That advanced baseball statistical research allows us to quantify just about anything is both the greatest strength of the sabermetric movement and the aspect of it which gives us the falsest sense of security. Statistics are objective–even if they are complicated to a point of impenetrability to the casual fan, like WAR or wRC+ or xBABIP, the numbers are based on empirical data. But the conclusions are based on analysis which, even when attempted with the best of intentions, is clouded by preconceived notions.

During the John Mozeliak era, the St. Louis Cardinals once made a trade which, according to the empirical data of FanGraphs, was absolutely a “loss” of a trade. FanGraphs measures Wins Above Replacement based on consistently applied standards of player value, and it measures a player’s “Salary” based on the going market values of free agents in the sport. Is it complicated to a point where even on my most adventurous day, I am taking the numbers on faith rather than calculating them myself? Yes. But the numbers are based on hard data. And according to FanGraphs, the Cardinals, in this trade, acquired a hair over $4.3 million in total “profit” value, calculating the player’s value and subtracting what the player commanded in real dollars. This profit is, of course, a good thing, but from what the Cardinals gave up, they lost over $26.9 million in value. By this measure, the Cardinals lost $22.6 million in value over the trade. This isn’t an all-time disaster, but it’s still a quite poor result.

This trade is almost universally considered one of the great trades in St. Louis Cardinals history. The Cardinals traded Trever Miller, Colby Rasmus, Brian Tallet, and P.J. Walters to the Toronto Blue Jays for Octavio Dotel, Edwin Jackson, Corey Patterson, and Marc Rzepczynski.

The deal received a fair amount of heat from Cardinals fans the moment it happened, and in the macro sense, what unfolded is not that far from what those who critiqued it claimed of it. Colby Rasmus, a former top prospect for the Cardinals who was still a few months shy of entering his salary arbitration years, was by far the most coveted part of the trade, and his value to the Blue Jays was considerably higher than of any other player involved in this trade. Although Miller, Tallet, and Walters were essentially worthless to the Cardinals, particularly with the influx of pitchers being returned in this trade, Rasmus was a big deal, and although veterans Dotel and Jackson were prized, they were rentals, soon-to-be free agents. The only piece returning to St. Louis signed beyond 2011 was Marc Rzepczynski, who ended up struggling by and large with the Cardinals. In fact, by team “profit”, the second-highest valued player for the Cardinals was Patrick Wisdom, who briefly played with the team in 2018 and was the compensatory draft pick for the loss of Octavio Dotel in free agency.

The problem with taking this information and declaring that the Cardinals lost the Colby Rasmus trade is that Wins Above Replacement is context-neutral, which makes it both far more useful in terms of analyzing player quality and far less useful in terms of evaluating whether a move actually spoke to the needs of the team involved. While Colby Rasmus had infamously and fairly publicly feuded with then-manager Tony LaRussa, the single biggest piece of context for the 2011 Cardinals was Jon Jay, the relatively unheralded young outfielder who was a reasonable facsimile of 2011 Colby Rasmus–of course, a team would rather than have two fairly good players who can handle center field than one, but there are diminishing returns on the second one. The second-biggest bit of context is that the Cardinals had a hole in their starting rotation (Edwin Jackson), a need for a solid late-inning reliever caused by the career implosion of Ryan Franklin (Octavio Dotel), and such a dire lefty reliever situation that just about anybody would be a substantial improvement (Marc Rzepczynski). This trade worked for the Cardinals because they addressed their needs while dealing from a position of strength, but this does not mean that the Blue Jays “lost” the trade. The goal of a front office shouldn’t be to pull fast ones on their opponents, not because doing so would be a bad thing but because doing so is so incredibly rare. The goal is self-improvement.

But I am not writing about a dozen year-old trade apropos of absolutely nothing–this trade ties in to the last two things I wrote on this website, a post about David Freese declining his invitation to the Cardinals Hall of Fame and a post about the arguments for and against trading Paul Goldschmidt. Because how we as fans and how the Cardinals organization has reacted in the aftermath of this trade is instructive of how the Cardinals view their past, present, and future.

