The trade that Cardinals fans clowned is now paying major dividends

If you're a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, you ultimately want them to be successful in all of their decision-making. Even if you disagree with what they choose to do, if it produces good players or winning baseball, that's the goal, right?

For years, Cardinals fans wanted Paul DeJong off the roster. After an excellent rookie campaign and solid years two and three of his career with St. Louis, DeJong fell off a cliff offensively, posting an 87, 84, and 53 wRC+ in consecutive seasons from 2020 to 2022.

Still, the Cardinals kept him around for the 2023 season, in large part due to his contract extension. They held out hope that he could provide any value to the club that year, but as things fell apart at the big league level that year, they had no choice but to hope a suitor would come calling for him.

Luckily for the Cardinals, when Bo Bichette hit the injured list for the Toronto Blue Jays at the 2023 trade deadline, they were desperate enough to trade for DeJong. The Cardinals had to eat money on his deal, and the prospect they got in return, well, didn't excite anyone.

Two years later, that "throwaway" prospect has become an excellent high-leverage reliever for the club.

Matt Svanson's rise as a shutdown reliever means the Paul DeJong trade is paying major dividends.

When the Cardinals acquired Svanson, it totally made sense why fans and prospect pundits weren't all that impressed with the move. The fact that the Cardinals got anything in return for DeJong was a plus, but a 24-year-old reliever who had never pitched above High-A isn't exactly a promising profile.

Still, Svanson had a 1.23 RA in 24 games, and upon being acquired by St. Louis and promoted to Double-A, he maintained a 3.00 ERA in those 15 games. Svanson had a variety of opportunities to close games for both the Blue Jays and Cardinals, and in 2024, he recorded 27 saves with a 2.69 ERA for the Springfield Cardinals.

After being added to the 40-man roster this offseason, Svanson got his first taste of big league action and has been nothing short of awesome for the Cardinals this year. He's appeared in 32 games while covering 50.1 innings of work to the tune of a 1.97 ERA and 2.96 FIP. He's not a major strikeout guy, but he limits baserunners with his 0.83 WHIP and .145 batting average against.

Even if this is far and away Svanson's best year in the big leagues, that's already a pretty nice outcome for a player like DeJong who essentially had negative value at the time of the trade. Sure, he had rebounded to be slightly below league-average at the plate, but his contract and overall fall-off did not inspire confidence in anyone.

Relievers are so volatile, but considering how dynamic Svanson has been this year, the Cardinals may end up finding a diamond in the rough here, adding a cost-controlled back-end reliever to their mix for a player fans had given up on and in a deal that they clowned on.

Chalk that deal up as a win for the Cardinals' front office.