Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Cardinals Rumors

Cardinals Name Daniel Descalso Bench Coach

By | at

The Cardinals announced Monday that they’ve hired former infielder Daniel Descalso as their new bench coach. Last year’s bench coach Joe McEwing will join the Cardinals’ front office as a special assistant to president of baseball operations John Mozeliak. The Cardinals still expect to make further additions to the coaching staff this winter, the team noted.

Descalso, 37, spent five years in a Cardinals uniform from 2010-14 and appeared in parts of 10 MLB seasons between St. Louis, Colorado, Arizona and Chicago (Cubs). He spent the 2023 season as a special assistant in the Diamondbacks’ baseball operations department. This will be his first professional coaching assignment.

It’s the third time in the past two offseasons the Cardinals have effectively installed one of their former players as manager Oli Marmol’s bench coach. The Cards briefly hired Matt Holliday in that role last November, but Holliday had a change of heart just months after being appointed to the post, citing a desire to spend more time with his family as the primary reason for his resignation. Holliday spent eight years playing for the Cards, of course. McEwing, meanwhile, played for the Cardinals in both 1998 and 1999. As with Descalso, Holliday was slated to be a first-time coach with the Cardinals. McEwing had spent more than a decade on the White Sox’ coaching staff.

In 1079 Major League games, Descalso tallied just shy of 2900 plate appearances and posted a .235/.320/.362 batting line. He played every position on the diamond other than catcher and center field, with the bulk of his time coming at second base, third base and shortstop (in that order).

Cardinals Were Not "Actively Engaged" On Aaron Nola

By | at

  • While the Cardinals are known to be in the market for multiple starting pitchers and president of baseball operations John Mozeliak referenced discussions he had with right-hander Aaron Nola’s representation in conversation with Tom Ackerman of KMOX, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes that the club’s interest in Nola never reached the point where the club met with the right-hander or made a formal offer prior to him re-signing with the Phillies earlier today. Though Goold notes that other NL clubs were “actively engaged” in attempting to lure Nola away from Philadelphia, he adds that the Cardinals were not among them, despite indications earlier in the offseason that the club would be interested in Nola’s services this winter. While Nola is now off the market, he’s far from the only top-of-the-market pitching free agent the Cardinals have been connected to this offseason, Veteran right-hander Sonny Gray has been connected to St. Louis multiple times so far this offseason, while the club also has reported interested in NPB star Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a potential reunion with southpaw Jordan Montgomery.

National League Non-Tenders: 11/17/23

By | at

The deadline to tender a contract to arbitration-eligible players is tonight at 7:00pm CT. Here’s a rundown of fairly minor players on National League teams who have been non-tendered today. This post will be updated as more decisions are revealed. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projected salaries for all players eligible for arbitration last month.

All players who are non-tendered before this evening’s deadline go directly into free agency without being placed on waivers. They’ll be eligible to sign with any of the league’s 30 teams. It’s not uncommon to see non-tendered players almost immediately return to their previous organization on a minor league deal.

The transactions:

Latest Moves

Earlier

  • The Reds have non-tendered relievers Derek Law and Reiver Sanmartin. Cincinnati also confirmed the previously reported non-tender of Nick Senzel.
  • In addition to Rowdy Tellez and Brandon Woodruff, the Brewers have non-tendered right-hander J.C. Mejía. He failed a PED test in September, the second such result of his career, and was suspended for 162 games.
  • Former Rookie of the Year winner Kyle Lewis was non-tendered by the Diamondbacks. He played in only 16 games after being acquired from the Mariners last offseason.
  • The Cubs non-tendered relievers Ethan Roberts, Brandon Hughes and Codi Heuer. All three are recovering from surgeries.
  • Right-hander Tommy Doyle was non-tendered by the Rockies. Colorado designated him for assignment when acquiring Cal Quantrill this morning.
  • The Cardinals have non-tendered catcher Andrew Knizner, first baseman Juan Yepez and starting pitchers Jake Woodford and Dakota Hudson. St. Louis reportedly tried to deal Hudson this afternoon but evidently did not find a taker.
  • The Mets have non-tendered relievers Jeff Brigham, Sam Coonrod and Trevor Gott. New York also cut loose infielder Luis Guillorme and confirmed the reported non-tender of Dan Vogelbach.
  • Left-hander Josh Fleming was non-tendered by the Phillies, the team announced. Philadelphia just snagged the southpaw off waivers from the Rays a few weeks ago.
  • The Marlins have non-tendered catcher Jacob Stallings and infielder Garrett Hampson, per a club announcement. Stallings spent two seasons as the primary catcher after being acquired from the Pirates at the 2021-22 offseason. Hampson signed a minor league deal with the Fish last season.
  • The Pirates non-tendered Osvaldo Bido and Hunter Stratton, tweets Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Neither had yet been eligible for arbitration. Both right-handers made their big league debuts in 2023; Mackey suggests the Bucs will try to bring them back on minor league pacts.
  • The Nationals announced they’ve non-tendered first baseman Dominic Smith and right-hander Cory Abbott. Both players were designated for assignment earlier in the week, making this an inevitability.

