NYCardsFan wrote: ↑08 Oct 2025 10:22 am
Cranny wrote: ↑08 Oct 2025 09:15 am
ecleme22 wrote: ↑08 Oct 2025 08:55 am
Cranny wrote: ↑08 Oct 2025 08:47 am
Donovan’s a leader both on and off the field. Keep him.
No, you at least listen to offers...
Why trade a player who’s an excellent example to the younger guys coming up? Doesn’t make sense. Measure the intangibles lost, not just another body (with promise) coming in.
Timing and planning horizon. He’s entering his more expensive arb years, inching closer to free agency. If Bloom concludes the team/org isn’t that close to sustainable competitiveness (the standard he articulated in the press conference), then he has to efficiently manage his assets. As you’ve pointed out, the Cardinals can’t compete with the big market clubs on payroll, so ruthless, clear-eyed asset allocation is a must. That means making hard choices and sometimes letting go of popular players “a year too early rather than a year too late,” as Branch Rickey famously once said.
I think pretty much everyone likes Donovan, but if this turns out to be a multi-year rebuild, it makes sense to monetize his surplus value now—I.e., not allow it to depreciate with time—and convert it into assets more in line with the time horizon of the plan.
Good points in theory, but in reality it can be problematic to implement. This isn't the NFL, where we can just trade Donovan for a first round draft pick in future years that better align with our rebuild. If we could, that could make this an easier call.
Instead we need to get "value" back for him, but how? Just asking other GMs for "prospects" they are willing to turn loose of is usually a losers game. What prospect is a sure bet to replace in future years what Donovan is able to provide now? It doesn't exist. And if it did, no GM would make that prospect available. Instead they offer "compromised" or less promising prospects that they have seen issues with from their extensive internal scouting which clearly should be superior to external scouting because they have access to so much more info. We just cannot assume the Strong form of the efficient Markets Hypothesis in baseball. Insider info is a big advantage in prospect trades.
Your other option is to trade him for a proven ML player. Proven vets solves "most" of the insider info problem. Also its symmetrical since we have as much insider info on Donny as the opposing teams would have on any vet coming back to us - at least its as good as you can get in any MLB trade. This will probably provide a much better return but also might cost $5-$10M in salary. I say its worth it if: the player is still young enough they won't be 40 (or 36 and about to retire) before we hope to reach contention, and the player can be expected to replace Donny's WAR contribution, and if the player closely fills an area of great need that we don't have Plus options internally - like RHH Corner OFer.
The window doesn't have to be 2 years on a 29 yo player. And it needs to be OK to maybe collect middle salary paid players a year or so before we really "need" them. Otherwise we probably won't ever get to the point where we think we are good enough to need them. Finally we have already taken a $180M payroll to a MUCH lower 8 figure committed level with additional savings already likely. Saving another $6m or so by dumping Donovan for prospects instead of either trading for or keeping a proven vet is just pinching pennies at a completely unnecessary and possibly franchise damaging level.
