Cardinals’ bullpen presents tantalizing trade pieces. Which direction will they go?

The very nature of assembling a Major League bullpen is consistently being in possession of 10,000 spoons when all you need is a defined closer.

The St. Louis Cardinals, certainly not immune to irony and often outstanding at creating their own, find themselves now with one of the game’s most dominant, even as the time to ship him off closes in.

Jordan Hicks saved his first four games since 2019 on the team’s road trip to both sides of the Atlantic, and in so doing, demonstrated the kind of weaponry the team has seen only in flashes since his season-ending surgery that year and the starts and stops of recovery ever since. That demonstration came just in time for the Cardinals to come to the inevitable conclusion that he needs to be traded prior to the Aug. 1 deadline.

“Whenever you’re in my position, you kind of know what you’re capable of,” Hicks said Sunday after closing out the Cardinals’ 7-5 victory over the Cubs. “It’s just about the opportunity coming to you and being patient for it.”

That opportunity came to Hicks because Ryan Helsley, who ascended in his stead over the past few seasons and was an All-Star in 2022, is currently on the injured list with tightness in his right forearm. That shuffle helps to illustrate the larger point — bullpen pieces are fungible, no matter how talented, and with the Cardinals fading out of the race, it’s perhaps where they’re most poised to set the trade market.

Starters Jack Flaherty and Jordan Montgomery are both set to be free agents at season’s end, but either or both would be candidates to receive a qualifying offer which would guarantee compensation to the Cardinals should they sign elsewhere. That gives the team both a floor and flexibility; if they believe they’ll get more for those players this winter, they’re not under the same sort of pressure to seek trade return.

“I think our patience is going to be about where we see our club,” president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said when asked about how potential qualifying offer decisions impact the trade deadline. “I hate to use this word with the media, but what are those arbitrages? What do they look like? They might not be as attractive as we hoped.”

The compensation for the Cardinals for a departing, qualified free agent is a draft pick following competitive balance round B — roughly, the 75th overall pick. The counterbalance is the deal they’ll have to offer, which would be for one year and roughly $20 million.

That number is roughly commensurate with market forces for starters like Flaherty and Montgomery. Hicks’s services would chart out at a much lower rate, making it more essential to trade him rather than see him walk for nothing.

Helsley, Cabrera & Gallegos

There are others, too, who the team could seek to flip for its longer term benefit. Helsley was offered to the Toronto Blue Jays this past winter as the team sought to acquire a catcher in a trade, and then took the team to an arbitration hearing and lost. Those events in combination with his injury history could see him floated as a trade piece whose value could tick up with two more years of team control remaining.

Génesis Cabrera, seeing a resurgence in both value and fastball velocity, is in a similar boat. He too lost his arbitration hearing this spring, and he too has two years remaining; a lefty reliever with his skills would be appealing to any number of contenders.

Giovanny Gallegos signed a contract extension last summer which bought out his remaining arbitration years, making him a cost-stable and reliable workhorse reliever who also has a team option for 2025. Chris Stratton, like Hicks, is set for free agency this winter, though would be only a depth piece for a potential playoff club.

More potential bullpen options for St. Louis

More importantly, it’s unclear whether any of the prospect arms at Triple-A Memphis on the verge of the majors profiles as a full-time starter, save perhaps Michael McGreevy. Gordon Graceffo’s season has been sidelined by injury and therefore not the leap forward either he or the club would’ve preferred.

Zack Thompson, who was an effective reliever last season and at the start of this season, was sent back to stretch out and has posted disastrous results. His future might indeed be back in the bullpen.

Graceffo (at least for the time being) and Thompson (likely permanently) could fill those bullpen roles for the club in 2024 alongside Andre Pallante, Jake Woodford, and fireballer Guillermo Zuñiga (assuming his minor arm injury stays minor). Finding bodies to fill slots isn’t a challenge; maximizing the value of the pieces already in house is, and has been an unfamiliar one for this Cardinals leadership group for the last decade and a half.

Still, as reality becomes obvious and St. Louis’s place in the standings crystallizes, it’ll be incumbent on the front office to get what they can for what they have. What they have is a variety of bullpen pieces which could shake up the market. What they get will determine whether there’s much silver lining to this cloud of a season.