I have been meaning to check in on Nolan Arenado for quite some time, but with the Cubs out of the race and the Cardinals still kinda in it, I wasn’t looking to do any sort of petty neener-neener-your-trade-sucked type of deal. Or at least that wasn’t why I was curious.
Mostly, I was just curious how Arenado’s offense would translate outside of Coors Field, given all the consternation that goes into every single quality offensive player who departs Denver for another home (see the recent discussions of impending free agent Trevor Story for the latest example). And I also wanted to check back in on the trade/contract to see if all that “fleecing” talk from January still held true.
First, let’s talk about Arenado’s performance this year.
Nolan Arenado with the Cardinals
The thinking has long been that, for the most part, a great offensive player on the Rockies is going to be a great offensive player elsewhere, for whatever he loses in offense at Coors, he’ll effectively gain it back by virtue of not having to constantly adjust to the altitude difference (i.e., the Coors hangover effect, which causes disproportionately bad road numbers for Rockies players).
Has that been the case for Arenado with his new home in St. Louis?
Well, while you have to account for aging as part of the equation, it generally looks like he’s still been a good offensive player overall. Still, it doesn’t seem like he’s been anything close to the guy he was at his best for the Rockies.
If you exclude his partial rookie season and his stub 2020 year (injured), you get Arenado’s peak stretch from 2014-19: .299/.358/.566, 126 wRC+, 8.4% BB, 15.4% K, .303 BABIP, 38.5% hard contact. As you can see, his slash line looks WAY better than you would expect for a 126 wRC+, but that’s the ballpark adjustment doing its thing.
This year with the Cardinals, through 521 PAs, Arenado is hitting .255/.313/.495, 114 wRC+, 7.5% BB, 14.8% K, .253 BABIP, 32.3% hard contact. The slash line is waaaay down, but the wRC+ is merely down. Again, ballpark adjustment. You wouldn’t expect a guy to put up the same slash line playing half his games at Coors versus half his games at Busch. (Heh, they’re both beers.)
But are there reasons for concern about the now 30-year-old, whose 2020 season we throw out because of the injury stuff, but it did happen, and it was ugly? Well, this is not great news: although Nolan Arenado’s .338 wOBA this year is solid, it’s not in the top 100 in baseball. And worse, it’s 23 points HIGHER than his expected wOBA based on the quality of his contact. That .315 xwOBA? It’s 178th in baseball, tied with Matt Duffy. Insert eek face if you’re a Cardinals fan.
And the glove? Well, advanced defensive metrics are not super useful in single-year samples, so you would be cautioned not to go out too far on a limb here. But every single metric – UZR/150, DRS, OAA – has Arenado waaaay down from where he was just two years ago. Still good. Not elite.
Arenado hasn’t been a bad player, or a guy most teams wouldn’t want out there at third base and somewhere in the middle of their lineup. But I don’t think he’s been the guy the Cardinals traded for, especially when you consider the aging curve – this is supposed to be the best year they were getting from him.
The Cardinals Arenado Contract
The way the deal was structured, the Cardinals got all of Arenado’s salary this year paid for by the Rockies. They also got the Rockies to pay enough of the final year of Arenado’s restructured deal that they’ll owe him only $5 million in 2027.
But in between? The Cardinals are paying Arenado $35 million in 2022 (age 31), $35 million in 2023, $35 million in 2024, $32 million in 2025, and $27 million in 2026 (age 35). Is it just me, or does that suddenly look far from team friendly?
The Arenado Trade Pieces
The Cardinals “got” Arenado on that “discounted” contract in exchange for young pitcher Austin Gomber, and four prospects: INF Elehuris Montero, RHP Tony Locey, INF Mateo Gil and RHP Jake Sommers. How are they doing?
Well, we just saw Gomber get knocked around by the Cubs, but he’s actually been really solid for the Rockies overall (worth about half of what Arenado has been worth to the Cardinals this year by WAR, for what that’s worth). He’s 27, and not even arbitration eligible until 2023, so that’s a pretty nice guy to have, to be honest.
Montero, 23, is raking at Double-A, and is already the Rockies’ 4th best prospect according to MLB Pipeline, albeit in a bottom five system. None of the other three made the Pipeline top 30, and are considered fringy prospects around that range or lower at FanGraphs. None looks to me to be having a great year.
So, while Gomber might be a decent arm and Montero looks like a legit prospect, it still doesn’t look like a huge price to pay for the Cardinals. More than they’d want to give up if Nolan Arenado doesn’t improve from here, though? Considering the contract? Most definitely.
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Maybe there’s some bounce coming from Arenado as he settles in. He’ll be just 31 next year, so it’s not as if he’s obviously going to rapidly decline. So I won’t make any grand pronouncements here on whether the Cardinals won or lost that deal – that’s a quick way to get Arenado to hit a walk-off grand slam against the Cubs in some future decisive game – but I’ll say that, as we sit here today, the deal looks a helluva lot less like a “fleece” than it did when it was made.