Justin Williams

Cardinals Place Kwang Hyun Kim, Justin Williams On 10-Day IL

By Mark Polishuk | June 5, 2021 at 11:12am CDT

The Cardinals have placed left-hander Kwang Hyun Kim and outfielder Justin Williams on the 10-day injured list, manager Mike Shildt told reporters. Kim left his start last night due to lower back tightness, while Williams is dealing with a stiff neck. Righty Angel Rondon (as reported earlier today) and first baseman John Nogowski have been called up from Triple-A to fill the roster spots.

A similar back problem sidelined Kim during Spring Training and kept him from making his 2021 debut until April 17. The 32-year-old’s second Major League season has been pretty solid, as Kim has overcome some lackluster peripheral numbers to post a 4.05 ERA/4.25 SIERA over 40 innings of work. Kim’s current injury doesn’t seem as serious as his earlier injury, Shildt told MLB.com’s Katie Woo and other reporters, so the team is hoping a minimal 10-day stint will correct the issue.

A quick return from Kim would certainly help a St. Louis rotation that is already without Jack Flaherty and Miles Mikolas due to injuries. Johan Oviedo is slated to start today, and Shildt said that Rondon will be used as a long reliever for the time being. The Cardinals have off-days on both Monday and Thursday this week, so if Kim is indeed only out for 10 days, the team might not need a replacement starter at all.

Injuries in the outfield have led to a lot of playing time for Williams this season, as he has appeared in 51 of the Cardinals’ 58 games. Williams is hitting only .160/.270/.261 in 137 plate appearances, and when combined with some below-average defense, Williams has been a sub-replacement level (-0.8 fWAR) performer. Prior to this season, Williams had appeared is only four MLB games over parts of two seasons with St. Louis and Tampa Bay.

Cardinals Granted Fourth Option On Justin Williams

By Steve Adams | March 24, 2021 at 2:55pm CDT

The Cardinals have been granted a fourth minor league option on outfielder Justin Williams, as first reported by Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (via Twitter). President of baseball ops John Mozeliak confirmed as much in an afternoon call with reporters.

The extra minor league option might have dampened Williams’ chances of making the club more substantially under normal circumstances, but today’s Harrison Bader injury news puts Williams more squarely in the mix for a spot. With Bader sidelined anywhere from four to six weeks due to a forearm issue, Dylan Carlson will likely slide over to center field, giving the trio of Williams, Lane Thomas and Austin Dean a greater chance of making the roster.

Williams, 25, was acquired along with Genesis Cabrera and Roel Ramirez in the trade that sent Tommy Pham to the Rays. He’s logged just seven MLB plate appearances but is a career .271/.333/.423 hitter in 581 Triple-A plate appearances and is batting .259/.333/.407 in 30 trips to the dish this spring. Williams’ numbers to this point in his career don’t show it, but scouting reports throughout his minor league tenure have pegged him for plus raw power and bat speed. That power has been curbed in large part by a penchant for hitting the ball on the ground; Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel wrote at FanGraphs in January 2020 that Williams had the second-best exit velocity in the Cardinals’ system and the lowest launch angle.

Williams was one of several players awaiting ruling from an arbiter on whether he was out of options or had a fourth minor league option. The process, as is the case with most debates between MLB and the MLBPA, took longer than expected, but rulings have been filing in for the past day. The discrepancy stems from the truncated length of the 2020 season and how it should be treated with regard to fourth option eligibility.

Typically, fourth options are granted to players who have exhausted all three of their minor league options before being healthy enough to play five “full” seasons of pro ball. The league defines “full” as 90-plus days on an active Major League or Minor League roster (not the injured list), but last year’s 60-game season lasted just 67 days, and there were no active roster/injured list distinctions at teams’ alternate training sites.

Harrison Bader Out Four To Six Weeks With Forearm Injury

By Steve Adams | March 24, 2021 at 2:40pm CDT

2:40pm: President of baseball operations John Mozeliak tells reporters that Bader will be down for four to six weeks (Twitter link via ESPN’s Marly Rivera).

