Why Cardinals must sell at MLB trade deadline despite hot start

The St. Louis Cardinals have performed better than expected this season. Despite trading away Brendan Donovan, Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras and Nolan Arenado, they are in second place in the National League Central, just 2.5 games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers.

Young players such as JJ Wetherholt and Jordan Walker have been leading the way for the Cardinals as they continue to play inspiring baseball and give their fan base hope for the future.

The trade deadline is still nine weeks away, with the official date being Aug. 3 this year. It's not clear what the Cardinals will ultimately do. However, the best path forward is likely to sell rather than to buy.

Why Cardinals must sell at trade deadline

It is important to remember that the Cardinals are at the beginning stages of a rebuild and traded players away rather than adding them this past offseason.

They do have four players on expiring contracts: Dustin May, JoJo Romero, Ryne Stanek and Ramon Urias. It would make sense for them to capitalize on the value of those assets while they still can, so they don't simply lose them in free agency for nothing. Even closer Riley O'Brien, who has put together a strong season and has four years of club control remaining, could be a candidate to be moved.

The Cardinals must also consider is that the NL Central is a stacked division. Every team in the division is above .500, but with the trades they made in the offseason, the Cardinals likely don't have the necessary pieces to stay in the race in such a competitive division.

They also must consider the fact that they don't have the necessary prospects to swing a big trade for somebody like reigning American League Cy Young award winner Tarik Skubal. As they rebuild, they need as many assets for the future as possible, and the best way to get more assets is to trade players away and recoup their value.

A piece such as O'Brien could bring back some top prospects and allow president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom to continue to restock the farm system with more young and controllable pitching. That would be beneficial with both Richard Fitts and Brandon Clarke, the pitchers they brought back in the Sonny Gray trade with the Boston Red Sox, on the injured list. Fitts is done for the season after undergoing surgery to repair his right lat muscle.

Bloom himself has also said that he will be prioritizing the long-term goals of the franchise rather than the present.

"The game does not like when you yo-yo from one approach to another. It doesn’t like when you try to cheat it, so we need to stick with that," Bloom said earlier this month. "Just because it’s popular doesn’t mean you should want to do it more if it is a little bit of a side road off of what you said you would do.

"We cannot take shortcuts in this. You want to have these tough decisions on either side."