Each of Ellis, Hernandez and Hellweg has had a fleeting look at the Majors. Ellis was a Rule 5 pick of the Royals in 2018 and subsequently tossed one inning in Kansas City last year before being returned to the Cards. The 27-year-old has been moved in a pair of notable trades, going from the Angels to the Braves alongside Sean Newcomb in the Andrelton Simmons swap before being flipped from Atlanta to St. Louis a year later in the Jaime Garcia deal. (The Braves also sent John Gant and Luke Dykstra to the Cards in that deal.) Ellis had a nice year between Double-A and Triple-A in 2018, but he was rocked for a 7.18 ERA in 79 Triple-A frames in 2019.

Hernandez himself was once a top pick in the Rule 5 Draft, going from the Rays to the D-backs in 2014. He appeared in 22 games with Arizona but hit just .167/.239/.262 in 47 plate appearances. Now 26 years old, Hernandez signed a minor league deal with an invite to big league camp this winter. Despite a solid defensive reputation, he’s managed just a .210/.279/.336 slash in parts of three Triple-A campaigns.

Hellweg, 31, was once a rather well-regarded prospect himself. Originally a 16th-round pick by the Angels (2008), he was in the midst of a solid 2012 campaign at the Double-A level when the Halos flipped him, Jean Segura and Ariel Pena to the Brewers to rent ace Zack Greinke. He was hit hard in 30 2/3 frames with the Brewers and hasn’t pitched in the Majors since the 2013 season. Since then, he’s spent time with the Padres and the Pirates in addition to stints in the independent Canadian-American Association and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball. Like Hernandez, he’d inked a minor league deal with the Cards this winter.

That day saw Seattle trade slugging minor league outfielder Tyler O’Neill to the Cardinals in exchange for left-hander Marco Gonzales. The now-28-year-old Gonzales has become a fixture in the rotation, but the trade wasn’t exactly well-received among M’s fans at the time. The club was below .500 but just 1.5 games back from a Wild Card spot at the time of the swap. Dipoto had been trying to acquire young pitching, hoping to add to his core while also remaining competitive in a top-heavy American League. (The 85-win Twins claimed the league’s second Wild Card position that year.)

The consensus among Mariners fans at the time of the swap was, essentially, “Why would they do this?” Social media reactions to the deal weren’t favorable, and looking through the comments on the trade’s writeup at MLBTR, FanGraphs or most other sites reveals a similarly perplexed set of replies. O’Neill had entered that year as one of the game’s 100 best prospects and the second-best in the Mariners organization, while Gonzales had made just one appearance in the Majors since returning from 2016 Tommy John surgery. He was having a nice season in Triple-A, but most scouting reports on him pegged Gonzales as a mid-rotation arm, at best. In addition to that Tommy John surgery, he battled shoulder troubles in 2015.

Injury risk or not, Dipoto was undeterred. The Mariners’ GM spoke the day before the trade about only being willing to deal from his premium prospects if it meant acquiring a long-term rotation piece, and days after the swap he called Gonzales “about as big-league-ready as a Triple-A pitcher could be.” Sure enough, Gonzales was in the big leagues less than three weeks later.

The initial results did little to assuage the concerns of Seattle fans. Gonzales pitched just 36 2/3 innings of 5.40 ERA ball down the stretch as the Mariners again fell shy of the postseason. O’Neill hit .253/.304/.548 with a dozen homers in 37 Triple-A games following the trade that year. On-base questions notwithstanding, the power was still impressive and Mariners fans were skeptical of the lefty for whom O’Neill had been shipped out.

Despite that lackluster showing, Gonzales opened the 2018 season in the Seattle starting five. His early work didn’t inspire much confidence, but after four shaky starts, Gonzales settled into a groove and pitched to a 3.60 ERA over his final 150 innings, averaging 7.6 K/9 and 1.7 BB/9 along the way. In 2019, Gonzales posted a 3.99 ERA that was nearly identical to his 4.00 ERA from 2018 — but he did it in a larger sample of 203 frames.

Setting aside his rocky debut in 2018, Gonzales has given the Mariners 369 2/3 frames of 3.99 ERA ball with an even better 3.83 FIP, 7.1 K/9, 2.1 BB/9, 0.97 HR/9 and a 42.5 percent ground-ball rate. From 2018-19, he was worth 6.0 bWAR and 7.1 fWAR. The rebuilding Mariners made clear that they view Gonzales as a core piece back in February, signing the southpaw to a four-year, $30MM contract extension (2021-24) that also contains a $15MM club option for the 2025 season.

The trade would likely look like a solid one for the Mariners even if O’Neill had blossomed into an everyday corner outfielder. That hasn’t happened yet, however. While Gonzales was solidifying himself in the Mariners’ rotation, O’Neill was bouncing back and forth between Triple-A and St. Louis, hitting a combined .258/.307/.454 with 14 home runs in 293 plate appearances. The power has been good but not elite, and O’Neill’s contact struggles have indeed been magnified against MLB pitching; he’s punched out 110 times in those 293 plate appearances (37.5 percent).

To be fair to O’Neill, he hasn’t exactly been given a real opportunity to win an everyday job. Just months after he was traded to St. Louis, the Cardinals went out and acquired two years of control over Marcell Ozuna in a trade that sent Sandy Alcantara, Zac Gallen and Magneuris Sierra to the Marlins. With Ozuna, Dexter Fowler, Tommy Pham (in 2018) and Harrison Bader all logging considerable time in the St. Louis outfield, opportunities for O’Neill have been sparse. But the very fact that the Cards felt it necessary to pursue a Giancarlo Stanton acquisition and then pull off a deal for Ozuna speaks to some level of question in O’Neill’s readiness.

