Richie Palacios is giving the St. Louis Cardinals plenty to think about this October.
The utility man wasn’t supposed to be the kind of player that keeps a front office up at night. When the Cardinals dealt him to Tampa Bay in early January 2024, he was 26 and coming off a brief but encouraging major league look in 2023 - useful depth, not a fixture.
St. Louis sent him out for right-handed reliever Andrew Kittredge, a move that looked sensible at the time and fit a bullpen picture that already included Ryan Helsley and JoJo Romero.
Kittredge had posted a 3.09 ERA in 2023 with the Rays, so the Cardinals were getting a proven late-inning arm. Nobody was looking at Palacios and expecting a breakout on the level of Randy Arozarena, Zac Gallen, or Sandy Alcantara.
That’s what makes the Rays’ postseason run so interesting now. Palacios has been far from ordinary in October, and his numbers are starting to pop in a way that could nudge Cardinals fans into wondering what might have been.
Through the postseason, Palacios is hitting .368/.368/.526 with a .894 OPS. He has seven hits and four RBIs, and two of those RBIs came Monday night when he helped give Tampa Bay an early lead in Game 7 against the Cleveland Guardians.
Richie Palacios makes it 2-0 Rays with a two-out hit! pic.twitter.com/JH3iElimNm
- Talkin' Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) October 20, 2026
For the Cardinals, though, this isn’t a case of a lost star being flipped away too soon. Palacios’ first season in Tampa Bay was modest, with a .223/.346/.318 slash line and 1.8 bWAR. Over the last three years with the Rays, he’s sitting at .237/.341/.356 with a 98 OPS+, which is solid production but still the kind of profile a team can replace.
And St. Louis did get real value from the deal.
Kittredge was part of a bullpen group that helped Ryan Helsley set a new single-season franchise save record in 2024, even though the Cardinals didn’t trade Kittredge that year. So the move made sense then, and it still does.
But Palacios is doing his best Arozarena impression this postseason, and that alone is enough to make the old trade look a lot more interesting now.
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