Ad­di­tions the Car­di­nals can make to com­pen­sate for the loss of Mar­cell Ozuna

It’s been a rel­a­tively quiet off­sea­son for the St. Louis Car­di­nals. Aside from sign­ing Ko­rean pitcher Kwang-Hyung Kim to a two-year deal and trade away Jose Mar­tinez and Randy Arozarena to the Tampa Bay Rays for Top-Pitch­ing prospect Matthew Lieber­a­tore, not much has hap­pened. They’ve re­tained vet­eran right-han­der Adam Wain­wright and backup catcher Matt Wi­eters on one-year deals, but that’s it. St. Louis has also re­cently lost cleanup hit­ter and Left Fielder Mar­cell Ozuna, who on Jan­u­ary 21, signed a one-year, $18 mil­lion deal with the At­lanta Braves. 

The Car­di­nals of­fense in 2019 was less than stel­lar, as Matt Car­pen­ter had a ca­reer-worst sea­son, and Har­ri­son Bader re­gressed sig­nif­i­cantly af­ter a great sea­son in 2018. Now, with­out Ozuna, the Car­di­nals need to re­place that pro­duc­tion. That fix could come in­ter­nally, as the Car­di­nals have guys like Tyler O’Neill and Lane Thomas ready to make an im­pact. Top-prospect Dy­lan Carl­son may well make his Ma­jor League de­but this year, but here are three play­ers the Car­di­nals can add to make up for the loss of Ozuna:

1. Nolan Are­nado

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Are­nado would be the tough­est one to pull off. The Rock­ies signed Are­nado to an 8 year, $260 mil­lion ex­ten­sion with a full no-trade clause prior to the 2019 sea­son, and is clearly the face of that fran­chise. How­ever, re­cently, the Rock­ies have en­gaged in trade talks with mul­ti­ple teams re­gard­ing Are­nado, as they ap­pear to be en­ter­ing re­build mode af­ter a dis­mal 71-91 sea­son last year. There are mul­ti­ple rea­sons why this could be pos­si­ble. Firstly, Are­nado has said pub­licly that he feels “dis­re­spected” by the Rock­ies for con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of trad­ing him, so there may be some fall­out there. Sec­ondly, MLB Net­work in­sider Jon Hey­man has re­ported that Are­nado would waive his no-trade clause to come to St. Louis. How­ever, there is a great risk. 

One of the names that have been men­tioned in a po­ten­tial deal is right-han­der Dakota Hud­son. It’s un­likely that the Car­di­nals would want to part ways with him, af­ter go­ing 16-7 with a 3.35 ERA in 2019. There’s also hes­i­ta­tion on the Rock­ies side, as he led the Na­tional League in walks. It’s also highly likely that the Rock­ies would want one or both of the Cards’ top-prospects, Nolan Gor­man and Dy­lan Carl­son. The Car­di­nals have made it clear that they don’t want to part with ei­ther of those two. There would also be a sig­nif­i­cant pay­roll in­crease if St. Louis were to ac­quire Are­nado, who will make $35 mil­lion in 2020, and the Car­di­nals do not want to in­crease pay­roll too far from where they sit now, at $170 mil­lion. “That’s not mov­ing it up a lit­tle bit, that’s mov­ing it up a lot,” said Car­di­nals Chair­man and CEO, Bill De­Witt Jr. He con­tin­ued, “We re­ally can’t be in that kind of a range.”

2.  Brian Dozier

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Dozier will come as a sur­prise to many, as the Car­di­nals and Dozier have had seem­ingly no con­tact this off­sea­son. But if you think about it, it makes per­fect sense. Dozier would prob­a­bly be in the Car­di­nals range in terms of pay­roll. Last year, he signed a one-year, $9 mil­lion deal with the Na­tion­als af­ter an in­jury-plagued sea­son with the Twins and Dodgers. Dozier was­n’t overly im­pres­sive dur­ing his time with the Na­tion­als, as he lost the start­ing job at sec­ond base and hit only .238 and had only 50 RBI’s, how­ever, he still hit 20 homers. There’s still plenty of po­ten­tial here. In 2016, he hit 42 homers and fol­lowed that up with 34 in 2017. 

