Cardinals looking to acquire arms through trade?

Given Walt Jocketty’s modus operandi for the last several off-seasons in acquiring big-name talent, along with the skyrocketing contract demands of free agents this summer, it seems very likely that Jocketty will look to fill the needs of his starting rotation through arms in the Cardinals system and via trade.

The only returning member of the original starting five for the 2006 campaign is Chris Carpenter, 2005 Cy Young award winner and 3rd place in the 2006 vote for the same award. In addition to this, there are three possible arms that could be plugged into the rotation for the St. Louis Cardinals from within the organization. Anthony Reyes, who started Game One of the World Series and pitched a beautiful game, Adam Wainwright, who excelled last year as the closer after Jason Isringhausen went down for the season, and Chris Narveson, a lefty who came up to make a spot start in September where he went four innings giving up two runs.

Reyes will be in the rotation barring a trade that will land him in another uniform. The other two are more tricky though. Wainwright’s success in the bullpen compared to his sub-par AAA stats as a starter do suggest that maybe Wainwright is better suited in the bullpen. He may ultimately get a chance at the starting rotation, but with Isringhausen likely not back until May or later, it may not be this year that Wainwright gets to start. Narveson is a possibility, but he is a very green pitcher by MLB standards. He is a lefty and projects to be a decent #5 starter, but La Russa’s Cardinals teams have rarely relied on a rookie to take the ball every five days when a mediocre-at-best veteran could be had.

This leaves the other possibilities to be through trade. There are many names being thrown around in blogs and newspapers alike. Among these names, there are a number that appear to consistently show up and seem to be on the market, and an impressive number of these names are actually very young pitchers. The Detroit Tigers have a duo that have been rumored in both lefty Mike Maroth and electric righty Jeremy Bonderman. The Pirates are said to be willing to part with one of their three young lefties of Zach Duke, Paul Maholm or Tom Gorzelanny, and the Angels are looking to deal the stud youngster Ervin Santana, who is still over a year away from getting the quarter-century break in his car insurance.

In addition, veterans like Jake Westbrook of the Indians, Rodrigo Lopez of the Orioles and Javier Vazquez of the White Sox seem to come up a lot(of course, so does every other ChiSox pitcher, but Vazquez seems the most likely to be traded).

Now, several of these pitchers are very unlikely for the Cardinals to pursue. The asking price for Santana will be very high, Jeremy Bonderman is said to not be on the block anymore, and it’s unlikely Jocketty will trade for a pitcher making 12 million like Vazquez unless the White Sox eat some of his salary(an equally unlikely happening, given the lack of top-tier prospects the Cardinals could give up for him).

But just for fun, let’s look at how these pitchers compare. First, we’ll look at their 2006 stats.

Pitcher - ERA - Record - IP - K - Salary - Age
J. Vazquez - 4.84 - 11-12 - 202.2 - 184 - 12,000,000 - 30
J. Westbrook - 4.17, 15-10, 211.1, 109, 4,250,000, 29
R. Lopez - 5.90, 9-18, 189.0, 136, 3,750,000, 30
M. Maroth - 4.19, 5-2, 53.2, 24, 2,300,000, 24
J. Bonderman - 4.08, 14-8, 214.0, 202, 2,300,000, 24
E. Santana - 4.28, 16-8, 204.0, 141, 350,000, 23
Z. Duke - 4.47, 10-15, 215.1, 117, 335,000, 23
P. Maholm - 4.76, 8-10, 176.0, 117, 328,000, 24
T. Gorzelanny - 3.79, 2-5, 61.2, 40, Not shown, 24

Looking at how they chart out, some things do stand out. Maroth and Gorzelanny are coming off injuries that limited them to well under 100 innings pitched. Bonderman and Santana have the best combination of ERA and Strikeouts, making them the most desirable(but also the ones with the highest asking price). The three Pittsburgh lefties are by far the cheapest, although none of them appear to be power pitchers with Duke and Maholm tied at 117 K’s. And of the veterans, Westbrook is the most desirable, especially as he fits the Duncan system being a sinker-ball pitcher and letting the defense get in the game.

The real question then is, what is a likely package that could pry one or more of these pitchers away. Looking at the situation realistically, the Pirates lefties are probably the ones that would be the most likely to pry away. The Pirates are looking for a power hitting first baseman to fill the gap left by the Sean Casey trade. Chris Duncan’s natural position is first base(he converted to outfield this last season in order to get playing time, since Pujols is obviously entrenched there). Of the three, Zach Duke is the most desirable. He is a lefty Jeff Suppan type pitcher with much better stuff. He pitches for contact and can eat innings and has good enough stuff that with some more seasoning and a good defense behind him, he could be a #2 type pitcher in not too distant years. Paul Maholm would be a good consolation prize if they wouldn’t part with Duke for Duncan straight up(which my guess is, they wouldn’t).

Mike Maroth, another lefty, is probably the next likely pitcher the Cardinals could attain. The Tigers are looking for another outfielder(why, I don’t know, but several articles have said they are), and they need a lefty reliever. Now, I can’t imagine a package of Encarnacion and Rincon would make them happy(but boy would it be great for Cardinals fans, dumping two players we don’t really want at the same time? Awesome!), however Encarnacion and Flores might be enough to pry away Mike Maroth and Thames, their bench-riding outfielder who has shown some pretty good pop from the bench. This rumor has shown up on several sites saying Juan and Looper, but realistically speaking, I don’t see why Detroit would want Looper, as they have a pretty stacked bullpen and only lack a lefty to solidify it.

If it were possible to get Bonderman for any similar package, it would be an obvious pull the trigger situation, but word out of Detroit is after a season where it seemed very likely it was Bonderman’s last with the Tigers, that they intend to keep him now.

There are some crazy situations out there for Ervin Santana, one of them courtesy of Larry Borowski of Viva El Birdos that involves trading Scott Rolen(Note: He is merely speculating on a trade they COULD make, not saying that he's heard anything that could imply there has even been a conversation). Santana is a potential future ace by all accounts, and the Angels do need a third baseman, but I don’t see any reason why the Cardinals would want to get rid of Rolen. He’s going into year two of recovery from a surgery where year two is where they predicted he’d be 100% again, so the Cardinals would be selling low on Rolen(sort of anyway, he did have an MVP caliber performance in the World Series, where some people feel he should have won the award over Eckstein.)

The Cardinals supposedly are still pursuing Jason Schmidt as well, but I see them more likely to fill rotation spots through trades. Good luck to Jocketty in navigating the quagmire that is the 2006 free agent class though.