Dustin May’s one-year run with the St. Louis Cardinals ended up doing more than just helping the big-league club. It gave the organization a clear template for how to keep building, and how to keep adding talent.
May arrived in St. Louis on what looked like a classic prove-it deal, and not everyone was on board with it at the time. The upside was obvious to some, but there were plenty of skeptics around the move, even right up until the trade deadline.
The Cardinals, though, got exactly what they were hoping for. And from that outcome, they can take away two big lessons as they look toward 2027 and beyond.
The first is that St. Louis has become a place starting pitchers want to go.
May said as much when he signed, pointing to the Cardinals’ plan for him and their reputation for helping arms stay healthy in today’s game. After the club was able to boost his value, that pitch is only going to get stronger. Pitchers around the league will notice.
That matters because every winter brings a handful of high-upside arms whose stock has taken a hit because of injuries, poor performance, or both. If the Cardinals have indeed found a way to help pitchers recover value, they can keep targeting names in that mold. Freddy Peralta and Zac Gallen fit the kind of profile that could make sense for a team trying to do exactly that.
And this isn’t just about deadline flips. In some seasons, a pitcher like that could be signed, helped, and kept all year long as part of a contender’s rotation. The Cardinals now have a path for both outcomes.
The second lesson is even bigger for the long term: this kind of move can feed the farm system.
For now, St. Louis should keep leaning into this approach in free agency and on the trade market, using multiple arms if necessary to keep bringing in prospect capital. The club has money it can redirect, and that gives it room to keep working this lane.
Entering this season, the Cardinals were set to pay out $55.1 million of their Opening Day payroll to players on other teams like Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, and Nolan Arenado, along with the arbitration figures for Lars Nootbaar and JoJo Romero. In the cases of Gray and Contreras, the Cardinals absorbed money in trades to get better prospect returns. That same kind of flexibility can now be used to bring in players like May and turn them into future assets.
The pipeline is already in much better shape. Over the last 23 months, since Chaim Bloom began leading the effort to reshape player development, the Cardinals have also added plenty of outside talent through acquisitions tied to the 2025 MLB Draft and Trade Deadline.
In trades, that group has included Jesus Baez, Tai Peete, Jurrangelo Cijntje, Brandon Clarke, Yhoiker Fajardo, Hunter Dobbins, Richard Fitts, Mason Molina, Blaze Jordan, Alexander Frias, Josiah Ragsdale, and more. Most of those names are already part of the organization’s most talented collection of prospects and young players, and that gives St. Louis a better shot at getting back to true contention in the next few years.
In Other News...
Ivan Herrera Is Forcing A Cardinals Decision They Didn't Want
Ivan Herreras bat has kept him in the conversation, but his defense behind the plate is making life harder on the Cardinals than they probably expected. The young catcher has been productive offensively lately, yet his work handling the running game has become a real issue, and that is forcing St. Louis to weigh how much longer it can keep betting on him as a catcher if the overall package does not start to balance out.
The Cardinals do have alternatives in mind, with Herrera potentially fitting at designated hitter, first base or even in the outfield if the club decides the glove is limiting the value of the bat. For now, the bigger question is less about where his offense plays and more about whether his arm strength and receiving skills can improve enough to make him viable in the role they hoped he would grow into. [Read more 🡒]
Three Young Cardinals Are Already Fighting To Prove They Belong
Jimmy Crooks, Michael McGreevy and Joshua Baez are all at different stages of the same question in St. Louis: what, exactly, do they look like when the Cardinals need them to stick? Crooks has kept putting up strong minor league numbers, but his brief major league look was a reminder that the jump to Busch Stadium is still its own challenge. McGreevy has handled the big leagues well enough on the surface with a respectable ERA, even if the underlying numbers have not been nearly as flattering.
Baez brings a different kind of intrigue because the power is obvious and the upside is real, but the strikeouts keep hanging over everything he does. For a Cardinals organization trying to sort through young talent and decide who can be more than a flash, all three carry some version of the same burden: showing enough now to make it hard to leave them out of the next conversation, even if the full answer is still a long way off. [Read more 🡒]
Cardinals Selloff Just Set Up A Bigger Outfield Debate
The Cardinals latest moves only sharpen the conversation around what their outfield will look like next, after the club sent Dustin May and JoJo Romero to Milwaukee for prospects Alexander Frias and Josiah Ragsdale and also dealt Lars Nootbaar to Arizona. It fits the direction St. Louis has been taking as the season has worn on, shifting attention from the present standings to stockpiling talent for what comes next.
That leaves the front office with a bigger question than just replacing production, because the outfield now feels like a spot where the Cardinals may need another major piece. One name already circulating as a possible offseason target is Yankees outfielder Jasson Domnguez, which would give St. Louis a chance to keep reworking the group while the organization continues its reset. [Read more 🡒]