The Cards didn’t add a left fielder to replace the departing Ozuna this winter, but they also have uber-prospect Dylan Carlson nearing the Majors. Even if Carlson seizes an outfield spot, the likely implementation of the universal DH will give O’Neill some additional opportunities to get into the lineup, so perhaps he’ll finally get the chance to justify the deal from the St. Louis end. The Cards haven’t exactly been hurting for pitching even without Gonzales in the fold, but there’s no denying he’s been the more valuable piece of the straight-up swap to this point.

The Gonzales/O’Neill trade won’t be looked back upon as any time of blockbuster, but it offers some reminders when judging future trades:

• Prospect rankings are useful and entertaining, but it’s easy to overemphasize them. Prospect values are in a constant state of flux. Even a few weeks and certainly a couple months can change the opinion on a prospect. Whether it’s adding a new pitch, adding/losing velocity, outgrowing a position, altering mechanics at the plate or any number of other changes a player can exhibit, a prospect’s value can alter in a hurry.
• It’s too easy to write off post-hype prospects. Gonzales himself was a first-round pick and top-100 prospect prior to injury troubles. At the time of the O’Neill trade, he was less than two years removed from ranking as the game’s No. 50 prospect, per Baseball America. A recent top prospect with some big league experience and four to five years of control is generally still a valuable piece even if he’s not a star. MLBTR’s Connor Byrne recently looked at another player fitting this mold: Pittsburgh’s Joe Musgrove.
• Position scarcity matters. We’ve seen corner outfielders and first baseman go for smaller returns on the trade market and in free agency in recent seasons. Part of the Mariners’ calculus was surely that a corner outfielder with some on-base questions was easier to come by than an affordable mid-rotation starter, even if the latter carried considerably more risk.

In some regards, the end result of this trade is common. “Team gets one of its best pitchers by trading away key prospect” is hardly a unique storyline in baseball, but the manner in which the Mariners went about this particular instance of that narrative isn’t typical. The result speaks for itself right now, though. And while O’Neill can still change how we look at the deal in the long run, it’s worked out about as well as the Mariners could’ve hoped.

More out of St. Louis…

• St. Louis native and postseason hero David Freese plans to be with the Cardinals’ fantasy camp next year, and the recently retired corner infielder tells Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he’s open to coaching in the future but not fully committed to the idea. “I always think about it, just because baseball is a part of me,” says Freese, who goes on to marvel at the manner in which the workload of Major League coaches has expanded over the past several years. A managerial role, even at the minor league level, has a bit more appeal to Freese than a coaching job, but the 37-year-old is currently focused on his family, with a second child due next month. Cards fans will want to check out the interview to read Freese’s personal recollection of a legendary postseason showing in 2011, when he rallied back from an icy NLDS showing to hit a combined .444/.528/.889 with four homers, six doubles and an unforgettable triple in just 53 plate appearances between the NLCS and World Series. He was named MVP of both series.
• ESPN’s Marly Rivera recently spoke with Yadier Molina about his willingness to test free agency and sign elsewhere if a reunion with the Cardinals doesn’t work out. Those comments were understandably the focus of her initial piece from their talk, although a lengthier transcript of the interview was published last week — one in which Molina discusses his Hall of Fame aspirations, his journey from a “defensive catcher” to a well-rounded All-Star performer, his pursuit of the 2,000 hit milestone and the change in the way that catchers have been valued since his MLB debut. There’s no additional context or change in his thoughts on potentially playing elsewhere; those comments were published in their entirety from the get-go, and it’s clear that Molina hopes to remain in St. Louis but wants another two years whether as a Cardinal or not. Still, as with the Freese interview, Cards fans will surely enjoy the personal stories and recollections from a revered player looking back on his career and discussing his future in the game.

If we go back a decade, Ludwick was amid a rather impressive run with the Cardinals, largely because of a 5.3-fWAR campaign in 2008 in which he posted a jaw-dropping 151 wRC+. While he fell back to earth from there, the Padres – who were playoff contenders in 2010 – expected him to at least serve as a solid regular in their uniform. But the Padres, despite winning 90 games that year, didn’t end up making the playoffs, and they never got much value from Ludwick. He slashed a weak .228/.301/.358 (86 wRC+) over 664 plate appearances in a Padres uniform in 160 games before they sold him to the Pirates in July 2011.

Ludwick’s subpar production in San Diego makes it all the more unfortunate that the team said goodbye to Kluber, who later evolved into one of the top starters of the past several years. Kluber came into his own in 2013, his first full season in the majors, and proceeded to post a sterling 2.96 ERA/2.89 FIP with 9.91 K/9 and 1.86 BB/9 across 1,238 2/3 innings through 2018.

As mentioned, Kluber took home a pair of Cy Youngs during his halcyon stretch. He also earned three All-Star nods, ranked 10th among all qualified starters in ERA, and helped the Indians to four playoff berths and three AL Central championships. Not bad for someone who was unheralded when the Indians got him. Westbrook, whom the Indians gave up, was quite good in their uniform at times, and he did enjoy success in St. Louis, but that’s nonetheless a trade that Cleveland would make again in light of how much Kluber blossomed as a member of the club.

However, now 34 years old, Kluber is no longer part of the team with which he broke out. After a disappointing, injury-ruined 2019, the Indians sent Kluber and his waning team control (he has a guaranteed one year, $18.5MM left on the five-year, $38.5MM pact the Indians gave him in 2015) to the Rangers for reliever Emmanuel Clase and outfielder Delino DeShields. It has never come off as an overwhelming return for Cleveland, especially in light of Clase’s recent 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs. Then again, Kluber didn’t look like a special pickup when he joined the Indians, and look how he panned out. Regardless of what happens with Clase and DeShields, you can’t argue with what the Indians got from Kluber when he was in their rotation. For the Padres, though, he’s a star who got away.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.