Matt Holliday: The star who walked Nolan Arenado's path before him

If the Cardinals are able to complete their acquisition of star third baseman Nolan Arenado — under the terms as we know them now — they’ll be getting the best defensive third baseman of his generation. Kyle Newman of the Denver Post pegs the Arenado deal as the biggest trade in Rockies’ franchise history. Cardinals shortstop Paul DeJong certainly sounds pleased, saying on MLB Network Radio on Sunday that “having a guy like Arenado in our lineup is going to completely change the way pitchers look at us.”

Sure enough, Arenado’s mantle-place is full: five All-Star nominations, four Silver Slugger awards, and a Gold Glove for every season he’s been in the majors (eight). He’s a career .293/.349/.541 hitter who’s been worth 32.3 fWAR in his career with a solid 7.9 percent career walk rate and excellent 15.0 percent career strikeout rate.

Even so, he heads to Busch Stadium III with the usual caveats of a player leaving Coors Field. He is a career 128 wRC+ hitter at home and 108 wRC+ hitter away from Coors. The first question with Rockies players always seems to be: Can he hit outside of Coors?

Paul Goldschmidt can walk Arenado through the process of going from face-of-the-franchise in the West to being just “one of the guys” in Yadi Molina’s orbit. For an even preview of what Arenado may face, we can go a little further back to another Rockies’ superstar who went East for the latter half of his career: Matt Holliday.

Holliday averaged a 154 wRC+ per season during his first five years at Coors Field, his age-24 to age-28 seasons (2004 to 2008. Over that same time span he posted a 105 wRC+ on the road — an even more drastic split that Arenado’s. It’s worth noting, however, that Holliday’s road numbers got better each year: 68, 90, 107, 122, and 137 in 2008, his last full season on the Rockies. Similarly, Arenado’s worst road seasons were his first couple, but beyond that, his road splits haven’t progressed quite as linearly as Holliday’s.

There’s also this: Holliday’s age-29 season was anomalous for his career in terms of the playing conditions — just like Arenado. Whereas Arenado had to deal with a 60-game season in a pandemic-wracked world, Holliday faced the equally jarring reality of moving from Coors Field to the Coliseum in Oakland for home games. Perhaps Holiday’s trials weren’t quite equal to what players are facing in the present, but it still stands out as a singularly odd year on Holliday’s resume in terms of the conditions relative to the rest of his career to that point.

Also, Arenado, like Holiday, will play his first full season with the Cardinals at age-30. We have mature projection systems these days that can do the fancy work for us, so we don’t need an analog from 10 years ago to project the future. But until ZiPS, THE BAT X, Steamer and others update their projections on Arenado, we can take a couple of minutes to further explore this old-fashioned player comparison.

If Arenado stays in St. Louis the length of his contract, he’ll be in Cardinal red for seven seasons from age 30 to 36. That just so happens to be the exact length of stay Holliday enjoyed in St. Louis. The similarities in their career paths line up so well in this way that one has to wonder whether Holliday’s success in St. Louis emboldened the Cardinals to make this move for Arenado, even if just the slightest bit.

Over his seven years in St. Louis, Holliday’s home/road splits would stabilize. He would average a 133 wRC+ on the road and a 142 wRC+ per season at home. On the whole, he arguably became a better hitter with a 133 wRC+ during his five seasons in Colorado compared to 139 wRC+ in his seven full seasons in St. Louis. Does that mean Arenado will do the same? Of course not. Just because Holliday stayed largely healthy and productive past his prime years doesn’t mean that Arenado will do the same.

Arenado glove should should also be a continued asset. While age may diminish his abilities at the hot corner somewhat, he has a lot of wiggle room before even entering the stratosphere of any other third baseman outside, maybe, Matt Chapman. With DeJong on his left, he shouldn’t even face much of an adjustment there. DeJong may be one of the few defensive shortstops who can rival Trevor Story’s competence on that end.

Arenado is heading from an organization that’s never won its division to one of the game’s premier, trademark franchises. He’s leaving the NL West, where the Dodgers and Padres are readying for what could be a divisional race for the ages — and he’s joining the NL Central, where contenders are being broken down and sold for parts. It might be a jarring move for Arenado, but he can always look back and take comfort in the fact that this path has been tread before — and that worked out quite well. Remember, it was only their second full season together that Holliday and the Cardinals won the World Series.