As a veteran of the First Great Nolan Arenado Trade Rumors Posting War, I believe that the lessons which I learned during the first cycle of Nolan Arenado trade rumors are instructive about the future of the Cardinals third baseman.

In 2019, the Colorado Rockies signed their star third baseman Nolan Arenado to an eight-year, $260 million contract. In the moment, it was viewed, if anything, as a slight overpay by the Rockies–Arenado was a consistent star for the team, but the contract was not only large, with the highest average annual salary in the sport at the time, but filled with player-friendly concessions, including a full no-trade clause and a player opt-out option. But after the Rockies had a lackluster 2019 campaign, finishing 71-91 despite Arenado’s 7.3 Wins Above Replacement, rumors kicked into high gear that both the organization and the player wanted to make a move–that Arenado wanted to play for a winning organization and that the team wanted to get out from under the large contract (which prompted a lot of questions about why they would have offered the contract in the first place if it was so prohibitive).

The rumors which circulated around what the Cardinals would give up for Nolan Arenado were all over the map. The proposed packages from St. Louis often included such young MLB stars as Tyler O’Neill and Jack Flaherty and such minor league prospects as Dylan Carlson and Nolan Gorman. But what these rumors tended to ignore was that Nolan Arenado was essentially being paid at the rate that a free agent would garner. At the conclusion of the 2019 season, at which point Arenado’s contract extension had not yet even kicked in, the Rockies still owed him his $260 million over eight years with an opt-out after his second season. At the same time, Anthony Rendon, a comparable player by individual value metrics, was a free agent who would eventually sign a seven-year, $245 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels, one which notably did not include an opt-out. And while signing Rendon would have meant the loss of a draft pick, this was quite a bit less cumbersome than most of the packages proposed for the Cardinals to send to Colorado.

When the Cardinals eventually did acquire Nolan Arenado, the package was comparatively meager–a so-so Memphis Shuttle veteran arm in Austin Gomber, a handful of okay-to-non-prospects, and Colorado retained some of the cost of the Arenado contract. The future value of the prospect “haul” sent to the Rockies wasn’t materially higher, if higher at all, than the hypothetical value of a lost draft pick due to signing a high-dollar free agent, and while the Cardinals were now acquiring a third baseman with less of his prime remaining, they were paying $50 million less over the life of the contract. While I don’t expect any fans to care about what their team spends on players, the teams themselves do care, and this was further evidence that the industry regarded Nolan Arenado as essentially analogous to a free agent–useful, valuable, but not exactly a windfall.

Nolan Arenado is currently thirty-two years old, putting him firmly in veteran territory. He is older than Albert Pujols was when he debuted with the Los Angeles Angels, for instance. In 2022, Arenado had the best season of his MLB career–his park-adjusted stats (one of the biggest pros cited about Arenado with the Rockies was his raw offensive numbers, accumulated while playing his home games at Coors Field) were easily the best of his career and he was a defensive dynamo. In 2023, Arenado has been a good player, but he is very unlikely to once again be an MVP finalist–his OPS+ of 129 is closer to his career average than his MVP-caliber 2022, and defensively, both statistically and anecdotally, his play at third base has declined dramatically.

After the 2023 season, Nolan Arenado will have four years remaining on his contract and he will be owed an additional $109 million–with only one year remaining at the contract’s peak annual value of $35 million, this means a decent-sized drop in its average annual value, but this is still a material amount of money. His average annual salary over his age 33 through age 36 seasons will be higher than the average annual salary of Carlos Rodón or Dansby Swanson, highly coveted free agents last off-season. Unlike post-2019 or post-2020 Nolan Arenado, where another year or two of prime performance could be argued, the Cardinals are looking at a back half of Nolan Arenado’s career which could still be quite productive but almost certainly won’t be the prize his peak years were.

Nolan Arenado’s trade value has, salary dips aside, likely decreased from what it was the day that the Cardinals acquired him–considering the productive two-and-a-half years Arenado has provided for the Cardinals, this is hardly an indictment of him. The vast majority of players’ values do decrease as their career goes deeper. And other teams are going to know this as well. The equivalent package to Tyler O’Neill, Dylan Carlson, and Nolan Gorman isn’t going to come back to St. Louis any more than it was going to go to Colorado in 2021.

I have been as sour on Nolan Arenado pre-and-post-Cardinals tenure as any Cardinals writer I know, and yet there isn’t a player whose hypothetical exodus via trade would annoy me more than Arenado’s, because such a trade would be an example of the organization’s unwillingness to spend money, an unwillingness that occasionally reveals itself but which has not manifested itself to this degree. If the Cardinals were to trade Jordan Walker or Nolan Gorman or Tink Hence or fill-in-name-of-your-favorite-young-Cardinal, you could reasonably infer that this was a baseball trade–that the organization believes that it makes baseball sense to make such a trade. If the Cardinals were to trade Paul Goldschmidt, it could be viewed as a chance to command a solid prospect or two for a player who probably has less value to the Cardinals than he would to a team that is in more realistic playoff contention for 2023. But it would be impossible to view a Nolan Arenado trade as anything but a callous salary dump, in much the same ways it seemed that way when the Rockies did it (at least until they proceeded to sign Kris Bryant with their leftover Arenado money and then moved him to a corner outfield spot, at which point it just seemed dumb). Sure, the New York Yankees could use a guy like Arenado in the lineup, but what evidence is there that they would give up Anthony Volpe or Jasson Dominguez for him?

I don’t want to tell anybody not to fantasize about potential blockbuster trades–the problem is that the Nolan Arenado trade in 2023 wouldn’t even really be a blockbuster, because the return would almost certainly be some mix of store-brand prospects and salary dumps. It’s not just that a Nolan Arenado trade isn’t realistic–it isn’t even fun. At least imagining what prospects could be returned for Paul Goldschmidt is dreaming on hope for the future. At least making proposals for how the Cardinals should acquire Shohei Ohtani as a rental is suggesting an exciting thing. And frankly, I would say that the odds that the Cardinals acquire Shohei Ohtani at the 2023 deadline are higher than the odds that the Cardinals part with Nolan Arenado–at least an Ohtani trade wouldn’t require somebody to waive their no-trade clause.