Cardinals should hang up the phone immediately with one Ryan Helsley trade suitor

The St. Louis Cardinals are expected to officially tank — or "rebuild" — next season as Chaim Bloom prepares to take over the front office. The Cards will take wins as they come, but the priority is to boost a barren farm system and increase flexibility for the future. That puts many of St. Louis' best players on the trade block.

Sonny Gray will naturally command headlines, while the looming departure of free agent Paul Goldschmidt is a popular talking point in MLB circles. Perhaps the most intriguing trade candidates on the Cardinals roster, however, are Nolan Arenado and Ryan Helsley.

Both are expected to command interest from various contenders. Arenado is one of the sharpest hot corner defenders in the MLB and he's a former MVP candidate, having led the league in WAR just two years ago. Helsley, meanwhile, is one of the gnarliest closers in the National League. He finished last season with a 2.04 ERA and 49 saves in 65 appearances.

The Philadelphia Phillies happen to need an Alec Bohm upgrade at third base and a Jeff Hoffman or Carlos Estevez replacement in the bullpen. There is a world in which Dave Dombrowski calls up John Mozeliak and offers a ton of prospects for both Arenado and Helsley, as pitched in a recent mailbag for Jim Bowden of The Athletic.

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This Cardinals-Phillies trade is too lopsided for St. Louis to say yes

The details of the trade, proposed by "Tom R.," are as follows: Mick Abel, Justin Crawford, and Taijuan Walker to St. Louis in exchange for Arenado and Helsley.

It's an intriguing concept, but Bowden would expect the Cardinals to swiftly shoot it down.

"I think the Cardinals say no. They don’t want Walker, who logged a 7.10 ERA last season. Abel, 23, has command and control question marks — he averaged 6.5 walks per nine innings this year at Triple A — and they already have a Crawford-type center-field prospect in Victor Scott II. But from the Phillies’ perspective, I love your idea as long as the Cardinals pay down Arenado’s contract. (He’s owed $73 million over the next three years, $10 million of which will be paid by Colorado; Walker is owed $36 million over the next two years.)"

Naturally, he's dead right on all points. Taijuan Walker is the real holdup. There's just no way the Cardinals want to take on the dead weight of that contract, even if it means offloading Arenado's own albatross. Walker was pound-for-pound the worst pitcher in the National League last season — I won't hear otherwise. Maybe he looks better with improved health and some hard work in the spring, but St. Louis can't count on Walker to bring anything positive to the table.

If the Phillies wanted to cough up a higher-end prospect, such as Aidan Miller or Andrew Painter, that obviously changes the calculus a bit. But it just won't happen, and the Cardinals clearly don't need Justin Crawford in the same way Philadelphia might a few years down the road. Mick Abel is a promising talent, but his lack of progress in Triple-A Reading is enough to dissuade the Cards from shipping out two of their best players.

Arenado and Helsley is an exciting hypothetical haul for the Phillies — especially if it means getting rid of Walker — but it's a pipe dream, not reality.