Nolan Arenado might have played his final game with the St. Louis Cardinals

The "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" line from The Dark Knight is one of the more memorable movie quotes of our time, and I'd like to make a variant of it to describe how the Nolan Arenado experience seems to be ending with the St. Louis Cardinals.

"You either move on as a franchise icon or you stick around long enough that fans have a hard time remembering the good old days."

While the actual quote from Christopher Nolan's iconic Batman movie feels pretty appropriate for how Cardinals fans feel about John Mozeliak's tenure coming to a close with St. Louis, I believe my variant is an unfortunate reality that Arenado finds himself in. And now with news that the future Hall of Fame third baseman has been placed on the injured list with a shoulder injury, there's a really good chance we are seeing Arenado's final days as a St. Louis Cardinal this season.

Nolan Arenado hits the injured list after the Cardinals were unsuccessful in trading him at the deadline.

Katie Woo of The Athletic is reporting that Arenado hit the 10-day injured list today due to a shoulder ailment that caused him to miss time in July. Arenado hoped that time off during the All-Star break would help him get back to normal, but he's now going to be missing at least a fair bit of time here.

The Cardinals did not provide a timetable for his return, and this may be a bit "tinfoil hat" of me, but I honestly don't know if we'll see Arenado again this season. My guess is that we will, since Arenado loves playing baseball and we have no indication that the injury is too significant to return from this season, but as the Cardinals try to give as much runway to young players as possible down the stretch, not having to fit Arenado into the lineup would be helpful in doing so.

Nolan Gorman is going to be activated today to replace Arenado on the roster, and relievers Ryan Fernandez, Andre Granillo, and Roddery Munoz will all take over the roster spots that Ryan Helsley, Phil Maton, and Steven Matz held prior to being traded at the deadline.

But going back to Arenado's future here, the club was hoping to trade him at the deadline to a contender, and I have a hard time believing that if Arenado did get moved to, say, the Houston Astros, that he would be going on the injured list right now. This screams to me "Go get your body right and let's try and move you in the offseason" rather than an abbreviated stint to get him back on the field for St. Louis.

I know John Mozeliak and the DeWitt family won't utter the word, but the Cardinals are in a rebuild right now. 2023 was the sounding alarm that they were heading this way, and their lackluster attempts to avoid one in 2024 and now 2025 have prolonged what this may look like. Arenado has two years and $42 million remaining on his contract beyond this season (with $5 million of that being paid down by the Colorado Rockies), so it's extremely likely that the Cardinals will be looking to find a suitor this offseason that's willing to take on as much of Arenado's remaining salary as possible.

Through 96 games this year, Arenado slashed .235/.294/.366 with 10 home runs and 43 RBI, grading out as 16% below league average at the plate but still remaining one of the best defensive third basemen in the game. But with how bad the bat has been this year, he was worth just 0.8 fWAR on the season, and there are few signs, if any, that Arenado is going to get back to being an impact bat of any kind moving forward.