The 4 best trade deadline moves in Cardinals' franchise history

With the trade deadline less than a week away, speculation surrounding who will trade whom and which player will be on which team is rampant. However, the trade deadline also presents an opportunity for reflection.

The St. Louis Cardinals have been on the winning side of quite a few trades in their long and storied history. Some of those deals have leaned heavily in favor of the Redbirds while others have been marginal victories.

These four trades were stellar by the Cardinals' organization when they happened, and they stand the test of time today. They are in chronological order. Mind you, these are all deadline trades; I'm not including all trades in franchise history.

St. Louis Cardinals rob the Cubs by snagging Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio in 1964.

This is the most common of trades mentioned when discussing deadline deals in baseball history, particularly ones involving the Cardinals. The Cubs traded away a young Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio. There are a number of stats that can be analyzed to see that this was a fleece of all fleeces, but the fact that Broglio was out of baseball by 1966 while Brock was just getting started is the most obvious of them all.

Brock would go on to attend six All-Star Games, receive MVP votes in nine seasons (and finish second in 1974), and become a Hall of Famer. What made this deal even more painful for the team on the other side of the exchange was that they would have to watch their former player beat up on them for years to come.

Brock would be a part of two World Series teams in 1964 and 1967. Brock was a great all-around player, but his speed was enviable. He led all of baseball in stolen bases in 1966 (74), 1968 (62), 1973 (70), and 1974 (118).

This was a case of two teams trading young players who weren't quite proven at the highest level of baseball; Broglio won 21 games in 1960 and 18 in 1963, but a splattering of injuries was the demise of the once-promising pitcher.

This trade changed the Cardinals' fortunes throughout the '60s and '70s, and without Brock, there could be two banners missing from the outfield at Busch Stadium. Additionally, the Curse of the Billy Goat could have ended after just two decades rather than eight. Brock tragically passed away in 2020, but his legacy lives on.

The Cardinals trade for one of the best home run hitters in baseball history in 1997.

Mark McGwire was well into his 16-year career by the time he came to St. Loius, but the extreme heights he would eventually reach were still to come when the Cardinals acquired him via trade during the 1997 trade deadline.

The Oakland Athletics had little hope of re-signing the then 33-year-old, and they were hoping to milk the trade value he had left despite him being on the wrong side of the aging curve in baseball. At the time of the trade, the Cardinals sat at 51-55, well behind the division-leading Houston Astros (yes, for a time there were six teams in the National League Central and only four in the American League Central. Go figure).

This wasn't a trade where the Cardinals were trying to improve an already strong lineup; rather, they were hoping McGwire would provide the boost that the lineup needed. Mark would be a free agent at the end of the season, so the Cardinals were playing with fire when they sent three young players in T.J. Mathews, Eric Ludwick, and Blake Stein to Oakland. Mathews had a 2.62 ERA as a reliever in his first two seasons, Eric Ludwick was ranked 13th among pitching prospects in baseball, and Stein was a serviceable depth starter at the time.

What St. Louis got in exchange was more than they could imagine. Not only did McGwire bring winning back to the city soon after his arrival following some disastrous decades, but he also helped grow the sport with the great home run race of 1998. None of the players whom the Cardinals sent to Oakland ended up performing well for the organization, and the lopsided results of this deadline deal make it one of the best in the organization's history.

The Cardinals land Matt Holliday in another lopsided trade with the Oakland Athletics in 2009.

Oakland should be wary when trading their stars to the Cardinals at this point. For the second time in about two decades, St. Louis was able to snag a perennial All-Star while sending players back to Oakland who wouldn't pan out. This time, it was for an outfielder: Matt Holliday. Holliday would become a cornerstone in St. Louis for many years after this deal.

In what was one of John Mozeliak's biggest moves early in his tenure as general manager, St. Louis sent Clayton Mortensen, Shane Peterson, and Brett Wallace to the Athletics for corner outfielder Matt Holliday. At the time, this deal was a bit risky. Brett Wallace was one of the best prospects in baseball, and Clayton Mortensen was rising in the Cardinals' farm system. Peterson was a recent second-round draft pick.

Sending three young players with full team control to Oakland for an outfielder who was a free-agent-to-be was quite bold. If Holliday were to sign elsewhere, the trade would be maligned by fans. If any one of the prospects panned out to be as good or better than Holliday in St. Louis, the trade pendulum would swing dramatically in the other direction.

Instead, this deadline deal from 2009 couldn't have gone better for the Cardinals. Wallace was a below-average hitter with poor defense, Mortensen struggled to maintain a major league roster spot, and Petersen wasn't even a replacement-level hitter for his career.

Meanwhile, Matt Holliday would garner MVP votes in four of his seven seasons in St. Louis and go to four All-Star games. Holliday was also awarded a Silver Slugger trophy in 2010 with St. Louis. Some of Matt Holliday's best years came in St. Louis, and the lack of production from the players who went to Oakland made this deal at the deadline one of the best in St. Louis history.