In terms of pure results, steeped entirely in hindsight, the worst trade that the St. Louis Cardinals have made in the twenty-first century, by a mile, was on December 13, 2017, when the Cardinals acquired outfielder Marcell Ozuna from the Miami Marlins in exchange for four prospects. The prospects, at the time, felt minor–the one that produced the most public outcry, at least in my circles, was outfielder Magneuris Sierra, a Dollar Tree version of a Whiteyball-era Cardinal (he was really fast, kind of a lousy fielder otherwise, and eventually went on to hit zero home runs in his 636 career MLB plate appearances). There was Daniel Castano, at the time a fairly anonymous pitching prospect who did not rise far above that level of fame–he ended up pitching in 24 games for the Marlins from 2020 through 2023. The other two were the ones that truly backfired.

Sandy Alcantara becoming a productive MLB pitcher was not a surprise–he was a fairly hyped flamethrower who was exciting, if not particularly effective, during his eight appearances out of the bullpen in 2017. But his 2019 campaign–a bit of a FIP-beating 3.88 ERA, an awful record but also it’s the Marlins so who cares, a “as I said, it’s the Marlins” All-Star Game appearance–felt roughly like it would have been his ceiling. And it…was not. He was good (albeit in a short period of time) in 2020, even better in 2021, and a straight-up pitching demigod in 2022–a 2.28 ERA and 2.99 FIP, six complete games and a commanding MLB lead in innings pitched (from a guy that was largely assumed to be too erratic to be a starting pitcher at all), and a well-deserved, unanimous Cy Young Award.

But the guy that finished in fifth in that year’s Cy Young balloting was the truly wild post-Cardinals revelation. When the Cardinals included Zac Gallen in the Marcell Ozuna trade, I had no opinion on the matter because I had no idea who Zac Gallen was. I am admittedly not a true, dyed in the wool Cardinals prospects sicko, but even before they made their MLB debuts with the Cardinals, which Gallen had not done, I knew who Alcantara (#6 on MLB.com’s ranking of the top Cardinals prospects in 2017) and Sierra (#7 on the same list) were. Gallen, however, ranked a mere 24th. But then in 2019, he got off to a strong start with the Marlins before being traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Jazz Chisholm Jr., where he would receive Cy Young votes in 2020, 2022, and where he would be a Cy Young finalist in 2023.

I’ve never blamed John Mozeliak for this trade. It’s the kind of aggressive, win-now, not-prospect-hoarding trade that fans are constantly clamoring to make. But let’s not delude ourselves: he would, and should, like to have that one back. And I’d like to take it back for him. So let’s invent a time machine, and for these purposes, we’re going to assume that these players were non-negotiable parts of the trade–we can’t replace Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen with (higher ranked prospects at the time) Delvin Pérez and Alvaro Seijas–so Marcell Ozuna never becomes a Cardinal. Let’s see what happens.

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A subsequent trade that happened after the Marcell Ozuna trade–literally later that night: I remember scrambling to blog about it–was one that sent Stephen Piscotty to the then-Oakland Athletics for two future Remember Some Guys-caliber bench players, Yairo Muñoz and Max Schrock. On the surface, it was an extremely straightforward transaction–a fairly established but mostly redundant MLB player coming off a down year sent out for two unexceptional prospects–but Stephen Piscotty, by all contemporary and retrospective accounts, wanted to be traded to the Bay Area specifically in order to be closer to his mother, who was suffering from late-stage amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

I don’t know that it happens that night, but I do think that trade eventually does happen, at which point the Cardinals would have needed an outfielder–the 2018 team, even with Ozuna, only had two other full-time outfielders on its Opening Day roster (Dexter Fowler and Tommy Pham), though I suspect José Martínez would have been listed as a corner outfielder rather than as a first baseman in this world. Going to the free agency market, there was Lorenzo Cain, but knowing the nature of the Cardinals’ spending, he was probably a hair too expensive for them (Cain instead went to a vaunted enormous market coastal elite club, the Milwaukee Brewers). The next outfielder listed on MLB Trade Rumors was somebody occasionally tied to the Cardinals, longtime Cincinnati Red Jay Bruce. They correctly had Bruce signing for three years and $39 million (though they got the team wrong), so let’s just say the Cardinals do that.