Cardinals Non-Tender Dakota Hudson

By | at

7:10pm: The Cardinals have announced that Hudson has been non-tendered, leaving him set to hit the open market where he’ll be able to sign with any of MLB’s 30 clubs.

4:29pm: The Cardinals are shopping right-hander Dakota Hudson “pretty hard” this afternoon ahead of today’s non-tender deadline, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand. Feinsand also suggests that St. Louis’s aggressiveness on Hudson could indicate the club views him as a non-tender candidate.

Hudson, 29, is projected by MLBTR’s Matt Swartz for $3.7MM this offseason in his penultimate trip through arbitration. The right-hander made his MLB debut back in 2018 and managed to get quality mid-rotation results through the first three seasons of his career, with a 3.17 ERA (131 ERA+) in 217 innings of work from 2018-20. That success came in spite of some shaky peripheral numbers that undercut the otherwise strong performance; Hudson struck out just 18.1% of batters faced while walking 11.6% during those years, leaving him with an unsightly 4.74 FIP in spite of an excellent 57.3% groundball rate.

Things took a turn for the worse for Hudson late in the 2020 campaign, however, when he was sidelined by Tommy John surgery. The injury would limit him to just 8 2/3 innings of work in 2021. While he returned as a regular member of the Cardinals rotation in 2022, his results had fallen back to Earth as he posted a mediocre 4.45 ERA (88 ERA+) in 139 2/3 innings of work, with a 10.1% walk rate that nearly matched his 13.1% strikeout rate. Only Zack Greinke struck out a lower percentage of batters among pitchers with at least 100 innings of work that year, while Hudson’s K-BB of just 2.9% was dead last.

While the Cardinals tendered Hudson a contract for the 2023 campaign, he was largely relegated to a depth option in the minor leagues despite the club struggling to field a viable rotation throughout much of the year. While he missed a month early in the season due to a neck issue, 11 of his 23 total starts in 2023 were made for the club’s Triple-A affiliate in Memphis, with whom he struggled to a 6.00 ERA in 48 innings of work. His 4.98 ERA in 81 1/3 innings of work at the big league level, while an improvement, was still 12% worse than league average by measure of ERA+. It’s worth noting that Hudson flashed a more serviceable form when pitching out of the bullpen in the majors this year, with a walk rate below 10% and a 3.86 ERA across 16 1/3 innings of work in six multi-inning relief outings.

Though Hudson has considerable success in his past as a big league starter and showed flashes of quality out of the bullpen this year, it’s not clear whether a team would be interested in parting with much of value for the opportunity to tender him a contract this winter. After all, the Cardinals themselves are among the teams most hungry for starting pitching options in the league at the moment. That being said, it wouldn’t be a shock to see a pitching-needy club work out a trade for Hudson, as the Rockies did for righty Cal Quantrill earlier today. If Hudson finds himself non-tendered by the Cardinals this evening, he could draw interest as a low-cost depth option on a market with plenty of demand for pitching.

Cardinals Outright Connor Thomas

By | at

Left-hander Connor Thomas went unclaimed and has been assigned outright to Triple-A Memphis by the Cardinals, per a team announcement. He’ll remain in the organization after being designated for assignment Tuesday, when the Cards set their roster in advance of the deadline to protect prospects from the Rule 5 Draft.

Thomas, 25, was the Cardinals’ fifth-round pick in 2019. He’s yet to make his big league debut but was selected to the roster last offseason when the Cards were setting their roster to protect players (Thomas included) at that same deadline. A rough 2023 campaign in Triple-A, however, dropped his stock and led the team to remove him from the roster.

In 21 appearances with Memphis this year — 17 of them starts — Thomas worked 94 1/3 innings of 5.53 ERA ball. That marked his third straight stint in Triple-A and his second with an ERA north of 5.00. Thomas notched a 3.10 ERA in Memphis back in 2021, and the Cards saw fit to protect him from Rule 5 selection last year in hopes that he’d rebound in a third look with their Triple-A club.

Instead, Thomas saw his strikeout rate plummet to a career-low 15.7%. He maintained strong command, although this past season’s 7% walk rate, while still better than the league average, was his highest in a full season. As a soft-tossing lefty with plus command and plenty of grounders, Thomas has profiled as a fifth starter at his best. He’s something of a throwback to prior generations in an era increasingly populated by power arms.

