MLB trade grades: Rangers create best rotation in baseball with Cardinals trade

The Texas Rangers kept busy on Sunday by engaging with the St. Louis Cardinals on a trade for another starting pitcher.

After you acquire Max Scherzer and Aroldis Chapman, you pop some champagne, laugh evilly over the fact that you fleeced the league at the deadline, and take it easy the next couple of days while everyone else panics to make moves before Tuesday’s trade deadline.

Unless you’re the Texas Rangers. Because in that case, you keep the pedal to the metal and deal some more. Everything is bigger in Texas, including trade deadline deals.

The Rangers pulled off a trade on Sunday with the St. Louis Cardinals that brought them starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery. Let’s look at the full deal and grade it for each side.

Rangers trade for Jordan Montgomery

The Rangers traded with the St. Louis Cardinals for Jordan Montgomery. Here’s the full details of the trade, as first reported by Jeff Passan:

Texas adds another starter and reliever in the deal. The Cardinals receive three farm system names to help position themselves for the future.

Grading the Jordan Montgomery deal for the Rangers

For the Rangers, this is a continuiation of their all-out push to add relevant talent and make the World Series. And therein lies the key, at least to me: Relevancy.

While other teams like the Mets and Padres have seemed to add just about any players that have notoriety regardless of fit or efficiency in their contract value, the Rangers have added players that they truly need that work well, not merely flashy names.

Montgomery is a quality starter who needs a better environment and has everything to prove in a contract year. A change of scenery will do him well.

Montgomery has 12 quality starts this season in 21 started games.

Meanwhile, Stratton gets the team a reliever they were seeking.

Relevant adds and the Rangers didn’t give up any prospects in their top 10. Not bad.

RANGERS GRADE: A-

Grading the Jordan Montgomery deal for the Cardinals

Neither of the three prospects the Cardinals received ranked in the MLB Top 100. Roby is the highest-ranked, 11th-best in the Rangers system, and Saggese is just behind at 16th-best.

Roby made it to AA this season but has struggled a bit with a 5.05 ERA. Saggese, an infielder, is also at AA with a .894 OPS.

King is not ranked.

It’s always tough to grade deals centered entirely on prospects. For St. Louis, though, you have to look at who they’re sending out and the fact that they were free agents after this season. There is a strong chance Montgomery and Stratton would have been heading out for nothing after this season, so a trade like this for a losing team like the Cardinals can be considered found money in plenty of ways.

I grade this below an A because the Cubs failed to get any top-10 prospects from the Rangers, but kept it a high B because they properly cashed in on two free agents.

CARDINALS GRADE: B+