St. Louis Cardinals: Trade Jhonny Peralta and Luke Weaver
It’s that time of year, folks; time to suggest players who should go on the move FROM the St. Louis Cardinals to bring value TO the St. Louis Cardinals. In this installment we will look at Peralta and Weaver.
I love trade talk. I love trade rumors and I especially love examining the St. Louis Cardinals who had trouble showing up in 2016 in terms of how to make them better in 2017. GM Mozeliak should have a busy off-season and we fans are here to help, right?
Reports have surfaced in the past few days that the St. Louis Cardinals organization will focus on center field and infield defense first and then potentially play in the pitching game. The 2016 team held few players who might excite other teams in terms of a trade but I believe that Jhonny Peralta and Luke Weaver are two who do hold significant value in the trade market.
Let’s start by examining Jhonny Peralta. In a recent post on MLBTR, Peralta is noted as recognizing that Aledmys Diaz has locked-up the short stop position which would place him firmly at third. It is also noted that the Cardinals could consider trading Peralta who is owed $10M in his final year of his contract.
I really like the idea of trading Peralta. Let’s look at his 2016 numbers: .260/.307/.408. His career slash line is .267/.330/.425. While these numbers aren’t huge contract material, they could be a nice veteran presence for a team seeking this quality in an infielder.
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To further suggest the trade, the impressive performance of Jedd Gyorko (let’s hope it repeats) tells me the club could lose Peralta without harm. These were Gyorko’s numbers in 2016: .243/.306/.495. Okay, I admit that these aren’t impressive as one might think but they were impressive for Gyorko and helped the team for sure.
My thought is that an everyday Gyorko could well produce the same slash as Peralta at a cheaper clip. Gyorko is under team control through 2020 and is owed $6M in 2017. The Padres will be paying $2M of this salary in 2017, thus making Gyorko $6M cheaper than Peralta in 2017. Moving Peralta therefore would clear salary space for a big splash.
Moving to Luke Weaver, as much as it pains me to admit this I just believe that now is the time to move Weaver. I really like Weaver and would love to see him succeed with the birds on the bat but I just don’t think he is 100% ready for everyday MLB play in 2017. With that in mind, I think now is the time to shop him.
Weaver was impressive in 2016 and teams were taking note of him even before he broke the MLB squad and showed shut-down stuff. Weaver managed to finish 2016 with nine MLB games under his belt finishing with a 5.70 ERA. This seems high but the majority of his starts maintained ERAs between 3.21 and 4.00. His stuff shows great promise and 2017 looks to be a split year between AAA and MLB.
Teams are always looking for promising farm talent and Weaver should be listed at the top of names in this category. To assist the St. Louis Cardinals with his absence will be the return of Marco Gonzales and Tim Cooney who sat out 2016 with injury. Add to them the return of injured Lance Lynn and perhaps even the rotation experimentation of Trevor Rosenthal, and you can see how a departure makes sense.
So where do we go from here? It would not surprise me at all to see the St. Louis Cardinals utilize Luke Weaver and Jhonny Peralta in some package deal to pick up a big-ticket asset. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this big-ticket come in the way of an outfielder who has years left on his contract or perhaps in acquiring an infield/outfield utility guy.
Keep your eyes and ears open for trade traffic as the postseason comes to a close. Stay tuned to Redbird Rants as we will keep you updated as soon as we hear things. If you like rumors, now is the time to stay with us as well as we will spin our opinions for you. Go Cards!
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