9:30am: Cardinals center fielder Harrison Bader will begin the season on the injured list due to a “flare up” of a forearm injury that required a platelet-rich plasma injection, manager Mike Shildt announced to reporters Wednesday (Twitter link via Jeff Jones of the Belleville News). He’ll be sidelined for a “solid four weeks at minimum,” according to Shildt.

The injury to Bader lends some clarity to the Cardinals’ outfield mix. Tyler O’Neill and Dylan Carlson are locks at this point thanks to huge spring showings. Carlson can play center field early if needed or slide over to right field, where he’d been initially projected with a healthy Bader in play.

Justin Williams, Lane Thomas and Austin Dean are likely vying for the remaining starting job, and it’s possible that all three could make the roster (two as reserves). Dean does have some experience at first base, giving him a bit more utility in a bench role. Williams, meanwhile, is still awaiting ruling on whether he has a minor league option remaining or not. If he does not, then he’d be all but assured an Opening Day roster spot, as he wouldn’t be able to be sent to the minors without first clearing waivers.

Bader has become a polarizing figure among Cardinals fans due to his low batting average, but he’s among the game’s best defensive center fielders and has some power at the dish. Over the past three seasons, he’s posted a combined .234/.326/.401 batting line with 28 homers, 41 doubles and seven triples through 958 plate appearances — good for a 97 wRC+ (about three percent worse than league-average offense when weighted for home park and league). Some of Bader’s OBP is propped up by frequently batting eighth in front of the pitcher, however, and his 29.4 percent strikeout rate in that stretch is problematic for obvious reasons. Still, a player with his defensive aptitude and a solid .167 ISO (slugging minus batting average) needn’t be an offensive force to provide value.

That said, the Cards will now get a longer look at several outfield candidates who have quite a bit of offensive upside themselves, so it’ll be interesting to see if any of them run with the opportunity and challenge the 26-year-old Bader for playing time upon his eventual return. That four-week timeline from Shildt would take Bader out through at least April 21, though the absence could very well be longer in the likely event that he needs a tune-up at the team’s alternate site/in Triple-A once his forearm discomfort has cleared up.

Several Players Awaiting Clarity On Minor League Option Status

By Steve Adams | March 2, 2021 at 4:36pm CDT

In the minutes after we posted our annual list of out-of-options players earlier today, several readers pointed out players they believed to have been omitted. In following up with various team and agency sources around the league, it became clear that there’s some uncertainty as to how the 2020 season will impact some players’ number of minor league options.

Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch explores the situation at greater length, reporting that Cardinals outfielder Justin Williams isn’t even sure whether he has a minor league option remaining. Neither, according to Goold, are the Cardinals themselves. Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register writes that the Angels are in a similar spot with right-hander Jaime Barria. Goold lists the Cubs’ Adbert Alzolay as another player currently in this state of limbo.

The reason? The commissioner’s office, the MLB Players Association and Major League teams still need to determine whether last year’s shortened slate of games counts as a full season under the league’s option structure. An arbiter is expected to make a final decision sometime this month, per Fletcher. Goold writes that a decision is expected “any time now,” adding that the Cardinals have been awaiting clarity for weeks.

By rule, players are given three option years after being selected to a team’s 40-man roster. Being optioned to the minor leagues, even if it’s out of Spring Training, counts as an option year — so long as the player spends 20 days down on the farm. Players are granted three option years, but there’s no limit to the number of times they can be optioned back and forth throughout the course of one of those individual option seasons.

It is possible for some players to be granted a fourth option year. This is most typical among players who have missed considerable time due to injury. Players who are on the 40-man roster and have exhausted those three minor league options before accruing five full seasons of play can be granted this exemption. A “full” season by that definition entails 90 or more days on an active Major League or Minor League roster (but not the injured list).

As Goold explains with regard to Williams, he fell shy of 90 days on an active roster in 2013, 2014 and 2019. His fifth “full” season would’ve been 2020 — you can see where this is going — but the season itself was not 90 days in length. Beyond the fact that the season itself was only 67 days long, players who were “optioned” weren’t sent to the minor leagues to compete in games but rather to alternate training sites to participate in simulated game settings against others in the organization.

Generally speaking, Major League clubs are keenly aware of the out-of-options players on other rosters, but it was clear in asking around today that there’s presently a disconnect because of last year’s shortened season. Even if you were to downplay the significance of one team not being clear on another team’s player, the reports from Goold and Fletcher underscore the confusion surrounding the issue.

