Something rare happened at Busch Stadium on Friday.
A former Cardinals player who is having a decent season for another team faced his old club, and there was no wailing about what he could be doing here.
Former Cardinals pitcher Austin Gomber is having what appears to be the best season of his major league career. The 30-year-old southpaw showed up here with a 3.06 ERA in 11 starts. Considering the Cardinals’ current trouble with their fifth starter spot, Gomber would be an upgrade there.
But Gomber, unlike some of the ones who really got away, can’t be lumped in with the other what-if Cardinals, of which there are far too many lately. That’s because trading Gomber, of course, helped the Cardinals land star third baseman Nolan Arenado in a steal that outlasted the Rockies front office that made it as one of the most lopsided deals in recent baseball memory.
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Three-plus years later, it’s still a home-run trade, even before remembering the Rockies handed the Cardinals more than $50 million along with their superstar.
It has not become, contrary to what some rushed to assume at the time, the Cardinals’ best trade.
What worked out terribly for the Rockies has worked out well for the Cardinals, but not nearly as well as Arenado and the Cardinals could have hoped.
No, I don’t expect that to make Rockies fans feel better.
Denver sports columnist Woody Paige once called the Rockies’ trade of Arenado to the Cardinals the worst baseball trade for a team since the Red Sox swapped Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
In Colorado, that view probably remains.
That’s because the Rockies stink, whether the Cardinals win this series against them or not. They are headed toward their third consecutive fifth-place finish after finishing fourth each of the previous three seasons before that. They have not been to the postseason since 2018 and have not won a National League Division Series game since 2009.
It’s a shame.
Colorado has great fans and a great ballpark. And while those fans have not had consistent winning ever, they did have Arenado. Until he was gone. Since he left, more bad baseball. And no Arenado to distract from it with his sensational two-way play.
At least Arizona, after trading Diamondbacks star Paul Goldschmidt to the Cardinals, can say the Diamondbacks beat the Cardinals back to the World Series after making the move.
The Rockies have nothing to point to seasons later.
But Arenado and his Cardinals have not exactly stuck their landing.
It’s safe to say as we are fast approaching the 60th anniversary of Brock-for-Broglio that the late, great Lou Brock remains far out in front of all-time best Cardinals trade competition.
Six times in a Cardinals uniform, Brock was an All-Star. Five times in a Cardinals uniform, Brock placed in the top-10 of MVP voting. Most importantly to his entrenchment at the tip-top of a traded-here list that includes names like Ozzie Smith, Scott Rolen, Adam Wainwright and more, Brock helped the Cardinals add coveted hardware. He helped the Cardinals win a World Series immediately (1964), then again in 1967, with another trip, this one a loss, in 1968.
Goldschmidt has joined the Cardinals’ exclusive MVP club. Arenado’s been a Cardinals All-Star three times to Goldschmidt’s one. It seemed like just a matter of time until the two headlined deep postseason runs here together. Now? Not so sure.
Goldschmidt, 36, is in the final year of his current deal. Arenado, 33, has a contract that runs through 2027 if he spends it all here. Not that long ago, it felt silly to think Goldschmidt or Arenado could possibly end their careers in different uniforms. Now, following a last-place finish in 2023 and this season’s uncertain trajectory, nothing seems impossible, does it?
When the Arenado trade with Colorado went down, no one — not even Tucupita Marcano — would have bet on Arenado having more postseason games played and a deeper postseason run with the Rockies than he’s had with the Cardinals by now.
Yet Arenado’s postseason at-bat total with the Cardinals is 12. He’s had just one postseason hit. He’s been a part of one postseason win in his career, and it came with the team in the visiting dugout this series, a wild-card win with the Rockies in 2018.
Goldschmidt, at least, has won a National League Division Series in a Cardinals uniform, though the Cardinals got brutally swept by the Nationals in the NLCS that followed.
The Cardinals will always push back on any notion of viewing their seasons in player-specific windows, but the reality is the Goldschmidt-Arenado Era has not lived up to optimistic imaginations. Whether you blame the duo or what the team did or didn’t do around the two to maximize their chances of winning bigger, results are what matter in the end, and the results add up to underwhelming.
There is good and bad news. Good: There’s still time to change it. Bad: That time has also become an unrelenting and compounding competitor to these two players. So far this season looks like harsh proof.
Arenado’s third-place MVP season in 2022 was followed by a 2023 season that fell significantly below his career average offensively while becoming his first in which he didn’t win a Gold Glove. His power has sagged even lower since. He is slugging .374 now, down from his career-average slugging percentage of .522. Between 2015 and 2022, Arenado averaged 38 homers per 162 games. Since 2023, he’s averaged 26 per 162.
There are two ways to view these Cardinals. Arenado and Goldschmidt are going to get going, and look out if they do. Or, this is who Arenado and Goldschmidt kind of are now, and others are going to have a hard time compensating for that decline.
Other things are a lot less fluid.
The worst trade in Denver sports history is the Rockies giving Arenado away, no offense to Gomber.
The best trade in Cardinals history is Brock, even 60 years later.