The St. Louis Cardinals came into the season with uncharacteristically low expectations. St. Louis was coming off a second consecutive disappointing season and didn't hit the trade market or free agency hard to upgrade over the winter. Instead, John Mozeliak let a slew of players walk away in free agency and opted to replace them internally, with an eye toward using 2025 as a reset to see which players could be building blocks moving forward.
This had nearly everybody assuming the Cardinals would be sellers at the trade deadline. All the signs seemed to be pointing that direction. But then a funny thing happened: St. Louis began to win, and win, and win some more. They've won so much, in fact, that the conversation has shifted from them being the worst team in the National League Central to potentially competing for the division title — or at worst a Wild Card berth.
But will one stretch of winning put the Cardinals plans for the future on the back burner? There's a chance.
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John Mozeliak hints at Cardinals being trade deadline buyers
Mozeliak recently spoke about the Cardinals' trade deadline approach, and reflected on some of the decisions made last summer.
“If we’re playing well, why wouldn’t you want to keep trying to play well?” Mozeliak told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “There are decision that are made to help us in the here and now, and there are decisions that might help us in the future. You weigh that. Last year, we were feeling like we were onto something, and we went and tried to make some moves to help. Some were more long-term in idea, and some didn’t really move the needle. You tried.
“It’s certainly a lot more fun to be trying to improve your club than to break up your club.”
The biggest thing to note here is Mozeliak's first sentence: “If we’re playing well, why wouldn’t you want to keep trying to play well?”
With that in mind, it would be shocking to see the Cardinals aggressively rebuild this season. There's a chance they hold onto their expiring contracts including Ryan Helsley and Erick Fedde. Both Fedde and Helsley were expected to be on the trade block coming into the season, but they're huge pieces of the team. Trading them would set the Cardinals back.
That doesn't mean that St. Louis will go all-in to try and make a run this year, though. The team's young core has been good enough to get it to this position by the end of May; maybe the Cardinals will simply hold tight, fiddle a bit on the margins without parting with any major pieces or prospects and then take stock of where they're at next winter.
In reality, the Cardinals will likely land somewhere in between being a big time buyer and a big time seller. St. Louis might trade away expiring talent like Fedde or Helsley, but there's a good chance they look to land controllable talent in return.