It seems something of this nature should have been planned for during last year’s return-to-play negotiations, but as we saw with the months-long back-and-forth between MLB and the MLBPA, the March agreement under which the season was renewed had many issues that were not fully addressed. It’s not necessarily a surprise that 2021 option status wasn’t a major talking point up front, but it’s nonetheless a bit perplexing that an entire offseason has elapsed without a resolution. Minor league options — or a lack thereof — will be a considerably driving factor in spring roster moves around the game over the next four weeks.

Latest On Cardinals’ Potential Roster Additions

By Steve Adams | August 5, 2020 at 9:56am CDT

The Cardinals placed six players on the injured list yesterday following the team’s Covid-19 outbreak, and they’ll likely be adding infielder Rangel Ravelo to the IL as well. The team confirmed yesterday that he is also among the current players to have tested positive (but did not formally place him on the injured list).

That drops the Cardinals’ roster to 23 players, meaning they’ll still need to make five additions between now and Friday. (Rosters reduce from 30 to 28 players for the remainder of the season tomorrow.) To this point, only one spot has been formally filled: infielder/outfielder Brad Miller was activated from the injured list yesterday. Four more players will still need to be added to the roster between now and Friday.

Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch runs through many of the possibilities, reporting within his morning column that infielder Max Schrock will likely be selected to the active roster. Jeff Jones of the Belleville News points out on Twitter that lefty Genesis Cabrera has already revealed via Instagram that he’s in St. Louis, so he’ll fill another of the spots. Alex Reyes will also be called up, per Goold. Jones adds that Cabrera and Reyes are likely to be the only two pitchers added to the roster. Those additions have not yet been announced by the club.

The Cards’ final open roster spot figures to be of particular intrigue among fans — and with good reason. Top prospect Dylan Carlson is among the names available within the 60-man player pool for St. Louis, and at this point in the season, the Cardinals have already delayed his path to free agency by a year. He’d need to be added to the 40-man roster, but the team can easily accommodate some additions due to the fact that players on the Covid-19 injured list don’t count against the 40-man.

Carlson has been widely expected to debut at some point in 2020, and considering that the Cardinals were struggling to score runs even before losing Paul DeJong and Yadier Molina, there is (on paper, at least) some extra incentive to get his bat into the lineup. It’s a small sample, clearly, but St. Louis has batted just .217/.281/.382 as a team through five games. Carlson, meanwhile, raked at a .292/.372/.542 clip with 26 homers, 28 doubles, eight triples and 20 steals in 562 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A last year.

Jones tweets that the final spot could well come down to Carlson, fellow outfielder Justin Williams and infield prospect Elehuris Montero. Both Williams and Montero have been ranked among the organization’s top 20 or so farmhands for the past couple seasons, though neither has generated the expectations associated with Carlson, who entered the season as a consensus Top 25 league-wide prospect. It’d be the first real look in the Majors for any of that trio, and all three would be controllable all the way through the 2026 season should the stick in the Majors following their promotion. Carlson and Montero have yet to appear in the big leagues, while Williams received just a single plate appearance with the 2018 Rays.

The Cardinals’ Blocked Prospects

By Steve Adams | April 9, 2020 at 10:40am CDT

The Cardinals haven’t had a losing record since 2007. Despite a recent playoff “drought” — a three-year stretch from 2016-18 that only qualifies as such by the St. Louis organization’s lofty standards — the Cards have run out a solid roster on an annual basis. Riding a blend of productive veterans, high-end prospects who emerge as key contributors and what seems like an out-of-nowhere success story or two every year (we see you, Tommy Edman), the Cardinals have established themselves among MLB’s more consistent franchises.

And while their strong track record in player development allows them to continually filter up quality young players to complement the veterans on the roster, it also inevitably leaves some talented players on the outside looking in. Because they’ve been able to develop so many quality youngsters, the Cards simply don’t have the space to play them all. (That’s a partial driver behind the outfield carousel they’ve experienced in recent years — though certainly not the only factor.)

