Insider names 5 Cardinals most likely to be part of trade deadline fire-sale

The St. Louis Cardinals hoped the 2023 season was an aberration. The 2024 season has proven it was no fluke. They're stuck in a rut and they can't get themselves going.

The natural solution to the position the Cardinals find themselves in is to sell at the MLB trade deadline. No one ever wants to blow up their team and start over, but St. Louis has a window to capitalize on what they have now for the sake of a brighter future.

That's what Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Dispatch laid out on MLB Now on Friday.

Speaking to Bob Costas, Goold threw out five names of players the Cardinals could look to move on as they begin what they hope would be a quick roster rebuild.

5 Cardinals who could be on MLB trade block

• 1B Paul Goldschmidt
• SP Lance Lynn
• SP Kyle Gibson
• RP Ryan Helsley
• RP Andrew Kittredge

The reasoning is simple. All five of those players would hold value for contending teams looking to strength ahead of the playoffs. And all five aren't locked into a long-term future with the Cardinals.

Losing Goldschmidt would be the toughest pill to swallow and his desire to retire a Cardinal could prevent St. Louis from cashing in on him anyway. The 36-year-old is having a miserable season at the plate but everyone in baseball has seen what he can do over the past 14 years.

Lynn and Gibson have pitched well enough this season to look like viable rotation-boosters for teams who need to add some depth. Given their contract situations — bother are on one-year deals — it would be a shock for the Cardinals not to trade them.

Kittredge, who the Cardinals traded for earlier this year, is also headed for free agency at the end of the year. There are teams out there in desperate need of relievers and Kittredge could fetch a strong price.

Helsley would be even more valuable as a trade piece. The 29-year-old still has plenty of good ahead of him and is under team control until 2026, so the Cardinals wouldn't take trading him lightly. The long-term health of the organization would get a major boost with quality prospects in return.

So there you have it. The potential Cardinals fire-sale is easy to map out. Will John Mozeliak go there? His job might depend on it.

St. Louis can't possibly persist on the path they're on. Stubbornness would sentence them to many more years of painful disappointment. It's time to make the hard choices and look to the future.