Even John Mozeliak knows that the Cardinals won't be getting much for Nolan Arenado

It's been an open secret for weeks now that the St. Louis Cardinals want to trade third baseman Nolan Arenado at some point this offseason. After a second straight disappointing season, the team is looking to get younger and more financially flexible, and a declining 33-year-old third baseman set to make over $75 million over the next three years doesn't exactly fit into that plan. And while other veterans like Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray have committed to sticking out the rebuild (sorry, "reset"), Arenado has at least expressed an openness to moving on — provided he gets sent to a pre-approved contender.

But while there's no doubt that St. Louis wants to move on from Arenado, that sums up the problem: Every team knows the the Cardinals don't want to keep him, and every team knows that he has a full no-trade clause and will only accept a deal to certain destinations. Combine that with a precipitous offensive decline over the past couple of years and a contract that will take him through his age-36 season, and you've got yourself a very tricky situation.

"Tricky situations" are not exactly where president John Mozeliak thrives. And based on his opening comments at the Winter Meetings, Cardinals fans shouldn't get their hopes up

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John Mozeliak gets brutally honest about Cardinals' effort to trade Nolan Arenado

Mozeliak gave one of the most brutally honest quotes you'll ever hear from a Major League executive on Monday afternoon. Appearing in front of the media for the first time at the Winter Meetings, he was unsurprisingly asked about the possibility of an Arenado trade. His answer? "It's my intention to try." Inspiring stuff!

On the one hand, you do have to sympathize a little with Mozeliak here. He has little to no leverage here, and there's no real competitive advantage to be gained by training to throw teams or media members off the scent. On the other, this hardly inspires confidence about the potential return in an Arenado trade. The team is set on trading him no matter what, meaning that interested parties can simply wait St. Louis out until they get sufficiently desperate. At this point, it seems like the best-case scenario for Mozeliak is finding a team (like, say, the Yankees) with plenty of payroll space and limited infield options who will take on the majority of the money remaining due to Arenado. Getting any sort of prospect of note feels like way too much to ask.