Just look at some of the young players the Cardinals have traded away prior to 2019 while still managing to field competitive rosters:

Carson Kelly, Luke Weaver — traded to D-backs in the Paul Goldschmidt deal
Tommy Pham — traded to Rays in return for Genesis Cabrera, Justin Williams and Roel Ramirez
Oscar Mercado — traded to the Indians in exchange for Conner Capel and Jhon Torres
Luke Voit — traded to the Yankees in the deal that brought Giovanny Gallegos to St. Louis
Sandy Alcantara, Zac Gallen — traded to the Marlins in the Marcell Ozuna deal
Marco Gonzales — traded to the Mariners in return for Tyler O’Neill
Randal Grichuk — traded to the Blue Jays in return for Dominic Leone and Conner Greene

That’s nine big league regulars/rotation pieces shipped out — in some cases, for disappointing returns — without causing the final on-field product to dip below .500. It’s a testament to the Cardinals’ amateur scouting and player development staffs that they’re so regularly deep with talent that they’re able to ship it off for veterans, potential areas of need or larger quantities of further-off talent. Certainly, not all of those swaps have worked out — Mercado or Pham would look nice in the outfield right now — but the Cardinals have rarely come up completely empty-handed on a deal.

Trades of this nature have become the norm for the Cards, and it’s likely that will continue to be the case. With Yadier Molina reportedly talking extension prior to the shutdown and Paul Goldschmidt signed five more years, for instance, the Cards look to have a pair of roadblocks to some more young talent. The outfield, too, has more names than playing time available. It seems likely that we’ll see more young players change hands as a result in the next calendar year, so let’s run through some possibilities.

Catcher

If a Molina extension does indeed come together, that doesn’t leave much of a path to regular playing time for 25-year-old Andrew Knizner — a fairly well-regarded backstop whose bat looks close to big league ready. In 83 games and 341 plate appearances in Triple-A, Knizner is a .283/.362/.453 hitter with an 8.2 percent walk rate and just a 13.1 percent strikeout rate. Scouting reports on Knizner question his receiving and framing skills, but he notched a 42 percent caught-stealing rate with Triple-A Memphis in 2019.

If Knizner does indeed change hands following a Molina extension — the Cards brought Matt Wieters back to serve as his backup again — then perhaps 19-year-old Ivan Herrera will emerge as the true heir-apparent to Molina and his Hall of Fame legacy.

First Base

Luken Baker isn’t an elite prospect — few first-base-only prospects are considered as such — but FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen put a 70 grade on his raw power in this year’s scouting report on the hulking 6’4″, 265-pound slugger in the making. Baker hasn’t tapped into that power just yet, though he spent the 2019 season in a pitcher-friendly Florida State League (Class-A Advanced). He’s managed his strikeouts to this point (21.6 percent) and also walked in 10.5 percent of his plate appearances. With Goldschmidt entrenched at first base through 2024, there’s no hope of Baker emerging as a regular in the near future, which seemingly puts him on a similar track to Voit.

Elsewhere on the roster, 27-year-old Rangel Ravelo (28 later this month) is out of minor league options and limited to a bench role. A career .293/.369/.452 hitter in 1652 Triple-A plate appearances who also slashed .310/.385/.473 in 649 Double-A plate appearances, Ravelo has done enough in the minors to suggest that he could hit in the big leagues. He’s played a little corner outfield, so perhaps the Cards view him as a replacement for the recently traded Jose Martinez. However, it’s possible that another club could view him as a potential late-blooming regular at first base.

The Outfield

The Dexter Fowler signing clearly hasn’t panned out as hoped, but the switch-hitting veteran’s five-year, $82.5MM deal runs through the 2021 season. Had the 2019 campaign been as much of a struggle as his 2018 season, he’d perhaps be a release candidate, but Fowler’s bat bounced back to roughly league-average levels last year (103 wRC+, 98 OPS+), and his contract should grant him a decent leash.

Harrison Bader was one of the game’s best defenders in center (14 Defensive Runs Saved, 12.9 Ultimate Zone Rating, 13 Outs Above Average), so he’s probably locked into center field despite a rough sophomore showing at the dish (.205/.314/.366).

