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Today’s mailbag gets into Nolan Arenado’s future with the Cardinals, offensive struggles for the Rangers and Red Sox, hot starts for the Angels and Giants, and much more.
Sam asks:
Arenado is off to a pretty good start with his surface level stats but his batted ball profile is still pretty bad. Barring an injury to a third baseman on a contender, is he going to be playing for the Cardinals for the next 3 years?
Arenado, 34 today, has an excellent 136 wRC+ through 74 plate appearances. His Statcast numbers have always been middling since he was traded to St. Louis four years ago. As you know, the Cardinals tried to move Arenado during the offseason, both to save money and open up playing time for younger players. Arenado wasn’t willing to say yes when asked to approve a trade to the Astros in December, and no deal materialized with the four other teams on the third baseman’s list.
In February, Katie Woo of The Athletic reported that the Cardinals “had conversations with at least nine organizations” about Arenado during the offseason. Woo said the other four teams on Arenado’s list besides the Astros were the Dodgers, Red Sox, Padres, and Yankees. The rigidity of Arenado’s list is confusing. He said, “I don’t see myself changing that list ever. I have a family now. … To be willing to pick up my family and move them, it has to be something that’s worth it.” Arenado is clearly not bound entirely by geography, having chosen teams on both the East and West coast. But let’s look at some playoff odds from when the season opened:
Astros: 53.5%
Dodgers: 97.6%
Red Sox: 56.2%
Padres: 35.1%
Yankees: 62.3%
Cardinals: 23.2%
Tigers: 46.6%
Royals: 41.8%
Angels: 10.5%
Is it fair to say that for Arenado to leave the comfort of St. Louis he needs what he considers a strong chance at winning the World Series, but he might accept a lesser chance for a team near where he grew up, such as the Padres? What makes this tricky is that Arenado seems to have developed his own playoff odds. Playoff odds are not reliable in the best case, and Arenado is probably worse at this than FanGraphs.
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