Thomas had previously ranked as highly as No. 19 prospect in the Cardinals’ system at Baseball America and No. 20 at MLB.com. FanGraphs pegged him 11th heading into the 2023 season. The Cards will hope to get him back on track this year, and given the general organizational need for rotation depth, they’re likely happy to stash him back in Memphis.

MLBTR Podcast: Top Trade Candidates, Bryce Harper at First Base and the Braves’ Raising Payroll

By | at

The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.

This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…

Plus, we answer your questions, including…

  • The NL Central appears to be the most intriguing division from an offseason perspective. The 2023 division winner could be selling. The Reds have a positive youth movement that could be augmented with veterans and turn into a real threat. The Cubs and Cardinals have pieces and could do an offseason push to rapidly improve their teams. The Pirates always seem to be a year or two away. What does each team in the NL Central need to do take the Brewers spot on top of the division? Do you see a potential arms race in the middle of the country instead of the coasts? (25:10)
  • Do the Angels have a chance for Cody Bellinger or one of the top pitchers? (29:50)
  • Could you explain why any team would trade something of value for Jonathan India? He’s been one of the worst defensive second basemen in baseball both of the last two years (according to both DRS and OAA), plus he’s been a below average hitter by wRC+ both years? He’s also had injury concerns both years. Maybe I’m wrong, but wouldn’t just about any contender aim higher than him as a starting second baseman? (34:10)

Check out our past episodes!

Cardinals Announce Six Roster Moves

By | at

The Cardinals announced a series of roster moves in advance of today’s 40-man roster deadline.  Right-handers Adam Kloffenstein and Sem Robberse and catcher Pedro Pages had their contracts selected, while left-hander Connor Thomas was designated for assignment.  (Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported earlier today that Pages’ contract was going to be selected.)  Left-hander Packy Naughton was outrighted to Triple-A, and St. Louis officially confirmed the previously-reported news that Wilking Rodriguez elected free agency after the right-hander had also been outrighted to Triple-A.

It was essentially a set of chalk picks for the Cards in protecting three of the four Rule 5-eligible prospects on their MLB Pipeline top 30 list, with right-hander Ian Bedell the only eligible player now available to rival clubs in December’s R5 Draft.  Bedell might be one of the more interesting names to watch heading into the Rule 5, but the Cardinals felt Kloffenstein, Robberse, and Pages were more worthy of 40-man roster spots.

Kloffenstein and Robberse only joined the organization at the trade deadline, acquired from the Blue Jays in the Jordan Hicks trade.  Both pitchers made their Triple-A debuts after coming to the Cardinals, and they’ll likely start 2024 at Triple-A as well.  Since St. Louis is aiming to add multiple new starting pitchers this winter, Robberse and Kloffenstein will be competing with the Cards’ other young arms to see who might be part of the first wave of depth starters.  It also isn’t out of the question that either could be on the move if the Cardinals pursued some experienced pitching on the trade market.

Pages was a sixth-round pick for the Cardinals in the 2019 draft, and he hit .267/.362/.443 with 16 home runs over 497 plate appearances with Double-A Springfield last season.  Speaking of trade depth, the Cards might also look to the catcher position, as they now have four backstops (Willson Contreras, Ivan Herrera, Andrew Knizner, and Pages) on the 40-man roster.

Thomas was a 40-man selection almost exactly a year ago, as St. Louis looked to protect the outfielder from the 2022 Rule 5 Draft.  The southpaw was coming off a 5.47 ERA in 135 Triple-A innings in 2022, but couldn’t make much headway last year, delivering a 5.53 ERA, 15.7% strikeout rate, and 7.0% walk rate in 94 1/3 frames for Memphis.  Thomas is a grounder specialist who has faced some heavy BABIP misfortune during his minor league career, but the Cardinals have seen enough to potentially move on from the 25-year-old.

Naughton has a 4.98 ERA over 59 2/3 Major League innings since the start of the 2021 season, with his first two big league campaigns spent shuttling back and forth from Triple-A with the Angels and Cardinals.  His 2023 campaign was essentially lost to injury, as Naughton underwent flexor tendon surgery in late June and figures to miss probably the first half of the 2024 season, based on past timelines for similar procedures.  Naughton will continue rehabbing and potentially also surface for at least some bullpen work at some point next year.

Wilking Rodríguez Elects Free Agency

By | at

The Cardinals have sent right-hander Wilking Rodríguez outright to Triple-A Memphis, per his transactions tracker at MLB.com, though Rodríguez has elected free agency. It wasn’t previously known that the Cards had removed him from the roster, so this opens a spot on their 40-man, which is now at 39.

