Cardinals Fallout: Why St. Louis Didn’t Trade Brendan Donovan, Lars Nootbaar

As the 2025 MLB trade deadline inches closer and closer, rumors picked up about more than just the St. Louis Cardinals’ pending free agents.

Ryan Helsley, Steven Matz, and Phil Maton all seemed as good as gone. But, other names started being mentioned on social media in reports, like Brendan Donovan and Lars Nootbaar. Neither will be free agents this offseason and could realistically be a part of the organization’s rebuild.

But, rumors were out there that there was serious interest in these two on the trade market. While this is the case, Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak shared that the club wasn’t “blown away” by any offer and therefore opted to keep guys under team control beyond this season, as shared by The Athletic's Katie Woo on social media.

"We got hit a lot on our left-handed hitters...but we were not motivated to move players that we had under control unless we were, to put it mildly, blown away. And we just weren't," Mozeliak said.

The Cardinals took a significant hit in the bullpen with Helsley, Matz, and Maton now gone, but overall, the team looks very much the same. Right now, the Cardinals are 55-55 on the season. There was a time not too long ago in which the Cardinals looked like a playoff team before going ice-cold. Could the club turn it back up to that level of play? That talent is still here at least to think that is possible.