For a shining moment in 2013, the stars aligned in Colorado like they never had before, offering a glimpse at what real baseball could be at elevation. Todd Helton manned the bag at first base. To his right, DJ LeMahieu at second. Troy Tulowitzki played shortstop. And a young Nolan Arenado set his roots at third.
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Over the next eight years, each of them would escape Coors Field for better options. Helton aged out of the league, perhaps on his way toward the Hall of Fame. LeMahieu signed with the Yankees, reached the playoffs twice and won a batting title. Tulowitzki was traded to Toronto and stormed to two Championship Series.
Arenado was the last of them remaining in Colorado. He trudged ahead, nonetheless, winning a Gold Glove award in each of his eight seasons, a run of defensive wizardry not seen since Brooks Robinson. He played in five All-Star Games, won five Silver Slugger awards, led the National League in home runs three times, in RBIs twice. He established himself as one of the best players in baseball, one of the best Rockies in their 28-year history.
And like his predecessors, he left without winning.
On Friday night, the Rockies agreed to trade Arenado to the Cardinals in a blockbuster deal heavy on money and light on consolation. The trade, first reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, is not yet official, but only red tape remains. The Rockies will send to St. Louis a significant amount of money along with Arenado, believed to be in the range of $50 million. Colorado will receive a package of midlevel prospects, perhaps 27-year-old left-hander Austin Gomber, but none among the Cardinals’ top four, and probably none within the Top 100 prospects leaguewide.
The deal is pending approval from Major League Baseball and the players union and any standard medical reviews, and Arenado will have to agree to defer some of his salary and waive his no-trade clause. But in essence, the Rockies are paying the Cardinals to take their best player.
The Cardinals immediately will return to heavyweight status in the National League. With Paul Goldschmidt at first base, they have a pair of corner infielders who can stack up against any in the majors. And in relation to recent blockbuster trades — the Mookie Betts deal with the Dodgers, for instance — St. Louis scored a steal.
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Arenado’s exit out of Colorado will come without any hesitation. As the complicated trade moved into its final stages, with the last hurdles only a conversation between Rockies owner Dick Monfort and Cardinals owner Bill DeWitt, sources indicated that Arenado was eager to leave his original team.
Over the past year, Arenado fell into an open and ugly cold war with Rockies general manager Jeff Bridich, beginning with a blowup between them near the end of the 2019 season. Bridich had pulled off an impressive coup to sign Arenado to an eight-year, $260 million contract extension during spring training that year, sneaking in a monster deal just as the rest of baseball focused on the free-agent fates of Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.
Arenado’s deal came with a handshake agreement that the Rockies would continue to build around him in an attempt to reach the World Series for the first time since 2007. They instead nosedived to a 71-91 finish, and as a parade of minor-league call-ups arrived at Coors Field in September, Arenado noted that “it feels like a rebuild.”
Bridich was not pleased, thinking the Rockies were better than their finish near the bottom of the NL. Bridich doubled down, implying that what the Rockies really needed was not more and better players, but to simply play better. Colorado added just one major-league pitcher that winter, a waiver claim from the Marlins. They then finished with an even worse record in 2020.
Meanwhile, with Arenado feeling disrespected, Bridich began taking phone calls for possible trades. Less than a year after pulling off perhaps the best signing in club history, they were already trying to trade him. It did not go well.
Arenado called out his own general manager, saying Bridich was “very disrespectful.” He finally allowed the world to peek behind the curtain in Colorado. “There has been a lot of stuff going on that nobody knows about,” Arenado said. It suddenly became clear he was on short time with the Rockies. Since then, it was merely a countdown to his departure. The only remaining obstacle was whether Bridich could find a suitable trade partner.
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Enter the Cardinals. The two teams, even before the tenures of Bridich and St. Louis president of baseball operations John Mozeliak, have been willing trade partners.
In 2004, the Cardinals flipped three middling prospects to the Rockies for eventual Hall of Famer Larry Walker. They then used Walker in a run to the World Series. In 10 years with the Rockies, Walker played in just four playoff games. In barely more than one season with the Cardinals, he played in 24.
The Cardinals also flirted with the idea of trading for Tulowitzki and Charlie Blackmon, among others, apparently seeing an exploitable pipeline in Colorado. They found another potential Hall of Famer in Arenado.
Much like the Yankees when they swooped in to bully the money-desperate Marlins into trading Giancarlo Stanton in 2017, the Cardinals picked on the Rockies to fleece a deal. In Miami’s case, the club was forced to send $30 million along with their MVP to New York. The Marlins received an established infielder in Starlin Castro, who ended up in Washington, and two prospects, neither of whom have made an impact in the major leagues. Stanton and the Yankees reached the playoffs in each of the three years since then. Arenado and Stanton, not coincidentally, share an agent, Joel Wolfe.
The Rockies, though, weren’t simply looking for a salary dump. They committed to the richest contract in their history because they expected to build around Arenado over the long term. They changed course only after marginalizing him.
By cornering the Rockies into giving them a significant amount of money, the Cardinals in essence added Arenado for six years and about $150 million — basically the same price the Blue Jays paid for outfielder George Springer earlier this month, but Arenado is two years younger.
Sources told The Athletic that Arenado will keep an opt-out clause in his contract after the 2021 season — originally given to him without prompting by Bridich — and he will gain an additional opt-out after the 2022 season. In the worst-case scenario for St. Louis, if Arenado chooses to leave after next season, the Cardinals will still net $15 million (the difference between his $35 million salary for 2021 and the proposed $50 million they get from the Rockies).
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After an offseason seemingly weighed down by the financial fallout of the pandemic, the Cardinals quickly sprung back to life. They re-signed pitcher Adam Wainwright to a one-year deal Friday worth a reported $8 million and they continue their pursuit of catcher Yadier Molina. In a division of teams slashing payroll, and just as the Cubs posture toward a rebuild, the Cardinals are back atop the heap.
The Rockies, meanwhile, are left in tatters, having watched another star player leave before winning.
(Photo: David Zalubowski / Associated Press)