John Mozeliak and the St. Louis Cardinals have taken a ton of heat this offseason for the team's complete lack of Hot Stove activity, a lack that seemed to stem from their inability to find a trade partner for Nolan Arenado. The team's uncertain media rights future (or the DeWitt family's unwillingness to spend, depending on who you ask) meant that Mozeliak was operating on a tight budget, and as St. Louis looked to get younger and more flexible moving forward, it became hard to figure out a path forward without getting out from under the three years and $74 million remaining on Arenado's contract.
Of course, Mozeliak thought that he'd solved this problem months ago, when the Cardinals had agreed in principle to a deal with the Houston Astros. But that deal blew up over Arenado's unwillingness to waive his full no-trade clause, wiping away one of the only viable options on the third baseman's list of approved teams. At the time, everyone wondered how talks could've progressed that far without Arenado's approval. As more details emerge, though, it sure seems like Arenado is the one at fault here.
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Nolan Arenado seems squarely to blame for Houston Astros trade debacle
According to a new report from Katie Woo of The Athletic, Mozeliak and the Cardinals had every reason to believe that they'd found a solution that worked for all parties involved. Houston had the sort of righty-friendly park that eased concerns about Arenado's declining bat, and with Alex Bregman likely leaving in free agency, they had a hole at each infield corner and enough financial flexibility to meet St. Louis' money demands. The Cardinals got to send him to the American League, while Arenado got to go to one of the teams on his initial list of five approved clubs.
So Mozeliak, understandably, moved forward, sounding very confident at the Winter Meetings that an Arenado deal was close. And then everything fell apart: According to Woo, "shen Arenado was presented with the trade, he balked," rethinking whether he really wanted to go to Houston after all. On one hand, this is understandable; the Astros had just dealt star outfielder Kyle Tucker amid a looming payroll crunch, and with Bregman and Justin Verlander now free agents, Arenado likely didn't see them as quite the surefire contender they appeared to be at the start of the offseason.
"He wanted more time," Woo reports, "and while he did not tell the Astros 'no' definitively, he also did not want to rush into a decision."
On the other hand, though, you'd think that Arenado or agent Joel Wolfe would do St. Louis the courtesy of reaching out and letting him know that his feelings had changed before letting Mozeliak get deep into trade talks with counterpart Dana Brown. Yes, this all moved quickly, with an Arenado trade nearing completion just days after Tucker left town. But you also can't blame Mozeliak for working from the list that Arenado had given him, a list generated after Mozeliak went out of his way to meet with the third baseman toward the end of the 2024 season and inform him that the team likely wouldn't be as competitive as he'd like next year.
Woo claims that Arenado wanted to wait and get more clarity both about his own market and Houston's offseason, but of course the Astros were never going to wait around for him to make up his mind. The team signed Christian Walker to be its first baseman, and just like that, St. Louis was back to the drawing board. Arenado is well within his rights to decide where he does and doesn't want to play, but he had to understand that the list he gave Mozeliak left the Cardinals with very few workable options; the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, in particular, were immediate non-starters, and the New York Yankees never seemed to have very much interest. The third baseman dealt St. Louis a bad hand, then made it worse by waffling.