Cardinals rumors: Player speaks on Goldschmidt trade, Nootbaar, more

Former player talks about Paul Goldschmidt trade

Firstly, let’s be honest about one thing: The St. Louis Cardinals are probably not trading Paul Goldschmidt. They also probably aren’t firing Oli Marmol. Common sense would tell you that much if you’ve followed the team close enough the last decade-plus. These moves are just not in the Cardinals’ nature.

Plus, insider knowledge now tells us both of those moves (also, throw the idea of a Nolan Arenado trade in there while you’re at it, too) are far-fetched.

But that said, there is a growing case that maybe they should be making moves like that. We recently looked at an argument put out there by Will Leitch that Jordan Walker could fill in at first base if St. Louis opted to trade Goldschmidt. Not a terrible idea, to be honest.

Former Cardinals player Mark DeRosa is behind the idea of trading Goldschmidt now, too.

Here’s what he said on MLB Network, H/T to our friends at Redbird Rants:

"“I’m walking up to Nolan Arenado and I’m entertaining the idea of, if it keeps going south, do you want to stay, or, do we want to potentially put you out there? You and Paul Goldschmidt. You and Adam Wainwright, Willson Contreras, because you have Gorman, Winn, Walker, Donovan, Edman, and you go sign some pitchers.”"

DeRosa may have just spent just one year with the Cardinals of his 17-year career, but you don’t have to know the organization intimately to see the logic here. In fact, one could argue being too close to the team in this case taints the perspective and pulls you too far toward, “the way we’ve always done it.”

Just because the Cardinals have typically not made moves like this, or just because they don’t typically fire managers this early on in their tenure does not mean they shouldn’t.

The Cardinals, though, might want to keep those players around because the NL Central is so up for grabs. Can the Cardinals really leap from worst to first, though? They might be 8.5 games back from the division lead, but they’re 10 back from a Wild Card spot. The odds of making the playoffs fall below 15 percent according to most projection models right now.

Common sense would tell a lot of people that you pack it up in 2023 and cash in on whatever you can so you can build back better in 2024 and beyond. But the Cardinals don’t seem convinced with that thinking.