3 players the St. Louis Cardinals must consider trading, and 1 they absolutely can’t
By Josh Wilson
Players the Braves need to consider trading: Tyler O’Neil, OF
Tyler O’Neil, unsurprisingly currently on the 10-day IL, has struggled to stay healthy. He played 96 games last year, and, save for 2023 and 2021, hasn’t appeared in even half the games of any given season.
O’Neil was also put on the pine by Oli Marmol for what he deemed to be an “unacceptable” base running effort earlier this year. In a year where struggles have plagued the Cardinals, that’s a bad look and it’s hard to justify keeping someone with that red mark on their resume around.
The bigger picture with a move like this, though, is to unleash someone like Lars Nootbaar, who is getting the bench role more often than not. His bat has been better than O’Neil’s and he’s one of the two outfielders on the team that has a positive outs above average rating with a success rate 7 points higher than O’Neil. Furthermore, the Cardinals have several years left of team control with Nootbaar. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to get one of Shohei Ohtani’s buddies out on the field more… right?
This one is nearly obvious, and in fact, my colleague Cody Williams tabbed him as a player who certainly won’t survive the deadline. I have to agree.