In the moment, I would have been fine with the Cardinals signing Jay Bruce, and in hindsight, I would have been wrong. But it’s not like Marcell Ozuna exactly set the world on fire as a Cardinal, either. In 2018, Bruce was sub-Replacement Level–his bat was bad if not otherworldly terrible while he contributed minimally anywhere else. But ultimately, this wouldn’t have been much worse from a practical perspective for the Cardinals–his numbers were worse than those of Ozuna, but with Ozuna, the Cardinals had a tumultuous season which ended with a late season resurgence and an 88-win campaign three games short of the second Wild Card spot. Sub in Jay Bruce instead, and considering that the Cardinals likely would have gotten minimal if any contributions from the prospects they instead sent to Miami, they’d have probably…won 86 games or so instead. Objectively worse; not materially worse. But also, this is the season where the Cardinals are supposed to built up a big lead on the trade.

In 2019, things start to get a bit more complicated, because while Marcell Ozuna still wasn’t living up to the sky-high expectations of his Marlins peak, he was still an above-average hitter and was materially better than Jay Bruce in a season where the Cardinals did not clinch their National League Central title until the final day of the regular season. In some ways, Marcell Ozuna made the difference. But the margin was so small that any number of individual players could be argued to have made the difference, and most of those players were acquired for something other than players who could have themselves contributed to the 2019 team. Sandy Alcantara was a 3.3 WAR All-Star, and in a more abbreviated period, Zac Gallen was worth 2.7 WAR. But these six wins of marginal value cannot simply be added to the 2019 Cardinals’ win total, subtract Ozuna’s contributions, and there’s the new win total. Three of the spots in the Cardinals’ rotation, filled by guys who were healthy throughout the year, were ironclad: Jack Flaherty was a legitimate superstar and Miles MIkolas and Adam Wainwright were too solid to be reasonably replaced by unproven, relatively unheralded youngsters like Alcantara or Gallen. Dakota Hudson, who had a low ERA but high FIP, is a bit more of a wild card, but given that he was in their playoff rotation and given that he finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting, I doubt he would have been replaced either. Michael Wacha, though, I think there’s a reasonable chance to begin the season and especially during the season to remove him from a starting role. Surely it would have gone to Alcantara, the more hyped and more seasoned of the young pitchers, who would have taken Wacha’s starts, and Alcantara represents a 3.1 WAR improvement. That’s larger than the Ozuna over Bruce improvement. It’s safe to hypothesize that the Cardinals would have still won the NL Central, perhaps even a little more comfortably, though they were not going to make up the six game deficit that gave the Atlanta Braves home field advantage in their NLDS matchup.

Marcell Ozuna was arguably the most valuable player in the 2019 NLDS for the Cardinals–his go-ahead double in Game 1’s ninth inning was probably his single greatest moment as a Cardinal. Meanwhile, Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen, in a short series, probably wouldn’t have gotten any starts–Alcantara maybe slides into the Dakota Hudson start (that the Cardinals won anyway). They could have pitched out of the bullpen, but they weren’t realistically going to replace Carlos Martínez, the one genuinely ineffective Cardinals relief pitcher during that series, in the closer role. Was acquiring Marcell Ozuna the difference in getting the Cardinals to their only NLCS appearance of the last decade? I’m not saying this is definitely the case, but one thing I am quite certain in saying is that the trade would have had no bearing on the outcome of the NLCS, a four-game sweep at the hands of the Washington Nationals. Marcell Ozuna struggled and Dakota Hudson was terrible; maybe the Cardinals steal Game 4. But it would be totally unreasonable to assume a Cardinals series comeback.

