For whatever reason… well I guess he really wants a trade?
I went into this planning on writing about anything but Nolan Arenado, but today, I can’t think of anything else to write about. And that’s because Nolan Arenado would play first base.
What is he saying? His throwing arm is about done? He has a shoulder? Some other mystery injury? Does he want to re-focus completely away from defense in order to bolster his hitting abilites? Well they could use some bolstering…
Since becoming a redbird, Arenado had a pretty lackluster 112 wRC+ during his first year in 2021; then in 2022 he had not only his best year as a Cardinal, Nolan reached his career year at age 31: an apex of 7.2 fWAR and 149 wRC+. As a Rocky he was a more standard 120-130 wRC+ hitter. So we got to see his offensive ceiling, as well as probably his floor: a 102 wRC+ this year. And just last year he was down to 106.
So it would seem he is in his offensive decline but will there be a resurgence? Not if there’s a major injury. But, how does one explain his defensive abilities this year? He didn’t really seem too injured to me.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/11/nolan-arenado-reportedly-willing-to-move-to-first-base.html
If there’s no injury, it sounds like Arenado simply just wants to be flexible, and willing to work with the Cardinals plans of rebuilding. So just as I expected, Arenado will be traded if a deal makes sense. He seems willing enough to waive his no trade clause, if the team is more competitive than the Cardinals. Who knows what he thinks about that.
And there’s a precedent to this, other free agents have made it known that they would play other positions, just to add positional flexibility to their resume. Maybe he does know what teams he wants to play for and figured he would throw in that added bonus of, hey, technically I CAN play first base, too.
Maybe Nolan the first knows that there are several Cardinals that he’s possibly blocking, like Nolan the second, Jordan Walker, and other options as well. Maybe he knows it’s time to move on.
If so, he was a 118ish wRC+ hitter for the Cardinals, with 4+ career average UZR/150. But we will always have Nolan Arenado’s peak year, in 2022. That said, I would not be surprised if he comes back in 2025, both as a Cardinal and as a top performer. Ok, maybe not on offense, but I think he can get back to 110 wRC+ with top notch defense next season. I wish that for him, or better, wherever he goes (as long as it’s outside of the NL Central).
Album Hall of Fame
Billy Woods and Kenny Segal – ‘Maps’
This week I’m inducting a recent favorite that I consider to be a masterpiece of 2020’s hiphop. It just came out last year, but if you are more into alt-hiphop, give this a listen! This one actually has what I would consider filler tracks, but they actually work to make the album better, and sound fine on their own as random songs in a playlist. So this is the exceptional album to all killer no filler. Can you think of any other perfect albums that have filler tracks? Give this one a try!
Keeping this a short one this week, since I started late and had absolutely no idea what to write about. I didn’t even have a perfect album lined up, but Billy Woods and Kenny Segal popped into my mind out of nowhere. And there really isn’t much to talk about just yet outside of Nolan Arenado would play first base, if you really wanted him to.
