Randy Arozarena made a huge splash in the 2020 postseason, and St. Louis Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak might want a do-over.
Randy Arozarena has been the biggest story of 2020 October baseball, and the St. Louis Cardinals definitely regret trading him.
"I will own that. That's on me. You need to know your own players. We will revisit how we rank our own players and make sure that we don't have something like this happen again." -- Mozeliak pre-emptively answering the Arozarena questions. #stlcards #cardinals #MLB
— Derrick Goold (@dgoold) October 28, 2020
That kind of feels like an understatement, John. I mean, it’s not like Arozarena was bad for the Cardinals. He played 19 games for them in 2019 and slashed .300/.391/.500. Sure, 23 plate appearances is an absurdly small sample size, but they probably should have known they had something in Arozarena.
And to be fair, the player they got in return for Arozarena was Matthew Liberatore, a first round pick in the 2018 draft. There’s every chance that he could become a horse at the top of their rotation in time.
But that’s not a definite. And everything we’ve seen from Arozarena suggests that he’s the real deal. The Rays clearly got the better end of this deal. He hits the ball hard, with a barrel rate of 14.0% and hard hit rate of 44.2%. The only real blemish on his advanced statistics is his 26.3% strikeout rate, which he could very well lower with more experience in the big leagues. And there’s no doubt after the 2020 postseason that he’s built for the biggest moments under the brightest lights.
Mozeliak’s right, they probably should re-evaluate the way they analyze their players. After all, they traded Luke Voit to the New York Yankees for Chasen Shrive and Giovanny Gallegos and the Yankees clearly got the better end of that deal. Sure, they didn’t really have a place for him after Paul Goldschmidt replaced Matt Carpenter at first base. But I’m sure looking back, they would have liked more than two relievers in return for the guy that led the league in homers in 2020.
It’ll be years before we know definitively who got the better end of the deal. But as it stands now, the Rays absolutely fleeced the St. Louis Cardinals. Arozarena is a budding star in this league and Mozeliak’s right to want a do-over on that trade.