Left field was to be determined in camp, with the likes of Dylan Carlson, Tyler O’Neill, Lane Thomas, Justin Williams and waiver claim Austin Dean vying for playing time. Carlson ranks among baseball’s elite overall prospects and should be installed as a regular at some point in 2020 (assuming a season is played). Even in the unlikely event that the club quickly moves on from Fowler, there’d be O’Neill, Thomas and Williams left to compete for that theoretical spot.

O’Neill was a ballyhooed prospect himself when acquired from Seattle, and though strikeouts have been an issue, he’s a passable corner defender with light-tower power and a history of drawing walks in the upper minors. Thomas can play a solid center field and owns a career .270/.342/.472 slash through 444 plate appearances in Triple-A. Williams is a corner bat who draws good marks for his raw power. He’s yet to show off that power in the minors, but FanGraphs points to his high-end exit velocity as a source of optimism if he can add more lift to his swing.

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Most organizations would love to have the “more talent than playing time” issue on the big league roster — and you certainly won’t head president of baseball ops John Mozeliak or GM Mike Girsch complain about the reality. But that duo and the rest of the Cards’ front office figure to continue to find creative ways to deal with those surpluses, and it shouldn’t come as a big surprise if some of the above names finally get their chance at playing time in another organization,

Cardinals Option Four Players To Triple-A

By Mark Polishuk | March 19, 2020 at 5:36pm CDT

The Cardinals optioned outfielders Austin Dean and Justin Williams, infielder Edmundo Sosa, and righty Jake Woodford to Triple-A, as per the club’s Twitter feed.

Dean has by far the most MLB experience of the group, appearing in 98 games with the Marlins over the past two seasons. St. Louis acquired Dean in January, though Dean faced a lot of competition for an Opening Day roster spot, given the amount of outfield depth in the Cards’ camp. Dean played mostly as a left fielder in Miami with a few appearances in right field and first base, and he hit .223/.268/.388 with 10 homers over 311 plate appearances.

Williams faced a similar situation as Dean did in facing an uphill battle to win an outfield job, though Williams’ left-handed bat makes him a solid call-up possibility during the season given that Cardinals’ other outfielders are mostly right-handed hitters. A second-round pick for the Diamondbacks in the 2013 draft, Williams was dealt to the Rays in 2014 and then came to St. Louis as part of the return in the Tommy Pham trade package at the July 2018 deadline. Shortly before that deal, Williams received his lone bit of MLB experience to date — a single plate appearance on July 21, 2018.

As noted by Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sosa is eligible to be sent down due to a fourth option year, as opposed to the usual three. After the Cardinals cut ties with Yairo Munoz, Sosa stood to benefit from that unusual situation, and he played well in Spring Training in his bid for a utility infield job. While at Triple-A, Sosa will be the “de facto backup” to Cardinals’ starting shortstop Paul DeJong on the big league roster, should DeJong suffer a longer-term injury. Sosa has had only a few more cups of coffee in the big leagues than Williams, as Sosa has appeared a total of 11 games for St. Louis over the last two seasons.

NL Central Notes: Castellanos, Ozuna, Pirates

By Steve Adams | January 22, 2020 at 10:17pm CDT

The Reds “remain a player” for free-agent outfielder Nicholas Castellanos, tweets MLB Network’s Jon Heyman. The extent to which the Reds are interested is far from clear, though. Cincinnati has already signed Shogo Akiyama to a three-year deal and has Nick Senzel, Jesse Winker and Aristides Aquino atop an already deep list of incumbent outfield options. And, unlike the Rangers, who are also said to have interest in Castellanos, there’s no option of plugging him in at first base, where Joey Votto is entrenched in Cincinnati.

It’s difficult to envision much of a fit in Cincinnati unless Castellanos winds up taking a short-term deal along the lines of the one Marcell Ozuna signed in Atlanta just yesterday. Even if such an opportunity were to materialize for the Reds, they’d likely still need to move an outfielder to alleviate the logjam that’d come with signing Castellanos. Corner outfielders have had a hard time cashing in this winter, and the market for Castellanos looks rather limited at this point. If he and agent Scott Boras are willing to wait things out, it’s possible that an injury early in camp or a Cubs trade that sheds some cash will change his market’s landscape. At present, however, demand doesn’t exactly appear frenzied.

