The St. Louis Cardinals pulled off a coup this week, though not the one their fans intended to on January 6.
After months of speculation, the Rockies sent third baseman Nolan Arenado to Missouri at a Disgruntled Superstar Discount, sending tens of millions of dollars to placate the Cardinals’ budget while accepting a series of lottery ticket prospects as compensation.
This massive maneuver was exciting for St. Louis for a number of reasons, and somewhat far down the list was the prospective reunion between Arenado and his old Rockies teammate Dexter Fowler, otherwise known as the smiling man who manned right field for the Cards…up until Thursday, that is.
Late in the evening, the Cardinals dealt Fowler to the Angels for salary relief, just a few days after they celebrated the impending reunion between him and their new third sacker.
This tweet didn’t age too well... pic.twitter.com/dTwcDlkIpf
— Noah Maurer (@nmaurer34) February 5, 2021
Oof.
The St. Louis Cardinals celebrated Dexter Fowler and Nolan Arenado, then broke them up.
Wait…does this mean the St. Louis Cardinals are flipping Arenado to Anaheim?! Blink twice if there’s another move en route.
The Cards broke their deadly silence last week, but suddenly appear to be one of the few teams willing to spend money of any kind, especially in the dormant NL Central.
In fact, they’ve already put some of the Arenado money they received to good use, paying almost the entirety of Fowler’s salary to pave his way to Anaheim.
#LAAngels are receiving $12.75M from the Cardinals to offset Dexter Fowler’s $14.5M 2021 salary. So it was the majority. 87.9 percent to be precise!
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) February 5, 2021
In Fowler’s first season in St. Louis (2017, after defecting from the World Champion Cubs), he slashed .264/.363/.488 with 18 homers and 64 RBI, an extremely Fowler-like season. Since then, however, the spark plug has mostly been dampened — though he did OBP over 100 points higher than his moribund .238 average in 2019, proving the eye is still there.
Hopefully, Fowler prefers playing alongside Mike Trout to the “reunion” he was denied this week by the unfeeling hand of John Mozeliak.
Shouldn’t the front office have at least given a heads up to the team’s social media manager?