It feels appropriate that the news that St. Louis Cardinals fans had been anticipating for what is now years, the trade of third baseman Nolan Arenado to the Arizona Diamondbacks, would drop less than three days after their biggest rival signed the top third baseman on the market, with the Chicago Cubs signing Alex Bregman. The Bregman news came on a night where the Bulls, Blackhawks, and most notably the Chicago Bears won their games, the latter a dramatic playoff comeback victory against their biggest rival. Truly, it must be nice.

The trading of Nolan Arenado, a nearly thirty-five year-old in clear and likely irreversible decline, was only a surprise insofar as it is a bit surprising that it took this long for it to happen. When Arenado initially waived his no-trade clause from the Colorado Rockies in order to facilitate his move to St. Louis, the chance to play for a genuine playoff contender was the obvious but nevertheless frequently cited reason behind it, but the Cardinals are now coming off three aggressively mediocre seasons, averaging 77 wins and never particularly contending for a postseason position.

And although Arenado was perhaps a bit more judicious in his use of the no-trade clause than the Cardinals organization or its fans may have liked (as an aside: I have been as critical of Nolan Arenado before and during his Cardinals tenure as anybody, but this is one matter where I have always been firmly in Arenado’s camp–if you convince a team to give you a no-trade clause, you are well within your rights to reject every trade that comes your way), he did ultimately agree to go to the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team coming off a mediocre 80-82 season but which won 89 games in 2024 and made the World Series in 2023. With Arenado’s declining performance, if he wanted to play for a contender, he could not be as selective as he had been in the past–his hometown team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, for instance, are currently employing Max Muncy, one of the better hitters in baseball, at third base only because his most natural position, first base, is currently patrolled by a future Hall of Famer who has received MVP votes in each of the last eight seasons, and because designated hitter is manned by maybe the greatest player in the history of the sport. Arizona is an upgrade for a player who would probably like to win something at some point in his career. Good for him.

Evaluating the trade in purely baseball terms in a vacuum is a bit trickier than evaluating it in context. That the Cardinals, who only had to deal marginal prospects when they acquired Nolan Arenado when he was younger and better, didn’t exactly acquire expected superstars should not come as a surprise to anybody with reasonable expectations. That they had to agree to keep paying Arenado ($26 million over the next two seasons) to make a deal work also checks out, when one recalls that the Colorado Rockies were still paying Nolan Arenado in 2022 when he was an MVP finalist for the Cardinals. The Cardinals in turn acquired Jack Martinez, a 22 year-old 2025 draftee who, after a couple spins around the transfer portal, concluded his NCAA career at Arizona State. Those are the nuts and bolts, but in context, there is something important to note: the loss of Nolan Arenado as a baseball contributor does not matter not to the Cardinals because the Cardinals are not going to be legitimate World Series contenders for the remainder of his contract.

I have never experienced a true-blue Cardinals rebuild, and most people reading this haven’t either. It’s not that the Cardinals haven’t had interesting young players, but it is rare that those interesting young players are the primary, and arguably the only, attraction. JJ Wetherholt, a player I’ve never watched play a full baseball game and could not pick out of a police lineup if he were wearing his Memphis Redbirds uniform, is suddenly the most important person in determining how fun of a year I have as a baseball fan in 2026. I think back to September 8, 1998, a day most famous to Cardinals fans for Mark McGwire hitting his record-breaking 62nd home run of the season but which also saw the MLB debut of J.D. Drew–2026 is a year in which that extremely secondary highlight might be the best we get.

Some will try to argue that the highest-paid Cardinals player is now Dustin May, but don’t believe that–the highest Cardinals player is still Nolan Arenado (as a delightful graph in Michael Baumann’s FanGraphs writeup of the trade notes, his share paid by the Rockies and his share paid by the Diamondbacks would each be the fourth-highest paid player on the Cardinals as it currently stands). The gap may continue to grow–#3 Lars Nootbaar and especially #2 Brendan Donovan have been subject to their share of trade rumors, as well. The Cardinals prior to today already dispatched with two players whose salaries towered over anybody still on the Cardinals, Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras.

The absurdity is that the Cardinals probably aren’t that much worse than they were in 2025. Contreras, as infectious as his intensity was, had a somewhat unexceptional bat relative to his position once he moved from catcher to first baseman. Gray, although better by peripheral statistics than his earned-run average would suggest, is entering his age-36 season and has become increasingly susceptible to allowing his share of dingers. Arenado’s contract and expectations were typically weighed against him to an extent that he arguably became somewhat underrated in his later seasons, but given his age and decline, it’s very plausible that he is replaced at third base by a superior Nolan in 2026. Also, Miles Mikolas isn’t on the Cardinals anymore.

But this is a team that has effectively stripped itself of anything that could reasonably be considered a Star in the “gets the attention of casual baseball fans” sense. The lack of NBA or NFL team makes it more of a challenge, but is any major sports city in the country as starved for star power as St. Louis now is? The big name is probably Jordan Binnington, the Blues goalie that has been one of the worst goaltenders in the NHL this season. There is a part of me that is genuinely excited for what comes next, because for whatever star power the St. Louis Cardinals now lack, they seem to understand much better than in years past exactly what they are–they are not a great team or even a good team, but they are trying to determine their path forward to becoming one. But in the meantime, this summer is going to be a test of our patience that we haven’t experienced in decades, if in our lifetimes at all.