Latest On Cardinals Outfield Situation

By TC Zencka | January 18, 2020 at 7:41pm CDT

Harrison Bader has claimed the Cardinals centerfield job, per Derrick Goold, Benjamin Hochman, Rick Hummel and Ben Frederickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. If manager Mike Shildt decides to go with the dibs system this spring, Bader will be in excellent shape. Otherwise, he’s going to have to hit to stay the everyday man in center.

President of Baseball Ops John Mozeliak specifically mentioned a desire to see Bader become an “all-fields hitter,” while acknowledging that his offensive floor to remain a starter is lower than most in the game because of his elite defensive abilities. The .650 OPS he finished with in 2019 isn’t going to cut it – thought it’s worth noting that even with the .205/.314/.366 batting line, Bader put together a 2.0 bWAR season in 128 games.

The final note on Bader is that while the Cardinals have a handful of outfield options, none are suited specifically for center quite like him. That said, prospect Dylan Carlson, whom the Cardinals view as part of the 2020 picture, has spent a decent 43 percent of his minor league starts in center. The 21-year-old Carlson tore through the upper levels of the minors last year, hitting .292/.372/.542 across Double-A and Triple-A as a 20-year-old. Also mentioned, Lane Thomas – acquired in 2017 from the Blue Jays for international spending money – as a possibility for at-bats in center should Bader continue to struggle with the outside breaking ball.

Thomas, 24, played a total of 68 innings in center for the Cardinals in 2019, tearing it up in 44 plate appearances with a .316/.409/.684 small sample burst. In Fangraphs’ January prospect update, Thomas landed as the #8 ranked prospect in the Cardinals system, while Carlson came in at #2, behind only Nolan Gorman.

Along with Bader, Thomas, and Carlson, Tommy Edman looks like a fan favorite in the making, and he figures to get most of his playing time in the outfield while the Cardinals wait to see if Matt Carpenter bounces back. Even if Carpenter moves full time to the bench at some point, veteran Dexter Fowler enjoyed a bounce back season (of sorts) in 2019, tellingly appearing in 150 games as a clearly trusted veteran.

Read between the lines and it’s hard see how a reunion with Marcell Ozuna makes sense. That said, the Cardinals seem to be at least considering it. Speculatively speaking, the ongoing engagement could signal a willingness on Ozuna’s part to settle for a short-term pact.

Despite the outfielder’s interest in returning, the article notes that Mozeliak declined to answer when asked whether he has remained in touch with the 29-year-old. The Cardinals have enough coverage in the outfield to let Ozuna walk and feel okay about their depth. Besides the five potential outfielders mentioned above (Bader, Thomas, Carlson, Edman, Fowler), the Cardinals can also call on Rangel Ravelo, Tyler O’Neill, Justin Williams, or the recently acquired Austin Dean for outfield at-bats. If there’s a potential weakness in the Cardinals outfield, it’s depth in centerfield, where Ozuna does not help anyhow. Even there, depth is hardly a weakness. Bader and Carlson have immense potential while Fowler provides a veteran floor (though he’s more of a week-by-week stopgap at this point of his career).

Furthermore, payroll estimators peg the Cardinals opening day payroll somewhere between $162MM and $167MM. The low end of that spectrum would match last year’s opening day payroll, which was a franchise all-time high. That doesn’t paint a welcoming environment for a new Ozuna contract. Nor does it, before you ask, make the acquisition of Nolan Arenado’s $26MM contract seem at that likely. That said, if there’s any takeaway from the 500-or-so words above, it’s that Mozeliak and GM Mike Girsch have an eye for contrivance in roster building.

Rays Acquire Tommy Pham

By Steve Adams | July 31, 2018 at 1:20pm CDT

10:25am: The Rays and Cardinals have announced the trade. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com tweets that the Cardinals are sending $500K of international money to the Rays in the deal. St. Louis is barred from spending more than $300K on any single international signing anyhow, and they’ve already been using their international funds as currency in trades over the past few days.

9:51am: The Rays have struck a deal to acquire Tommy Pham from the Cardinals, reports Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports (via Twitter). It’s not clear what other elements are in play, though Passan adds that Chris Archer is not involved in the trade. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times tweets that the Rays will send outfielder Justin Williams, left-hander Genesis Cabrera and right-hander Roel Ramirez to the Cardinals in exchange for Pham and international bonus allotments.

