The Cardinals don’t have the same obvious trade-list this offseason that they did a year ago, when the path was pretty clear. Before the 2026 season, Brendan Donovan, Nolan Arenado, Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray all opened the winter as trade candidates and all four ended up getting dealt. JoJo Romero and Lars Nootbaar were also in that mix, only to stay put until the deadline before eventually moving on too.
This time around, St. Louis isn’t carrying that same stack of veteran trade chips. But there are still a few names worth watching, and the list starts with the least likely player to go and ends with the one who feels most likely to be moved.
Jimmy Crooks is the most intriguing piece on the board. He has appeared in 67 total major league games over the last two seasons, and his bat still hasn’t caught fire in the majors.
Even so, that small sample doesn’t erase what he’s shown elsewhere. Crooks has been one of the Cardinals’ top prospects for the last few years, and the production in the minors has been loud.
He is only 25 and remains under team control through the 2031 season. The problem for St.
Louis is simple: the catching room is crowded. If that weren’t the case, Crooks would be an easy fit on the big league roster.
But with the Cardinals already set at the position, beginning with Leo Bernal, Crooks becomes a realistic name to dangle. It doesn’t mean he’s definitely headed out, but this would be a logical time to see what kind of interest is out there from clubs looking for help behind the plate.
Then there’s Iván Herrera Pages, who doesn’t carry Crooks’ upside but still has a path to being moved. He’s 28, has shown enough to be considered solid defensively, and hasn’t offered much at the plate.
That profile fits more as a backup than someone you build around as a starter. If the Cardinals are comfortable rolling with a Bernal-Ivan Herrera tandem or a Bernal-Crooks pairing, Pages could be the odd man out.
The most likely player to go, though, is Nolan Gorman. The fit just hasn’t worked the way the Cardinals or Gorman probably expected, and the offensive consistency still hasn’t shown up.
Even more important, there doesn’t seem to be a clean route for him in the 2027 lineup. At this point, the offseason looks like the right time for St.
Louis to move on.
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Detmers 2026 season was strong enough to make him an appealing name in trade conversations, but the broader track record is part of the hesitation. He has shown inconsistency in earlier years, which makes him the kind of pitcher who can tempt a front office without fully justifying the kind of prospect haul it would take to land him. For a Cardinals team trying to balance patience with urgency, that is exactly the sort of debate fans do not love revisiting. [Read more 🡒]
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For St. Louis, the comments land in the middle of a larger question about how teams choose to spend. Some smaller-market clubs have found ways to compete by leaning into player development and scouting, even without matching the biggest payrolls. But when an owner publicly describes the business as lucrative, it gives fans more reason to wonder how much of the spending debate is about necessity and how much is about priorities. [Read more 🡒]