The Cardinals were once suitors for this Blue Jays star

For 19 years, Yadier Molina served as the guiding light for the St. Louis Cardinals. It had become difficult to imagine a Cardinals team without his steady hand calling games behind the plate. But all good things must end, and after Molina finally called it a career following the 2022 season, the team began its hunt for a starting catcher for the first time in John Mozeliak's tenure.

The Cardinals eventually signed Willson Contreras as a free agent, and it became clear in 2023 that the team was woefully unprepared for post-Molina life, as they yanked Contreras out from behind the plate for a spell during the season and had pitchers grumble about his game-calling and preparation.

But Contreras wasn't the only catcher whom the Cardinals had been linked to. During the 2022-2023 offseason, some sources considered the Cardinals to be a prime landing spot for one of the backstops from the Toronto Blue Jays who is now starring in October.

The Cardinals were rumored to be candidates to trade for Alejandro Kirk.

Kirk had just come off of an All-Star campaign, where he hit .285 with 14 home runs and won a Silver Slugger Award along with playing exceptional defense. Toronto boasted a plethora of catchers at the time, as along with Kirk, the Blue Jays possessed Danny Jansen and a young Gabriel Moreno. What they lacked was a strong outfielder, which made the Cardinals appear as logical trade partners. St. Louis had a surplus of outfielders, including Tyler O'Neill, Lars Nootbaar, Dylan Carlson and Alec Burleson, as well as utility player Brendan Donovan.

One of the more intriguing names that the Cardinals could have dangled in trade discussions was Nootbaar. Although Nootbaar had hit just .228 on the season, he showed an excellent eye at the plate, which gave him a .788 OPS, and he also boasted strong Statcast metrics, which suggested that there was plenty of untapped potential for him to grow into.

Although Nootbaar had strong numbers under the hood, the Cardinals likely would have had to give up something else to complete a Nootbaar-Kirk swap. It had been established by that point that Mozeliak was fearful of trading young talent out of the possibility that a player could become the next "one that got away" in the mold of Randy Arozarena.

Noot-mania was sweeping the globe at this point, as his performance for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic and the Cardinals' "pepper grinder" celebration that he took overseas made the baseball world fall in love with his performance and personality. In November of 2022, during the peak of his popularity, I floated the idea of trading Nootbaar to Toronto for one of the Blue Jays' catchers. Now, as Kirk propels himself toward stardom and Nootbaar fades into irrelevance, Mozeliak is again being lambasted for holding on to a player past his sell-by date.

Had the Cardinals opted to explore the trade route and acquire Kirk for Nootbaar and potentially a prospect, the trade would likely be seen as a fleece for St. Louis today. It probably wouldn't have changed the course of the Cardinals entirely as they look toward a rebuild, but Kirk, who will be 27 in November, could have been a building block for the Cardinals in their next competitive window.