Rodríguez, 34 in March, was selected from the Yankees in the 2022 Rule 5 draft. This was fairly unusual as most Rule 5 picks tend to be players in their early 20s who have yet to crack the big leagues. But Rodríguez actually made his major league debut back in 2014, tossing two innings for the Royals. He spent much of the intervening time away from affiliated ball, pitching for teams in Venezuela and Mexico.

The Yanks signed him to a minor league deal in August of 2022, surely intrigued by his 2.01 earned run average and 43.2% strikeout rate in Mexico that year, but the Cardinals plucked him away a few months later in the Rule 5. The righty opened the season on the injured list due to right shoulder soreness and underwent surgery in May. He stayed on the IL for the full season and collected a year of service time but never pitched in a regular season game for the Cards.

Players selected in the Rule 5 draft cannot be optioned to the minors and have to stay on a club’s active roster or injured list for the full season. They need at least 90 days on the active roster in order to shed those Rule 5 restrictions, so Rodríguez would have carried his Rule 5 status into next season. It seems the Cards weren’t willing to keep him on the roster for now and have cut him loose. Tomorrow is the deadline to add players to 40-man rosters for the next Rule 5, so the Cards likely have some of their own prospects in mind that they want to use the roster spot on.

When Rule 5 picks are cut from the roster, they have to be offered back to their original club. Per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Yanks declined, which allowed Rodríguez to be outrighted. But since he has a previous career outright, he has the right to elect free agency, which he has done. It’s possible he returns to the Cards in some non-roster capacity as Goold reports they are interested in bringing him back.

AL East Notes: Blue Jays, Donovan, Nootbaar, Watson, Judge

By | at

Before signing Willson Contreras last winter, the Cardinals were known to be considering catching options on the trade market, which included talks with the Blue Jays about their then-surplus of Gabriel Moreno (who was eventually dealt to the Diamondbacks, Alejandro Kirk, and Danny Jansen.  Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shed some light on those past talks between the Jays and Cards, writing that Toronto had interest in Lars Nootbaar and Brendan Donovan.

With Goold also reporting earlier this week that Dylan Carlson was on the Jays’ radar this winter, there’s plenty of reason to think that Toronto and St. Louis could line up on some sort of trade this winter.  Nootbaar could slide perfectly into the Blue Jays’ left field vacancy, while Donovan’s ability to play almost any position would give Toronto lots of flexibility in figuring out how it wants to address its many needs around the diamond.  Of course, several teams have also made calls about Nootbaar, Donovan, and Carlson, and it remains to be seen if the Jays could outbid the field, if the Jays have the available pitching that the Cardinals are badly seeking this offseason, or even if St. Louis dealt any of these particular players whatsoever.

More from around the AL East…

  • The Rays hired Tony Watson for a job in their player development department, according to Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times.  Watson will be working under director of pitching Winston Doom.  A veteran of 11 big league seasons from 2011-21, Watson retired in 2022 due to shoulder problems, and the 38-year-old is now moving into a new stage of his baseball career.  Known mostly for his seven seasons with the Pirates, Watson was a former All-Star reliever who posted a 2.90 ERA over 648 1/3 career innings, and is MLB’s all-time leader in holds (246) since the statistic started to be officially recorded by the league in 1999.
  • It isn’t any surprise that Aaron Judge is a big voice within the Yankees organization, and The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner writes that Judge and owner Hal Steinbrenner “have already met this offseason on multiple occasions.”  Examples of Judge’s influence might extend to the job security of manager Aaron Boone and director of player health and performance Eric Cressey, as Judge (and perhaps the Yankees clubhouse at large) likes both.  Kirschner notes the interesting dynamic this creates, writing that “Judge is seemingly on the second level of the team’s organizational ladder alongside” GM Brian Cashman, though Cashman himself earlier this week said he didn’t have any issue with star players like Judge or Gerrit Cole giving their input.
  • For more from the AL East, MLBTR’s Nick Deeds compiled another set of notes from around the division earlier today.

Lee Richard Passes Away

By | at

Former big league infielder Lee “BeeBee” Richard recently passed away, per an obituary from Serenity Life Celebrations out of Waco, Texas. He was 74 years old.

Richard was born in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1948. He attended Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, getting drafted by the White Sox in 1970. He played for the Sox from 1971 to 1975, getting traded to the Cardinals prior to 1976 for Buddy Bradford and Greg Terlecky. He was released after one year in St. Louis and didn’t make it back to the big leagues in subsequent seasons.

He finished his career having played in 239 games across five seasons. In 535 plate appearances, he recorded 83 hits, including 12 doubles, six triples and two home runs. He scored 71 runs and drove in 29, also stealing 12 bases. He mostly played shortstop but also some second base, third base and outfield.

We at MLB Trade Rumors extend our condolences to Richard’s family, friends, fans and former teammates.

Show all

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

hide arrows scroll to top