't be able to prove the skeptics wrong, however.

For the second straight outing, Tyler Glasnow was removed from a start early due to an injury. He allowed back-to-back home runs against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Glasnow was pulled while making warmup throws in the second inning. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said that it's "certainly a possibility" that Glasnow lands on the injured list.

While Glasnow is a talented pitcher with a strong ability to strike batters out, losing a controllable starter like Matthew Liberatore and a supplementary player like Alec Burleson for a pitcher who could miss an entire season at any given moment would have been devastating for the Cardinals. The organization is now in the midst of a youth revival, and Liberatore and Burleson are at the heart of this movement.

Glasnow's fifth injury with the Dodgers since being traded proves that John Mozeliak was right in staying away from the oft-injured starting pitcher.