In 2020, Marcell Ozuna went to Atlanta and magically became an amazing hitter again, but that’s beside the point. The Cardinals in 2020 were constantly catching COVID-19, so realistically any healthy person they could possibly employ would be a step in the right direction, but Alcantara and especially Gallen would have been helpful. They combined for 3.3 WAR, which doesn’t sound like that much until you re-calibrate your expectations for the 60-game season (or 58, as it turned out for the Cardinals) of it all. It was a bizarre, forgettable season (I almost said “forgettable year”, which outside of baseball is extremely untrue) in which Brad Miller was the second best hitter on the Cardinals. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, although extra starters to keep the team from regularly deploying Daniel Ponce de Leon or Johan Oviedo sounds great, they would have needed an additional seven wins to improve their playoff seeding, and while they had two games in hand had it really come down to it, this large of a margin in an abbreviated season seems unrealistic to overcome.

Their third and final game against the San Diego Padres was likely a lost cause, due to their complete lack of scoring, but Game 2, which they squandered via total bullpen collapse, was up for grabs. I don’t think Zac Gallen gets a playoff start–Kwang Hyun Kim and his sub-2 ERA started Game 1, Adam Wainwright had a good season/is Adam Wainwright and started the second game, and while Jack Flaherty’s 2020 was not very good he was coming off one of the best runs in modern Cardinals history in 2019–but he absolutely would have been in the bullpen, and he and Alcantara would have been more intriguing in Game 2 than Tyler Webb or Kodi Whitley. That trade might have made the difference in 2020. It would not have made the difference, however, in the NLDS–the Padres got swept by a juggernaut Los Angeles Dodgers team. By my accounting, the Ozuna trade probably gained a 2019 NLDS win and surrendered a 2020 NLWC win–I’d rather have the former, since everything about the 2020 season felt artificial. But the gap closed a nonzero amount in 2020. And it can only get worse from here.

In 2021, Zac Gallen was kind of forgettable–4.30 ERA, 4.25 FIP, by no means bad but this is basically just a middle-era Miles Mikolas season. Sandy Alcantara, however, was a genuine star, accumulating 4.2 WAR. Both of these pitchers, and especially Alcantara, would make the 2021 rotation better–this was the year of Carlos Martínez as an absolute disaster in the rotation, of Jack Flaherty and Miles Mikolas alternating healthiness, of John Gant and Johan Oviedo somehow combining for 27 starts. But the Cardinals were not especially competitive in the division race–although the eventual margin of victory of the Milwaukee Brewers came out to five games, their lead was up to 14 games by September 12th–a large part of why they squandered the size of their lead is that they, I would argue wisely, let their foot off the gas pedal. So if you assume the division was out of reach, and you assume that the Cardinals weren’t going to somehow close the sixteen game gap between the first and second Wild Card spots, they were still going to head out on the road to face the Dodgers. Adam Wainwright was still probably going to get the start, and based on his only allowing one run, that’s hardly a bad thing. The Cardinals stuck in the 2021 Wild Card Game to true relievers to pitch in relief, and the primary reason they lost is not even because T.J. McFarland and Alex Reyes set the stage for Chris Taylor’s walk-off home run, but because the Cardinals only scored one run. Almost certainly, a Wild Card Game loss to the Dodgers was going to be the end result of 2021, with or without the Ozuna trade.

