Cardinals should be an enticing trade partner for the SF Giants as they rebuild

The SF Giants will be looking to improve the roster this offseason. If they want to go the trade route, the St. Louis Cardinals make sense as a natural trading partner given where both teams are at right now.

As disappointing as the Giants’ season was, Cardinals fans have plenty of reason to be even more bitter. After limping to a 78-84 record and -65 run differential, the Cardinals suffered the single largest year-over-year decrease in attendance among all 30 teams in 2025.

SF Giants should explore trades with St. Louis Cardinals this offseason

Their attendance dip of 628,108 fans was higher than both the A’s and Rays, both of which moved to play their home games in minor league stadiums. Evidently, the Cardinal brass realizes there’s no quick fix to right the ship, as reports indicate they’re preparing to embark on a multi-year rebuild starting this offseason.

This provides a great opportunity for the Giants.

St. Louis will be exploring trade options for some of their pricier veterans, such as Nolan Arenado, Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray. The Cardinals have been trying to trade Arenado in particular for years now, and he may be motivated to finally approve a deal now that his team’s waving the while flag for 2026. Though Arenado has been a career Giant-killer, there’s no real place for him on the Giants with Chapman firmly in place at the hot corner. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of viable trade targets on the Cardinals roster, however.

One such target who will generate a lot of interest is part-time catcher Iván Herrera. Though he’s an everyday player, he saw very limited playing time behind the dish thanks to his injury history and defensive question marks. 89 of his 107 games played this year were at DH, while also moonlighting as a left fielder for four games.

Now that he’ll be a year removed from his hamstring strain back in June, the Giants may be more willing to let Herrera catch 50-60 games next year than the Cardinals would be. He’d make a fine bat-first complement to defensive wizard Patrick Bailey, and the Cardinals already have a surplus of catchers in the organization even outside of Herrera. Pedro Pagés and Yohel Pozo, as well as prospects Jimmy Crooks and Leonardo Bernal, would still represent a better - and younger - catching situation than many teams currently have.

On days when Bailey’s catching, Herrera could become a DH replacement for the departing Wilmer Flores and possibly Dominic Smith. At the plate, Herrera would help lengthen the Giants’ middle of the order, particularly since he happens to mash lefties – which the Giants have struggled mightily against of late. Herrera’s overall 2025 line of .284/.373/.464 (137 wRC+) is nice enough, but his .330/.455/.660 line (205 wRC+) against southpaws was phenomenal.

Herrera is also only 25 years old and under team control for another four years, so even though those are great points for why the Giants should want him, they also mean the acquisition cost would be steep. One way to simultaneously address another need while lowering the acquisition cost would be to take on the entirety of what’s still due to Sonny Gray as well. Gray would fill the one-year elder statesman role that Verlander occupied this year, and though he has a history of being a top-of-the-rotation arm, he’s 35 years old and owed a whopping $35 million next season. Considering he’s coming off a somewhat down year with a 4.28 ERA, most teams would probably consider him a slightly negative asset when taking money owed into account.

Netting a package of both Herrera and Gray at once would kill two birds with one stone for the Giants though, who may be more amenable than most teams to eat a little extra money if it means making the 2026 squad more competitive. A complicating factor is that Gray holds a no-trade clause, but for just one year he might be willing to waive that for a more competitive situation.

As for who the Giants would have to trade to get that duo (or even just Herrera), it would probably take a couple of their top-10 prospects plus a major league-ready piece. That MLB-ready piece the Giants could dangle might be Heliot Ramos, who is himself a former All-Star with the same amount of team control remaining as Herrera. A lot of Giants fans grew frustrated with Ramos’ multitudes of defensive lapses and baserunning gaffes, but through it all he still managed to be an above-average hitter (106 wRC+) with a positive WAR (1.1).

A fresh start with a change of scenery could be the boost Ramos needs to get back to the tantalizing potential he showed in 2024. That would open up a new hole in left field for the Giants, of course, but it’s possible that Posey and Minasian may already feel it’s time to look for alternatives out on the grass. A trade with the Cardinals could be the first of many moves the Giants could make as they look to return to the postseason for the first time since 2021.