While some may raise an eyebrow at the notion of the Rays adding pieces when they’re firmly out of both the AL East race and the AL Wild Card picture, Pham is controlled for another three seasons beyond the current campaign. Pham will be arbitration-eligible for the first time this offseason and is not eligible for free agency until after the 2021 season, making him an affordable long-term piece to help the Rays as they hope to move back into a contention with a young core built around Blake Snell, Jake Bauers, Willy Adames and others.

For the Cardinals, the trade serves as the latest in a roster shakeup that is approaching cataclysmic proportions. The Cards have designated Greg Holland and Tyler Lyons for assignment, traded Sam Tuivailala to the Mariners and are reportedly open to offers on Bud Norris and Jose Martinez. The Cardinals also sent minor league first baseman Luke Voit to the Yankees (along with international money) in order to acquire a pair of big league bullpen assets in Chasen Shreve and Giovanny Gallegos.

With Pham out of the picture in St. Louis, the Cards will create more opportunity for younger outfield options like Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill, though both Marcell Ozuna and Dexter Fowler remain on hand as high-priced, veteran options.

In Pham, the Rays are buying low on a player who has slumped over the past two months but looked to have broken out as one of the National League’s better all-around players in 2017 and in the early stages of the 2018 campaign. From the start of his season in 2017 to the end of May this year, Pham posted a sensational .296/.399/.506 with 32 homers and 33 steals through 734 plate appearances. He’s capable of playing all three outfield spots, though with Kevin Kiermaier serving as one of the game’s premier defenders in center, Pham’s home will likely be in an outfield corner. Of course, Kiermaier has also proven to be injury prone, and Pham provides some insurance in center during future seasons.

It’s worth noting that over the past two months, Pham’s output at the plate has plummeted. He’s posted just a .227/.292/.330 slash through his past 192 plate appearances, though his walk and strikeout rates have remained fairly constant in that time. Pham’s average on balls in play during that stretch is .278, though, and while that isn’t all that far below the league average, it’s considerably south of his career .339 mark. With a lifetime 40.6 percent hard-hit rate and a 22.1 percent line-drive rate, Pham has proven himself to be a hitter capable of sustaining a BABIP better than the league mean, so there’s some reason for the Rays to hope for a turnaround.

In return for Pham, the Cardinals will acquire a package of three prospects that, frankly, would’ve appeared underwhelming when Pham’s value was at its peak. It’s possible, of course, that St. Louis views Pham as an asset that is unlikely to rebound or is particularly high on one or more of the pieces coming over from Tampa Bay, but the package is lacking in the way of top-tier prospects.

Williams, 22, ranked as the Rays’ No. 14 prospect as of last week’s update from Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com. He’s posted a .258/.313/.376 batting line in 386 plate appearances in his first exposure to Triple-A pitching this season, though he notched a more encouraging .301/.364/.489 slash in Double-A last season. MLB.com’s report praises his athleticism and gives him the potential for 20-plus homer pop, noting that his offensive abilities are still a bit raw but he could become a well-rounded player in an outfield corner.

Cabrera, 21, has a 4.12 ERA with with 9.8 K/9, 4.5 BB/9 and a 34.4 percent ground-ball rate in 113 2/3 innings at the Double-A level this season. He’s been playing against much more experienced competition and, in fact, is in his second run through Double-A after reaching the level as a 20-year-old last year. Callis and Mayo ranked him 25th in Tampa Bay’s system, noting that he has a projectable enough frame to potentially be a starter down the line but a strong enough fastball/slider combo to be a bullpen piece if that doesn’t pan out.

Ramirez, 23, is enjoying a solid season in the Double-A ’pen, having worked to a 3.32 ERA with 10.2 K/9, 3.8 BB/9, 0.89 HR/9 and a 35.6 percent grounder rate in 40 2/3 innings of work. He’s closer to the Majors than Cabrera, it seems, given his more advanced age, status as a reliever and greater success at that level. He could conceivably emerge as a ’pen option in St. Louis either this season or next, though was not considered to be among the Rays’ top group of prospects.

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