St. Louis has put a lot of faith in Matt Car­pen­ter hav­ing a bounce-back year in 2020, but in case that does­n’t hap­pen, Dozier could be a backup op­tion. He’s a util­ity in­fielder, so he could pla­toon with Car­pen­ter at third if he does­n’t bounce back. This would also al­low Tommy Ed­man to play full-time in the out­field. This deal is highly un­likely, but it would be a nice un­der the radar sign­ing for St. Louis, who needs a power bat des­per­ately. The only is­sue the Cards may run into is that Dozier has never ac­tu­ally played a game at third base, but the Car­di­nals have a his­tory of help­ing play­ers ad­just to new po­si­tions, ex­am­ples in­clud­ing when Skip Schu­maker moved from the out­field to sec­ond base and when Al­bert Pu­jols moved from the third-base to the out­field, and then to first-base, so it would­n’t be too much of a stretch to have Dozier ad­just to third, given that he can al­ready play sec­ond and short.

3.  Yasiel Puig

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There are some that may not like this. Some would point to the fact that sev­eral times with the Dodgers, Puig was benched by then-man­ager Don Mat­tingly for show­ing up late, and some fans will re­mem­ber his an­tics dur­ing the 2013 NLCS when the Dodgers faced the Car­di­nals. But this would also make sense and might pos­si­bly be within the Car­di­nals salary range. Con­sider the fact that Mar­cell Ozuna signed with the Braves a one-year deal worth $18 mil­lion. The Car­di­nals qual­i­fy­ing of­fer to Ozuna was worth $17.8 mil­lion. Puig has been a free agent for a while but has been over­shad­owed by the likes of Ozuna and Nicholas Castel­lanos. 

A one-year deal sounds rea­son­able for Puig. Also, St. Louis is in need of an out­fielder and a power bat. Puig could give them both. Sure, the Car­di­nals have a sur­plus of Out­field­ers who could claim the Left Field job, in­clud­ing Dy­lan Carl­son, but what if he is­n’t ready this year? What if Tyler O’Neill re­mains in­con­sis­tent and can’t cut down on the strike­outs? Puig also be­friended a 10-year-old boy, who hap­pened to be a Car­di­nals fan dur­ing his time with the Dodgers. This boy would con­stantly re­mind Puig of the times the Car­di­nals beat the Dodgers in the post­sea­son. This prompted Puig to say that the Car­di­nals were now the Dodgers biggest ri­vals. “If we beat them, we can win the World Se­ries. We just have to get through them,” Puig said at the time. 

Would­n’t it be heart­warm­ing if Puig came to the Car­di­nals and that boy could fi­nally root on his friend? Surely, there are some po­ten­tial draw­backs. As men­tioned ear­lier, Puig in his younger days had a bad habit of show­ing up late to games. He also showed a lack of hus­tle on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, one of them be­ing in the 2013 NLCS. On top of that, he was ar­rested later that year for be­ing in­volved in a bar fight. How­ever, if we be­lieve that peo­ple can grow and change, why can’t Puig? Sure, he’s been in­volved in plenty of con­tro­ver­sial mo­ments dur­ing his ca­reer, but we can over­look that as long as he pro­duces, right?

4.  Wilmer Flo­res

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Flo­res would be a nice un­der the radar sign­ing. Un­like Brian Dozier, Flo­res has ex­pe­ri­ence play­ing at all in­field po­si­tions. His power num­bers have never been on the same level as Ozuna, and 2019 was no ex­cep­tion, as he hit only 9 home-runs. How­ever, he’s no slouch. He had three straight years with the Mets from 2015 to 2017 where he hit at least 16 homers, even hit­ting 18 in 2017. He also hit .317 last year with Ari­zona de­spite his power num­bers be­ing down. Like Dozier, it would­n’t take much for the Cards to pull this off. There’s plenty of un­cer­tainty sur­round­ing Matt Car­pen­ter, so it could just be a sim­ple depth move. A backup op­tion in case Car­pen­ter strug­gles again. This would be the eas­i­est one to pull off. Even if it does­n’t make up for the loss of Ozu­na’s power, he’s still a high av­er­age guy who could pro­vide qual­ity at-bats off the bench.