Risky trade for Wainwright 20 years ago is reminder of what Cardinals must do to rebuild

The 2003 St. Louis Cardinals were a disappointment. With a superstar core in place and just a year removed from an appearance in the National League Championship Series, they sputtered to 85 wins and a third place finish in their division.

It’s not terribly difficult to remember why; Brett Tomko finished second on the team in innings pitched, four pitchers with at least 70 innings posted an earned run average higher than five, and it goes on from there.

This year’s Cardinals would do cartwheels to reach 85 wins and third place. At that pace, they’d essentially be the Cubs, closing in on a postseason spot and playing meaningful ball down the stretch.

There’s not much in regular season pro sports that carries less meaning than what the Cardinals have been doing between the white lines for the last six weeks or so, with the exception of Adam Wainwright’s winding down career.

Having already pitched his last innings, he’ll be feted by the Busch Stadium crowd this weekend and take off his game uniform for the last time, just months short of the 20 year anniversary of the trade which brought him to his baseball destiny.

It’s that trade which stands as a stark reminder of the ability of teams to take risks, and which serves as an intriguing possible bookend for the final close of one era of Cardinals baseball. With Wainwright’s departure, there will be no players remaining in the organization who were part of the team through its dominant 2004 and 2005 seasons, let alone the 2006 championship.

That era stands apart in Cardinals history as the fulfillment of the promise which accompanied the purchase of the team by the group led by Bill DeWitt, Jr. in 1995. T

he assembly of talent and support from the owners in the front offices pursuits culminated not in the arrivals of Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen but in that December deal which saw young Wainwright get the call that he’d been traded in the midst of requesting permission to ask his now wife to marry him.

It would’ve been easy, after all, to keep J.D. Drew. The Cardinals offense was one of the very best in the league in 2003, and when Drew was on the field, he was at the center of the action. Long painted a malcontent – it wasn’t that so much as he didn’t really like baseball – Drew was on the cusp of his best seasons and provided nearly as much at the plate as Rolen.

Instead, the Cardinals were willing to take the painful pill and risk moving on from Drew to secure their pitching. Wainwright, of course, was not the headliner; that was Jason Marquis, who it was thought had been stifled in Atlanta and who would blossom with a chance to vault to the head of a rotation elsewhere. He never really was that, though in 2004, he did make 32 starts with an ERA under four.

Ray King, on the left side of the bullpen, was a relatively known commodity, and a marked upgrade on a well-past-cooked Jeff Fassero.

Wainwright, of course, became Wainwright, contributing almost nothing to consecutive 100-win teams before closing out a World Series championship and becoming one of the most important figures in franchise history.

That’s an awfully high bar to set for any potential winter acquisition. Making the choice to sacrifice off the current roster for a young pitcher’s potential ceiling doesn’t need to include baking in the possibility that that young pitcher might some day challenge for the Hall of Fame.

What it does require is accepting the risk of that tradeoff and not being mired in the creeping conservatism that’s come to define their decision making in recent years.

It’s perhaps harder to make trades now than ever before because teams are working from similar data sets. There are perhaps no rogue executives left willing to gamble futures for known quantities, in large part because the data-driven route is also the job preservation route; an executive who sticks to the charts is an executive who doesn’t often have to risk his job being questioned.

Free agent mistakes only cost money.

Should the Cardinals add arms this winter exclusively from the market, they’ll be able to soothe themselves with whatever talent stockpile they currently possess. It’s not as simple as finding the next Wainwright and trading whoever the current Drew might be for them. If anyone knew those analogues, well, they wouldn’t do the deal in the first place.

Wainwright’s departure, though, is a reminder of his arrival. And it’s a reminder of the risk that comes with the territory in navigating a team through treacherous waters.

Rebuilding is a non-starter in St. Louis, as it should be. It’s been jarring this summer to watch the Cardinals rip as closely down to the studs as they have, but it’s also been instructive of how easy that is to do if all other options exhaust themselves.

The easy path can come later.

Twenty years ago this December, Adam Wainwright got linked into two permanent commitments on the same day, even if he only knew about one.

It would behoove the Cardinals to turn over every possible rock this winter as they seek to do the same.