6 Cardinals players that won't survive the trade deadline

The writing has been on the wall for the St. Louis Cardinals for a while now. They got off to a historically bad start to the season and as the weeks and months dragged on, things did not improve as the lacking of quality starting pitching was too much of a hurdle to overcome. With the second half just getting started, St. Louis is 14 games below .500 and in last place in the National League Central.

Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak had previously been insistent that this club could compete and even talked about buying at the trade deadline, but his tune has changed in recent days. Now, it sounds like the Cardinals are focused on 2024 which means that guys that will be free agents at year's end are likely to be shopped around and St. Louis won't be pushing for any short-term fixes for 2023.

This is fairly new territory for the Cardinals as they are used to being competitive each and every season. The biggest question to ask now is who are the players that are the most likely to be traded at the deadline.

Here are the 6 players that the St Louis Cardinals are the most likely to move at the trade deadline

While it remains possible that the Cardinals could make a bigger move like trading Paul Goldschmidt at the trade deadline, that still seems unlikely. Everything that is being said publicly is pointing to St. Louis wanting to do a quick retooling of their roster with the goal of being competitive again next season and that means they will want to keep their core together for now. So, we will be focused primarily on pending free agents and expendable roster pieces for the moment.

Lets take a look at the six Cardinals players that are the most likely to get traded at the trade deadline.