Although the Colby Rasmus trade helped the Cardinals in 2011, it was not an Earth-shattering move. The Cardinals did not win the World Series because they employed Edwin Jackson, Octavio Dotel, Marc Rzepczynski, Corey Patterson, or a newly emboldened starting center fielder in Jon Jay; these players were, at most, solid complementary pieces. The Cardinals made the postseason by one game, quite famously. Over the final weekend of the Cardinals’ season, the team won consecutive one-run games against the Chicago Cubs–had it not been for a highly fortuitous loss of control from Cubs closer Carlos Mármol on Saturday and unexpected late solo home runs from Yadier Molina and Rafael Furcal on Sunday, the Cardinals’ 2011 season could easily be viewed as the season where the team made an admirable push to the postseason but ultimately fell just short.

There are numerous what-ifs that stem from this, but here is one that I do not consider even remotely a stretch–if the Cardinals miss the 2011 postseason, or if one of the several deep fly balls hit by Philadelphia Phillies off Chris Carpenter in Game 5 of the NLDS left the park, or if Nelson Cruz gets a better jump in the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, David Freese is not a Cardinals Hall of Famer. One that is admittedly a little bit more subjective but I think is sensible: had the Cardinals not made the 2011 postseason, I believe the calls for the Cardinals to sell would be much louder, and possibly would not be directed towards John Mozeliak at this point. The 2011 Cardinals were an impossibility, but for all of the Cardinals Devil Magic discourse, most of it revolves around 2011. The 2012 Cardinals blew a 3-1 series lead. The 2013 Cardinals were just straight up good and then lost to the only team they faced that didn’t have a worse record than them. Heck, the 2015 Cardinals won 100 games and played four playoff games. Yes, there was 2021, but had our brains not been calibrated to believe that the Cardinals are simply inevitable, who’s to say how we would feel about a last-place team hanging on to an objectively irrational belief that greatness is just around the corner?

But evaluating the 2011 Colby Rasmus trade as a good trade simply because the team won the World Series also treads dangerously closely to what I consider to be the most dangerous binary in sports–the belief that any season that does not result in a championship must be viewed on some level as a failure. That mindset might make sense to some degree from a front office perspective, but from a fan perspective, it straight up sucks. And if Nelson Cruz does catch that fly ball in right field in 2011, the Cardinals still had a really fun run. The Rasmus trade still provides the toppling of a Philadelphia Phillies team that most believed to be World Series favorites. It still gives us vanquishing Nyjer Morgan and the 2011 Milwaukee Brewers. It still gives us Albert Pujols going absolutely psycho mode in Game 3 of the World Series. These memories still matter!

When it comes to Paul Goldschmidt trade talks, to the extent that they are even worth discussing (I would never be so brazen as to declare he will unequivocally not be dealt at the trade deadline, but I also do not think it is at all likely), if one is to view only a World Series win as meaningful, then he should almost certainly be traded right now. The Cardinals have a 0.6% chance of winning the 2023 World Series per FanGraphs (and if Paul Goldschmidt abruptly retired, their chances would still probably be around 0.4 or 0.5 percent), and their 2024 odds would surely be in the single digits. Paul Goldschmidt probably will never win a World Series, simply because no individual player is probably going to win a World Series in the next three or four years. But the memories of whatever Paul Goldschmidt will accomplish, most obviously in 2024 when his accomplishments are more likely to have postseason consequence but also in 2023, do matter. This is a part of the buy/sell calculus. It’s why the Los Angeles Angels, even if they slip further out of contention over the next month, probably won’t trade pending free agent Shohei Ohtani–for whatever prospect haul they could acquire, they would be depriving their fans of two months of watching Shohei Ohtani do something unbelievable.

There is a certain price at which Paul Goldschmidt would simply have to go (assuming he would waive his no-trade clause, a thing which St. Louis teams have a history of considering inevitable even if it is not)–if the Baltimore Orioles started offering Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg, you have to consider what potential value those prospects have to offer. But, to use an example from hockey, the Buffalo Sabres acquired a young prospect who scored 47 goals and 94 points last season in exchange for a veteran who never would have made the difference in getting their team to the playoffs–there is no question that Buffalo “won” the trade now headlined by Tage Thompson and Ryan O’Reilly. But the St. Louis Blues also earned a Stanley Cup in 2019 largely on the back of the performance of Ryan O’Reilly, their best player in both the regular season and the playoffs. The Blues also “won” the trade.

And if Baltimore traded Jackson Holliday and Jordan Westburg for Paul Goldschmidt, I would think it was nuts, but if it got them their first World Series title in my lifetime, how could I argue they didn’t win it? But maybe a deep playoff run would be enough. That’s for Orioles fans to decide.