2022 is the season where Alcantara and Gallen really cooked–13.3 combined WAR. The Cardinals won the NL Central without them, but they really would have won it with them. The 93-win Cardinals might have gotten to 100 wins if they could replace Dakota Hudson and Steven Matz in the starting rotation. But would they have gotten to 102? Because that’s the number they would have needed to avoid facing the Philadelphia Phillies in a Wild Card Series in which the Cardinals combined for three runs in two games. The starting pitching in those two games was legitimately quite good–outside of the catastrophic ninth inning of Game 1, the Cardinals allowed two total runs in seventeen innings. Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen would have started Games 1 and 2 by 2022–actual Game 1 starter Jose Quintana probably never would have been acquired at all–and they might have been awesome in those games, but they probably weren’t going to be any better than Quintana, and even if they were better than the still-quite-effective Miles Mikolas, the lack of run support whatsoever would not have changed the outcome. And even if the Cardinals had surpassed the Atlanta Braves for the second bye (I am dismissing the possibility of the Cardinals getting to the 111 wins of the Dodgers immediately), this would have set them up, in all likelihood, for an NLDS matchup against the same Philadelphia Phillies team that pantsed them in the real life NLWC. The difference Alcantara and Gallen would have made to the end result of the 2022 season, if you prioritize postseason success, is shockingly minimal.

The easiest season to recap is going to be 2023. Sandy Alcantara was pretty good–ERA and FIP in the low fours, certainly not as good as he was the year before but totally solid and definitely would have been a welcome addition to the Cardinals’ rotation. Zac Gallen was very good–the two combined for 8.3 WAR. That’s awesome. What they are replacing in the starting rotation is likely Steven Matz, whom the Cardinals likely do not sign in the first place, and Jordan Montgomery, whom the Cardinals likely do not trade for in the first place–they combined (even with Montgomery’s abbreviated stint due to being traded in July) for 4.1 WAR. Still, 4.2 WAR is a nice sized upgrade. To a 71 win team. The 2023 Cardinals would still come nowhere close to the postseason.

By the time 2024 rolled around, Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen were starting to make serious money–the latter was into salary arbitration while the former had signed an extension. 2024 Zac Gallen was still somewhat underpaid, even if his mid-threes ERA and FIP were a drop off from the previous two seasons, while Sandy Alcantara missed the entire season due to Tommy John surgery. They combined for just 2.6 WAR (which is better when it’s in the form of one guy than two, to be clear). Gallen would have rendered the signing of Kyle Gibson or Lance Lynn–honestly, take your pick–unnecessary, and he would have bolstered the rotation, but it would not have made a huge difference in the big picture, because the Cardinals lost the NL Central by ten games and the NL’s third Wild Card by six games. For the second straight year, in either universe, the Cardinals miss the playoffs.

In 2025, the Cardinals desperately need good starting pitching. Sonny Gray has been, some dreadful luck and a couple legitimate duds aside, pretty good, and Matthew Liberatore has been mostly fine, but Andre Pallante and especially Miles Mikolas and now-former Cardinal Erick Fedde were absolutely terrible. In theory, this is the year where Alcantara and Gallen would make a huge difference. But Sandy Alcantara has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball in 2025–his ERA of 6.66 is demonic in multiple ways, and while his 4.48 FIP is clearly better, we don’t have to delude ourselves into believing he’s been pitching well. Meanwhile, Zac Gallen, a pending free agent, has an ERA of 5.58 and a FIP of 4.86.

In a world where the Cardinals still had Alcantara and Gallen, they probably don’t ever trade for Erick Fedde and they may not re-sign Miles Mikolas. In a vacuum, the average Cardinals fan would throw a parade to celebrate this, but the end results aren’t really any better. It doesn’t really make a difference. As is the case in reality, both Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen would be firmly on the trade block, but with their limited club control and fairly high salaries, the returns would not be great–they would certainly be worse than the 2025 equivalent of Marcell Ozuna.

I am going to trust that pretty much anybody who would be willing to read this deep into a baseball blog post understands that individual players can only have so much impact on baseball. But even so, the lack of impact that two players who have clearly been superior to Marcell Ozuna over the last several years is astonishing. The TL;DR version of this is that had the Cardinals not traded for Marcell Ozuna, they probably lose the 2019 NLDS, they might win the 2020 NLWC and might advance to the 2022 NLDS, and that other than that, very little changes. Is this nihilism? Is this comfort that even the worst of front office decisions can only impact a team so much? Do trades matter? Does baseball matter? Does anything matter?