The St. Louis Cardinals have been hanging around this season and are currently just 4.5 games out of first place in the NL Central as the trade deadline is looming on July 30th.
One insider shared some insight into the Cardinals’ potential deadline plans and pointed out two names who the team will likely target to bolster the starting rotation for the stretch run.
MLB.com’s John Denton said that the Cardinals will “likely target” Nathan Eovaldi of the Texas Rangers and Zach Eflin of the Tampa Bay Rays at the trade deadline.
Eovaldi is in the final year of the 2-year, $34 million deal he signed ahead of last season and has a vesting option for $20 million in 2025 that turns into a player option if he reaches 300 total innings pitched over the last two seasons, which he is currently 57 innings shy of.
He is having one of the best seasons of his career and has a career-low 3.36 ERA and 1.07 WHIP, and with the Rangers getting Jacob DeGrom back soon in addition to recently getting Max Scherzer back, the team might decide Eovaldi is expendable.
It would still be somewhat surprising to see the Rangers decide to sell coming off a World Series championship and with another ace on the way while facing just a 5-game deficit in the AL West.
Eflin won a career-high 16 games for the Rays last season and has a 4.14 ERA across 18 starts this year for the Rays, who like the Rangers, are still under .500.
The Cardinals need a starting pitcher, so keep an eye out to see if they go shopping in the coming weeks.