JUPITER, Fla. - At the time, we knew that Roy Oswalt wanted to be a Cardinal. This winter I heard there was a fleeting moment when he thought he would be.
When the Houston Astros were busy fielding offers for their righthanded ace, the team told interested teams that Oswalt was really focused on one team. An exec with another team trying to land Oswalt told me he was told upfront that Oswalt, who had a no-trade clause, was requesting a deal with the Cardinals.
A person who is close to Oswalt confirmed that story this winter and added that at one point it looked like a deal was going to happen. It got hung up on the prospect (Shelby Miller was a known target) and not, as the Houston Astros owner later confirmed, the Astros' hesitance to trade within the division. Eventually, Oswalt loosened his no-trade stance and expanded the acceptable teams to include Philadelphia. There he went 7-1 with a 1.74 ERA, pitched his way onto my Cy Young Award ballot, and will be in 2011 a part of the best on-paper rotation the NL has seen since Leo Mazzone was rocking away in the Atlanta Braves' dugout.
That brings me to Michael Young.
The Texas Rangers disenchanted DH also has no-trade protection as his team considers moving him, and it was reported this past week, on MLB.com and elsewhere, that the Cardinals are one of his eight OK'd teams. He has played exactly one game in St. Louis. The 2009 All-Star Game. Yet, with little more than reputation as their hook, there the Cardinals were on Young's list -- approved, desirable.
This led me to wonder about no-trade clauses and limited no-trade clauses and how often the Cardinals are included as an acceptable destination.
There is ample anecdotal evidence.
Last summer, Dan Haren had a limited no-trade clause that reportedly blocked deals to Minnesota, Detroit and Cincinnati. The Cardinals were OK. Larry Walker stretched his no-trade rights back in 2004 to accommodate an August trade to the Cardinals. When Arizona put lefty Randy Johnson on the trade block, Peter Gammons reported that the Cy Young Award winner would waive his no-trade protection for two teams and two teams only: the New York Yankees, where he landed, and the Cardinals. Jake Peavy had a no-trade clause that had to be hurdled before his deal to the Chicago White Sox, and before approving that move he identified these preferred teams: the Chicago Cubs, Houston, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta and the Cardinals. Even Troy Glaus had to waive a no-trade clause to make the swap of All-Star third basemen work before the 2008 season. He once remarked that it wasn't necessary for the Cardinals to pick up his option to convince him. This is unconfirmed but when the Cardinals were considering options for second base a friend of Brian Roberts said the Baltimore Orioles infielder's limited no-trade protection did not prohibit a move to St. Louis. (Baltimore Sun columnist Peter Schmuck speculated that two of the teams on the barred list were Kansas City and Toronto. Keep those teams in mind.) It was a similar situation with the Cardinals search for a reliever a few years ago and a rumored connection to lefty Billy Wagner, who once was going to invoke his no-trade clause to bar a trade from the New York Mets to the Boston Red Sox. He eventually went to Fenway.
A tour through the indispensable Cot's Baseball Contracts offers additional insight to the nature of no-trade clauses and the Cardinals place in them.
Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.
Per Cot's site, Los Angeles Angels outfielder Torii Hunter has a list of teams to which he can refuse a trade (Boston, Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay and Toronto). The Milwaukee Brewers have a handful of players with various no-trade protection, from the 12 blocks Ryan Braun can put in place in the coming seasons to the specific blocks Randy Wolf (once a Cardinals target) and Corey Hart. Zack Greinke reportedly reconsidered his no-trade blocks in order to make a trade to Milwaukee possible this past winter. Matt Cain, Ichiro Suzuki, Rafael Furcal, Nick Markakis and many others have some kind of limited no-trade protection in their deals, per Cot's, though the specific teams aren't identified in all cases. According to reports, Carl Crawford has a clause in his deal that he cannot be traded to a team that will then trade him to the New York Yankees - sort of a pre-emptive no-trade clause. Javier Vasquez could block deals to entire divisions, the NL West and AL West. Newly signed Yankees infielder Eric Chavez once had a deal with Oakland that protected him against trades to Toronto, Milwaukee, Montreal, Tampa Bay, the New York Mets, Minnesota, Florida . Diamondbacks outfielders Justin Upton reportedly can block trades to Cleveland, Detroit, Oakland and Kansas City. The more you look at these clauses the more the same teams keep cropping up. Toronto and Kansas City are popularly unpopular.
It takes going to the Royals' contracts to find the Cardinals listed as a blocked team. Closer Joakim Soria, per Cot's, can block a deal to the New York Yankees, Detroit, Boston, the Phillies, the Cubs and, yes, the Cardinals. That's the one anti-Cardinals clause I found.
Perhaps it's the exception that proves the rule.
"Even if I hadn't been traded here, St. Louis was somewhere that I had interest in going," Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday said this past winter. "It may have helped me with them, knowing more about me, and had I not come here maybe they wouldn't have been as willing to stay after me (as a free agent). It worked out. But I always had an interest in playing for the St. Louis Cardinals just from afar and playing here as a visitor watching them play in the World Series. As an opposing player and somebody who has grown up around baseball, there was a lot of appeal to playing for the St. Louis Cardinals. I had a lot of friends who played here. I heard from Larry Walker, Russ Springer. Hearing about his rave reviews of everything here. Had I not gotten traded here I think this was going to be a place I pursued."
I bring all this up not to fan this homegrown, trademarked "baseball heaven" notion that the Cardinals market (though I suppose it does help that). Nor do I mention it as an argument for Albert Pujols and the Hometown Discount (which it does not help no matter how much the facts are warped).
Rather, I point this out to wonder if there's a market here to exploit.
For Oakland, the untapped market was guys who didn't look good in jeans, or something like that. The Yankees once used their money as an edge, allowing them to take gambles on aging or ailing players that would have crippled other teams if they didn't perform. Sports Illustrated writer Joe Posnanski once wrote that Bill James suggested a downtrodden franchise take a radical approach and tap into the market that few teams would dare utilize - pitchers with command who operate in the low-80s and can throw off a hitter's timing. And so on.
As the Cardinals negotiate with Pujols on an extension and confront a future either without him or with his contract complicating their payroll, perhaps there is a vein of talent here for them to mine: the no-trade marketplace. Players with no-trade clauses hold power. They can dictate a market for themselves, and, as was the case with Oswalt, they can steer their team toward a preferred trade partner. It would also influence (even limit) the return the team could expect to get in return. Being a team that a) can take on salary and b) be a place that players are willing to waive no-trade clauses to get there would seem to offer an advantage. Especially when you also consider the caliber of players who usually merit no-trade clauses and the circumstances that would lead to said player being dealt. Certainly amore detailed and deeper excavation of no-trade clauses would reveal if this theory is a reality and there is an advantage for teams who aren't blocked or are attractive enough to get a player to lower his no-trade shield. (Clearly, there's a detriment to the club who find themselves listed routinely as a blocked team.)
It's like Young. The Cardinals don't have room or interest in the Texas infielder (see The Post-Dispatch story here), but if they did they would be in a better position than most teams to make it happen.
It's just a thought.
It also could be a strategy.
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