What is Nolan Arenado's value and how does that play into the Cardinals' trade talks?

You've seen them for months now - hypothetical trades thrown out for St. Louis Cardinals' third baseman Nolan Arenado. Whether it's our site, other Cardinals blogs, national media, other team's content creators, Twitter/X, Facebook, and more, everyone seems to have an opinion on how valuable Arenado is.

While there have been plenty of wild ideas thrown out there that clearly overvalue or undervalue what the Cardinals could expect in return for Arenado, it is pretty difficult to pin down the value of someone in a situation as complicated as the one in which Arenado is. The Cardinals and opposing teams have to factor in a number of things, including, but not limited to:

1. Arenado's decline in performance over the last two years
2. Arenado's no-trade clause
3. The three-year, $74 million contract he's owed
4. $5 million payments on Arenado's contract from the Rockies in 2025 and 2026
5. How much money the Cardinals are willing to eat on his contract
6. And more!

Obviously, Arenado's contract does not match the production he has provided as of late. He's being paid to perform like a superstar, and while fans overrate how bad he was in 2024, it is clear he was not the same player since the first half of 2023.

So how do you determine the trade value of a player like Arenado? Well, there's some helpful tools out there that I think can give us a pretty good idea of what the Cardinals should expect in a deal.

Nolan Arenado's trade value is heavily impacted by the amount of money the Cardinals are willing to eat on his deal

Aside from internal projections and feelings that each club would have about Arenado and his willingness to go somewhere, what ultimately will determine his trade value for clubs he is interested in going to is how much money the Cardinals are willing to eat on Arenado's deal. Let's break this down into smaller chunks together.

The concept of "surplus value"

You may have seen this floated around online before, but the idea of "surplus value" is something front offices weigh in almost every baseball decision they make.

Everyone loves stars, and signing a guy like Shohei Ohtani or Juan Soto really helps boost your chances of contending. But where teams make their bread and butter is when they can find players who outperform their monetary value. It's why young players and prospects are so valuable. Here is an example of what I am talking about.

In 2024, Bryan Woo and Luis Castillo were both worth 2.3 fWAR for the Seattle Mariners. Woo started 22 games and posted a 2.89 ERA over 121.1 innings pitched, while Castillo made 30 starts, covering 175. innings to the tune of a 3.64 ERA. Both are great pitchers, but Woo is clearly the more valuable player. Why? He was able to provide the Mariners the exact same value as Castillo did in 2024, but he did so while making $20.9 million less than Castillo.

FanGraphs has a great stat called "Dollars" that aims to assign a monetary value to players based on their fWAR production. Generally speaking, every 1 fWAR that a player produces is worth about $7.9 million in the open market. Both Castillo and Woo were worth 2.3 fWAR in 2024, meaning that both players put up about $18.2 million in value. That means Castillo was slightly overpaid for the production he provided in 2024, while Woo was a massive bargain and had a "surplus value" of $17.4 million.

What is Nolan Arenado's surplus value?

Let's go back to Arenado. In 2024, Arenado put up 3.1 fWAR, meaning he was worth about $25.1 million, falling about $10 million short of his salary in terms of production. In 2025, the Cardinals are on the hook for $27 million of Arenado's $32 million owed to him (thanks Rockies), $22 million in 2026 (thanks again Rockies), and $15 million in 2027, which was added onto his contract when he declined to opt out of his contract with the Cardinals following the 2022 season.

If Arenado were to put up another 3.1 fWAR season in 2025, he'd actually be only slightly overpaid in that scenario. But that does mean that any club looking to acquire him would see him as a bit of a negative asset, necessitating the Cardinals kicking in some money as the Rockies did for them.

Derrick Goold has pointed out that teams will likely be looking at that $15 million owed to Arenado in 2027 as a good barometer of how much money they would want back for taking on Arenado. If the Cardinals were to kick in $5 million of their own money for 2025, 2026, and 2027, Arenado should actually be a "positive" asset in trade talks, but not by much.

At that point, the club acquiring Arenado would be paying him just $22 million in 2025, $17 million in 2026, and $10 million in 2027. If Arenado could maintain being a 3-win player in each of the next three years of his deal, he'd be worth $23.7 million per season over the next three years while the acquiring club would only be paying him $49 million total for that production.

Arenado, in theory, would be a neutral asset in 2025, a $5.7 million bargain in 2026, and provide the acquiring club $13.7 million in surplus value in 2027. Because of this, I think the Cardinals could expect actual value in return for Arenado if they ate that much money. No, not some top 100 prospect, but the trade would not just be some pure salary dump then.

Now, this is where it all gets tricky. What do clubs actually project Arenado to be over the next three seasons? Even if they believe he can bounce back for them and be even better than a 3-win player, clubs are going to smartly acknowledge that the age curve could see him regress even further. What would help the Cardinals out a ton would be if multiple teams pivot to Arenado here soon. While there have been a variety of clubs who have checked in on him, developing competition for him would make teams have to acknowledge more of the upside that Arenado could have with them.

Here's where I think the Cardinals need to get bold and help negate that hesitancy some clubs may feel - kick in even more money. The club has already cut payroll down by about $36 million going into 2025, and while saving more money on Arenado's deal may help ownership's bottom line, the baseball operations would greatly benefit from being able to acquire even more value by eating more money on his deal.

Let's say the Cardinals eat $10 million of Arenado's contract per season or almost 50% of the money they still owe him, they the acquiring team would only owe Arenado $17 million in 2025, $12 million in 2026, and $5 million in 2027. Arenado would quickly go from a bad contract to a bargain salary, and that should significantly up the return St. Louis can expect.

Do I think they will be that aggressive in eating money? I have my doubts. I do think it is interesting that the reporting from St. Louis media has consistently been that the Cardinals want a return for Arenado though and are prioritizing that, which makes me believe they may eat more than that $15 million total number I mentioned earlier.

As is, Arenado is a negative asset due to his contract. Kick in some money and he becomes a neutral or slightly positive asset in trade talks. Kick in a lot of money, and the Cardinals could actually be looking at a nice return for him.