St. Louis Cardinals acquire 1B Paul Goldschmidt from the Arizona Diamondbacks championship rings for right-handed starting pitcher Luke Weaver, catcher Carson Kelly, infielder Andy Young and a Round B compensation pick in the 2019 draft.
The cheap St.Louis Cardinals championship rings have been looking to add a superstar-caliber player for a few seasons now and finally got one in Goldschmidt, a six-time All-Star who finished sixth in the MVP voting this past season. They went after David Price as a free agent, attempted to re-sign Jason Heyward and made a run at Giancarlo Stanton last offseason. Instead, they've settled for secondary pieces, signing Dexter Fowler in 2017 and acquiring Marcell Ozuna last winter.
Neither of those outfielders produced up to expectations in 2018, however, with Fowler hitting .180/.278/.298, and Ozuna playing through a shoulder issue and hitting .280/.325/.433 with 23 home runs, a big drop from his 2017 numbers with the Marlins. As a result, the Cardinals' offense was good in 2018, but not good enough -- they ranked fifth in the National League in runs, eighth in on-base percentage and seventh in slugging percentage. They needed another big bat. mlb world series championship rings
Enter Goldschmidt. Entering his final season before free agency, he'll be playing his age-31 season in 2019 but remains an excellent all-around player. He's not quite the hitter he was a few years ago -- his OPS peaked at 1.005 in 2015 and was down to .922 in 2018 -- and he's probably lost a step on the bases (32 steals in 2016, but just seven last season), but he still hit .290/.389/.533 with 33 home runs and was worth 5.4 WAR. cheap championship rings
Goldschmidt struggled early in 2018 when he was striking out at a prodigious rate. His average dropped to .198 on May 22, but he made some tweaks to his setup and hit .328/.418/.606 the rest of the season. In fact, ESPN Stats & Info reports that from June 1, just Mike Trout, Christian Yelich and J.D. Martinez had a higher OPS than Goldschmidt. Through May 22 he struck out 31.5 percent of the time with a swing-and-miss rate of 31 percent. From May 23 on, he fanned 22.4 percent of the time with a miss rate of 24.5 percent. If the custom St.Louis Cardinals championship rings get that player over a full season, they just acquired an MVP candidate.
It's a little right-handed, with only Carpenter and Wong from the left side (though the Cardinals could always fix that by entering the Bryce Harper sweepstakes). Carpenter will move to third base on a full-time basis after starting 74 games there in 2018. He actually rated pretty well there at plus-6 defensive runs saved (he's minus-1 at third in his career), so I don't think the Cardinals will take much of a hit on defense and whatever they do lose they should pick up with Goldschmidt's plus glove at first.
Arizona Diamondbacks championship rings for sale beat writer Nick Piecoro tweeted that Arizona did reach out in an attempt to sign Goldschmidt to an extension. The Cardinals will certainly try a similar tactic and Cardinals fans will be reminded of the Matt Holliday trade in 2009, when the Cardinals acquired him during the season and then re-signed him as a free agent after the season.
Look, the Diamondbacks may end up with more long-term WAR with the package of young players, but there's little to suggest the Cardinals will regret the deal as it doesn't seem they gave up any star power. If they can manage to eventually snag Goldschmidt to a long-term deal, that's even better. Still, the deal may ultimately get judged on whether the Cardinals make it back to the postseason after missing it the past three seasons -- the first time that's happened since 1997-99.