Yankees 'Kicking Tires' on Trade For $260 Million All-Star; Red Sox 'Iffy'
Baseball is back for 2025, as the St. Louis Cardinals pitchers and catchers reported to the team's spring training facility in Jupiter, Florida, on Tuesday. Position players are set to follow, with the team's first full-squad workout scheduled for Sunday. But will one high-profile player, the Cardinals' eight-time All-Star third baseman, show up there?
The fate of that player, 12-year veteran Nolan Arenado, remains up in the air. Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak has stated throughout the offseason that he intends to trade Arenado, who is owed $52 million over the next three years — the final three seasons of the eight-year, $260 million contract he signed with his original team, the Colorado Rockies.
St. Louis needs to get out from under that contract to begin a rebuilding process after missing the playoffs for two straight seasons. The Cardinals had qualified for the postseason in nine of the 12 previous seasons, and last won the World Series in 2011.
But according to a report by MLB Network baseball insider Mark Feinsand, appearing on the network Monday, there are only two clubs remaining on the list of teams interested in dealing for Arenado, who will turn 34 shortly after the start of the 2025 season. And that's where it gets interesting, because those two teams are baseball's fiercest arch-rivals, the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.
The Yankees, Feinsand said, are "kicking the tires" on the possibility to trading for the 10-time Gold Glover.
"If the acquisition cost of getting Arenado is low enough and the Cardinals are willing to kick in some money, which they were with Houston, I don't I don't rule the Yankees out just yet," Feinsand said in the MLB Network appearance.
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The Cardinals had a deal in place to trade Arenado to the Houston Astros earlier in the offseason, but the third baseman used his no-trade clause to nix the move.
As for the Red Sox, they have also been rumored to have a deal ready to go that would bring them Arenado, but the Cardinals' unwillingness to absorb a sufficient portion of Arenado's salary has been preventing that trade from happening, according to ESPN insider Jeff Passan.
"Moving Arenado could force St. Louis to eat upward of half the money he is owed," Passan wrote in a piece for ESPN.com. "Short of that, Boston's interest is iffy."
But Passan added that in the MLB offseason, deals can go from "dead" one day to "back to life" the next.
More MLB: Red Sox Rumors: Nolan Arenado To Boston Makes 'Most Sense,' Per MLB Insider