What is Nolan Arenado's trade value?

11/14/2024 09:00 AM

Hint: his contract is not actually underwater.

It seems likely that Nolan Arenado is going to be traded. Normally, I don't really like when people make assumptions about this kind of thing. Player with a no-trade clause signed in St. Louis intending to play for a winner, therefore they want to get traded when winning isn't the #1 priority for at least the front office. (I phrase it that way for a reason). But we can pretty easily deduce who has asked for a trade.

Also, it was reported that one of the four players with a no-trade clause asked John Mozeliak to explore trades. We've eliminated two already. Miles Mikolas seems incredibly unlikely even though it hasn't been officially reported he wants to stay. For starters, I would dearly hope he has enough self-awareness to realize very few teams are going to want to acquire an expensive starting pitcher coming off a 5.35 ERA season. He also happens to love that he gets to spend spring training in Jupiter, Florida, which is where he lives when he's not playing baseball. It's a big deal to be home for an extra month and a half.

I don't even know how I would write this post if I had to theorize what a Miles Mikolas trade would look like. It would be a paragraph. "Cards would throw in money, they'd get the 2024 equivalent of Raydar Ascanio, but worse." That's a deep cut. I didn't even look that up. Why do I know this? This isn't even going to be a trivia question for the most hardcore Cardinals trivia contest. It's not even useful information to remember. I sometimes have to meet people five times to remember their name, but sure I remember the returns for Mike Leake and Aledmys Diaz (JB Woodman).

Realistically, what does a Nolan Arenado trade look like? Theorizing trade values is already kind of unknowable and hard when prospects are involved. This is another level. There's a no-trade clause involved, a complicated salary situation, and if and how much money the Cardinals might throw in. So the best I could do is figure out what his trade value is, full stop and then we can work from there.

ZiPS doesn't have 2025 projections yet - I suppose it would have been wise of me to wait for that - and it removed the 3-year ZiPS projections from before the 2024 season. Which wouldn't have been super useful given it did not take into account the 2024 season, but could have given me a baseline for what they think his decline is. But I'm going to try to guess.

First, Arenado underperformed his ZiPS. By quite a bit from a per plate appearance standpoint, less so from a value standpoint. The projection system foreso a 3.4 WAR season in 583 PAs with a 116 OPS+ and +6 defense. Arenado came to the plate 635 times, had +8 defense, and had just a 102 wRC+. This is where having his 3-year ZiPS would be helpful because then I would know his 2025 projection would be worse with 2024 inputted.

Anybody who remembers ZiPS projections from the Matt Carpenter years would know that just because Arenado is going to be 34 doesn't mean the projections will automatically have him getting worse as a hitter. Enough players in his position bounced back near their career levels to make the median projection similar or better to the down year they just had. So even if you think it's true that he's going to be a below average hitter, I would be very surprised if ZiPS had him as a below average hitter in 2025. Just the nature of projections.

In fact, we have a projection system already out. A worse version, but better than nothing. Steamer sees him with a 106 wRC+ in 2025. If this is surprising to you, again do you not remember the Matt Carpenter years? I suspect batted ball data, which I don't believe Steamer uses, pushes that down a bit. But the good news is that Steamer gives me something to work with.

Steamer also has Nolan Arenado with just +2 defense, which I'm calling BS on. He has quite literally never been a +2 defender in his career. He's never even been worse than a +4 defender. So for projection's sake, I'll make him a +5 defender at 3B, knock off a couple points of wRC+, and adjust the PAs accordingly. So I have him as a 2.9 WAR player in 645 plate appearances, or a 2.7 WAR player in 590 PAs. (ZiPS is not going to project him for 645 plate appearances)

There's our baseline. 2.7 WAR in 2025, 2.2 WAR in 2026, and 1.7 WAR in 2027. That feels right to me. Arenado's floor seems high because of his defense and his contact ability. His contract ends at his age 36 season, and based on historical comps of defenders of his caliber, he'll age fairly well defensively. No power will affect his upside, but striking out 13% of the time allows him a high floor as well. And getting out of Busch can only help his power honestly.

While Arenado has a fairly complicated contract with deferrals and the Rockies picking up part of the tab and if traded, the Cardinals may also be paying part of the tab, I actually think it's relatively easy to figure out. We can ignore the deferrals for one. Cardinals are on the hook for deferrals in 2024 and before. Potentially they are not on the hook for deferrals going forward with a trade. Unless that's the part of the contract the Cardinals pick up. Rockies are picking up $5 million in 2025 and 2026, and none of 2027.

That's easy then. Removing the $10 million the Rockies owe, the Cardinals effectively are shopping a 2.7 WAR 3B who has a 3 year, $64 million deal. My rough projection for the next three years would make him worth $66 million on the open market. We'll just call it a wash. Nolan Arenado is almost exactly market value with his current deal in place when factoring the Rockies' payments in.

This is both good and bad. Arenado's contract is not underwater, or at least not that underwater, which is good news. The bad news is this means you can't unload his entire contract and get anything of value for him back. I joked above that the Miles Mikolas contract would be the Cardinals throwing in money and getting a Raydar Ascanio, but worse back. Similar here without throwing in money. They could get a complete non-prospect back and not have to pick up the tab.

There is value in that. It frees up a spot for Nolan Gorman or Thomas Saggese to play (Brendan Donovan might literally play 3B, but moving Donovan to 3B allows one of those two to start every day still). It frees up money both this year and in the next two years to potentially blue ball the fans into thinking you will get a big free agent.

But the Cardinals honestly have more money than they will spend over the next few years, so they really should just throw in as much money as possible and get the best return, prospect-wise, that they can. This requires the cooperation of the opposing team of course, who may very well be perfectly happy to pick up the check to not have to trade prospects. Given Arenado's likely desire to be traded and the Cardinals interest in playing the young guys, the very fact that you can trade him at all is going to be impossible to pass up, even if not ideal.

My realistic proposition, because we know how the Cardinals operate, is that the Cardinals simply take care of the deferrals. It's $6 million of each of the next two years, or $12 million in value. That's not a top 100 prospect, but it could be a solid return. That's something like a 45 future value prospect and maybe a lottery ticket.

To frame it a different way, a player with at least a 2.5 WAR projection with a history of being elite would probably do better on the open market than 3 years, $52 million right? I don't know maybe I'm wrong. The name recognition and the fact that most people think he's a future Hall of Famer would not hurt his case either. And if that's true, that means he should be able to net actual, though minimal, value in a trade.

Of course, this all ignores one very vital aspect. Nolan Arenado actually has to want to go to the team. He held the Rockies hostage to come to St. Louis and the trade return reflected that. So the Cardinals could easily end up having to throw in money and still get a nothing prospect.

Hence, why seeing what a trade looks like is nearly impossible. We don't know the demand, we don't know how many teams he'd be willing to go to, how much the Cardinals are willing to pay, how much other teams are willing to pay, there's just so many factors that could influence the return. Theoretically, the Cardinals should throw in money and get the best prospect possible. But...things don't always work theoretically.