Cardinals showed SF Giants exactly how to offload all of their bad contracts

With the news that the SF Giants are reportedly open to trading away their bad contracts, i.e. Matt Chapman, Willy Adames, and Rafael Devers, it’s worth looking at a recent example of a team that had a lot of overpaid players and decided to get rid of them.

Everyone knew the St. Louis Cardinals were looking to have something of a mini-rebuild during the offseason. They had a number of bloated contracts that they had to get rid of and the only way to do it was to pay off some of those contracts as part of the trade.

The Cardinals traded Sonny Gray to the Boston Red Sox and sent $20 million along as part of the deal. Gray signed a big three-year $75 million deal with a no-trade clause with the Cardinals that was back-loaded meaning he was set to make most of his money in the last two years of the deal. It was obvious the Cardinals wanted out especially since his performance didn’t exactly warrant that kind of money.

They also had to get rid of Nolan Arenado who is still playing under the big contract extension the Colorado Rockies gave him back in 2019. St. Louis got some great years out of Arenado but he has declined recently and they traded him to the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he is still tormenting the Giants, while also sending along $31 million.

St. Louis also opted to get rid of Willson Contreras who they signed to a five-year $87.5 million deal back in 2023. The Cardinals shipped him to the Red Sox as well and threw in $8 million as part of that trade.

Giants can follow the path the Cardinals took in the offseason

While those three contracts aren’t completely analogous to the Chapman, Adames, and Devers ones, it at least shows that a team can get out of bad deals. The Giants are going to have to eat money and may even have to send prospects in order to get deals done but they don’t want to just give these guys away.

Yes, they have all underperformed this year and yes it seems only natural that they will continue to decline, but the Giants likely aren’t so desperate to offload them that they’ll agree to pay half their contracts while also sending along Josuar Gonzalez as a thank you for their troubles.

Some teams may be desperate at the deadline and could talk themselves into a crazy trade for one of these guys. The Giants will still have to eat some money to be sure but if they can get some decent prospects in return then they may well agree to a trade.

While many thought the Cardinals wouldn’t be all that competitive this year they’ve actually been really good and currently have a 40-31 record thanks in large part to their young players.

Perhaps that’s a replicable model for the Giants since it’s pretty clear that building around Chapman, Devers, and Adames has not worked so far.

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