The offseason in Major League Baseball tends to take a while to develop. The St. Louis Cardinals have an opportunity to break that trend to an extent.
The Cardinals are reportedly interested in "jumping the market", acquiring one of their starting pitchers early on in the offseason before the dominos really start to fall. Now, there has to be interest on both sides for deals to get done right now, but I think there are a few different names we could see the Cardinals finalize a deal for or with over the coming week.
With how the market has started to develop in recent weeks, the idea of the Cardinals jumping the market seems more and more intersting to me. There's a real chance the bidding wars for many of the top arms get out of control in December, and while the Cardinals should be aggressive in that bidding too, securing at least their number two starter in the coming week would be a huge relief. It also would allow the Cardinals the chance to gameplan better for which number one starter to go after, knowing what they have to work with after their first move.
Historically, you do not really see many moves happening before Thanksgiving, outside of non-tenders, smaller contracts, and 40-man roster shakeups. Now, catch the right player at the right time, and a deal can happen soon.
Now, these aren't going to be massive names more than likely. Most big names wait until at least the Winter Meeting to really get rolling on making deals happen. But if the player has significant family interests driving their decision, or the team needs to move off of a player, impactful signings or trades can happen before the holiday.
These things are hard to predict since there are so many factors that go into when deals go down, but I think these 8 moves have a higher chance of happening for the Cardinals in the coming week than most of the other moves they have been linked to.