Paul DeJong was supposed to be dead money. His contract, which saw the St. Louis Cardinals getting some bargain-bin years out of the shortstop early in it, was supposed to have turned fully sour and that the Cardinals were going to run out the clock.

Instead, Paul DeJong has been shockingly competent this season. I don’t want to oversell it–his 96 wRC+ has actually led to a reduction in his career total by the metric this season–but for a player most people wanted jettisoned out of town by any means necessary, it was a huge bounce back. Couple a decent bat with legitimately strong defense at shortstop and Paul DeJong was suddenly a legitimately valuable player for the Cardinals. But with the team in sell mode and with a team option for 2024 that likely still made the organization nervous, the Cardinals played it safe and sent DeJong to the Toronto Blue Jays.

I have always had a soft spot for Paul DeJong largely because it was always abundantly clear how much he cared. If anything, his competitive desire was what made his more pronounced slumps that much harder to watch. But he worked really hard and I wish him the absolute best of luck in Toronto, where he will be reunited with Jordan Hicks after nearly 48 hours apart.

As for the return, on some level I don’t care–any scenario that simply results in the Cardinals not having to buy DeJong out of his contract for 2024 should be considered a legitimate organizational victory. But a player is coming back–minor league relief pitcher Matt Svanson. Svanson, 24, has spent most of 2023 in high-A, but will be assigned to the AA Springfield Cardinals. And his stats have been pretty good–a 1.23 ERA and a 2.55 FIP, even if over just 29 1/3 innings, is pretty solid. The 2021 13th round draft pick out of Lehigh is, to be clear, not a major prospect, ranking neither on MLB.com’s Top 30 nor FanGraphs’s Top 41 for the Blue Jays, but he does appear to make sense as a potential lottery ticket for the organization, a lottery ticket which they surely did not anticipate they could possibly obtain three months ago.

The lottery ticket metaphor is a popular one, including among people such as myself who do not play the lottery ever. Like, yes, I would take a lottery ticket, but I can’t pretend I’d be that excited to receive one. But obtaining something of some value from Paul DeJong is the equivalent of receiving a lottery ticket at a gas station when you went in intending to have to pay for gas–you got something of marginal value, but the real celebration is that what you assumed would be an inherent loss turned out profitable after all.