The thing that really stands out when one watches highlights of José Adolis García, as he was known at the time, during his time as a St. Louis Cardinal, besides the fact that he tripped rounding third base and the Cardinals were eliminated from playoff contention by the Milwaukee Brewers because there is only one significant highlight of his time with the Cardinals, is that he bares little physical resemblance to Adolis García, the powerful right fielder who just won an ALCS MVP award for the Texas Rangers.

The outfielder who tripped over his own feet was a somewhat slight figure who entered the game as a pinch-runner for Matt Carpenter; this was his twentieth MLB appearance and the sixth in which he was brought in for his speed. The outfielder who belted five home runs in the last four games for the Texas Rangers to smite the defending champion Houston Astros is a muscular presence, the rare MLB player who looks taller than his listed height of six feet and one inch. On a purely emotional level, it is nearly as difficult to feel a nostalgic longing for Adolis García as it is to feel nostalgic for Zac Gallen, the Arizona Diamondbacks starting pitcher who will face off against García and company in the 2023 World Series, even though the first time I ever heard Zac Gallen’s name was on the day he was traded away from the St. Louis Cardinals.

Ex-Cardinals prospering in the MLB postseason has become something of an annual tradition for St. Louis fans, and while Adolis García has certainly performed in an exaggerated and frankly unsustainable way for the Rangers so far this October, it would be inaccurate to label him as an October fluke–by Wins Above Replacement, he was the third most valuable Texas Ranger in 2023 behind Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, who are accurately compensated as two of the best players in the sport, with 39 home runs to boot. Zac Gallen, if anything, has flipped the script on ex-Cardinal postseason success–in the playoffs, his ERA stands at 5.24–but his overall stature as the best starting pitcher on the National League pennant winners is unquestioned.

It would be hyperbolic to say that Adolis García showed no signs of progress as a minor leaguer in the Cardinals system, even as his first cup of coffee with the big club was underwhelming–in 2019, with the Memphis Redbirds, he hit a career-high 32 home runs in 529 plate appearances. But in terms of his long-term projections with the organization, there was some sense that he had peaked–García was a bit of a free swinger, with an on-base percentage of just .301 and a strikeout rate over 30%. More significantly, though, was his age–he was 26 and would be 27 by the start of the next season (with or without the eventual pandemic delay)–and despite his talent, he had been out-OPSed in Memphis by younger players like Justin Williams, Andrew Knizner, and Randy Arozarena; he had also trailed slightly older outfielders like John Nogowski and Rangel Ravelo and had barely outpaced the younger Lane Thomas.

That the eventual return from the Texas Rangers for Adolis García was “cash considerations” turned out to be something of a misnomer for the Cardinals, as a cursory look at the transaction might suggest that Adolis García was sold off because of Cheap DeWallet Ownership. But the reality of the situation is that Adolis García had been designated for assignment by the Cardinals three days prior to their trade with Texas as a means of trying to remove him from the 40-man roster, not as a cost-saving measure but because the team had just signed Kwang-hyun Kim and needed a free spot. “Cash considerations” were not a price that St. Louis demanded so much as a minimal expenditure Texas paid in order to jump waiver priority; the alternative to cash for the Cardinals was not keeping García nor acquiring meaningful talent but losing him for nothing. And as much as fans should not and largely do not care about the bottom line for franchise ownership, there isn’t really a ton of practical reason to actively oppose some marginal savings.

Adolis García, in February 2021, was once again designated for assignment by a MLB team looking to clear a 40-man roster spot for a newly acquired pitcher; this time, it was by the Texas Rangers to make room for Mike Foltynewicz, whom Cardinals fans may remember from his being bludgeoned in Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS while pitching for the Atlanta Braves. His tenure in Arlington was so unmemorable that he will only net you a 2% on the Braves/Rangers Immaculate Grid square despite his recency. Given the quality of player added to the expanded roster, even ignoring the cash considerations of it all, the Cardinals’ designating for assignment was the better transaction. But Texas had the benefit of Major League Baseball’s twenty-nine other teams being disinterested in García, so he cleared waivers. And in the three seasons since, he has been the 33rd best position player in Major League Baseball by FanGraphs WAR, topping every Cardinals outfielder (and every Cardinals position player that isn’t Paul Goldschmidt or Nolan Arenado) during that time.

Zac Gallen, despite being less famous at the time he was traded, did have a reasonably high value floor–he was just 22 and a year removed from pitching at the University of North Carolina, several years from requiring a spot on the team’s expanded roster. But despite a 2017 rise from high-A Palm Beach to AAA Memphis, Gallen was not regarded as a particularly significant prospect–he ranked 24th in the Cardinals organization, making him, by some distance, the third most highly regarded prospect with which the Cardinals parted in acquiring Marcell Ozuna from the Miami Marlins. Gallen’s 2018 season with the New Orleans Baby Cakes was largely an extension of his 2017 performance–a competent if unexceptional 3.65 ERA that saw him conclude 2018 ranked as the #14 Miami Marlins prospect–improvement, but still not assumed for superstardom.

But even when Gallen yielded a sub-2 ERA in fourteen starts with New Orleans and a sub-3 ERA in seven starts with Miami in 2019, the Marlins still felt perfectly comfortable flipping the starter for prospect Jazz Chisholm Jr., who has shown flashes of brilliance in the big leagues (in addition to netting an inexplicable appearance on the cover of MLB: The Show 23), but is not quite the equivalent to “ace of a World Series team”. For whatever loss the Gallen-for-Chisholm trade was for the Marlins, it is certainly a closer transaction than the much-dissected Marcell Ozuna trade, but it does underscore that the Cardinals were not alone in underrating Zac Gallen. As soon as the Miami Marlins saw flashes of what would become with Gallen, they were so certain that it would not last that they cashed out their chips. Other teams didn’t see it, either, and I would posit that perhaps they didn’t see it because it wasn’t actually there yet–perhaps Gallen and especially García were something of late bloomers. They can be difficult to predict.

Outside of true high-end talent, MLB rosters experience high levels of turnover, sometimes to the benefit of any given team and sometimes to their detriment. The sheer volume of transactions assure that there will be multiple examples of wins and losses. Late in 2023, one of the few bright spot for the Cardinals was Richie Palacios, the 26 year-old outfielder acquired for cash from the Cleveland Guardians. Palacios may well survive the pending outfield shuffle instead of Tyler O’Neill, who nevertheless produced an MVP-caliber 2021 season after being acquired from the Seattle Mariners for Marco Gonzales, who has been an exactly league-average pitcher by ERA+ in that time–this is not to degrade a league-average pitcher, which is a valuable player to have, but it isn’t as valuable as a two-way force in left field capable of propelling tremendous late-season runs. Miles Mikolas, frustrating as his 2023 was, has been one of the, if not the, most important pitchers for the Cardinals over the last six years, all after the San Diego Padres and Texas Rangers, the latter being the supposed prospect whisperers, happily let him go.

You could argue, and to be clear I would argue, that the ones that got away from the Cardinals at this point outweigh the ones that the Cardinals stumbled upon. But any honest accounting of the situation should include both sides, and every team includes two sides. But ultimately, when it comes to the upcoming World Series, their Cardinals histories should not matter because, unless you are a true prospect hound (which, maybe you are!), you probably never developed any sincere emotional attachment to these players. García and Gallen are not pined-over exes–they are passersby on the street or in the supermarket that could in theory have been your soulmate but almost certainly weren’t. It’s just that in baseball, you get the chance to learn if they were.