Nolan Arenado is willing to be traded by the St. Louis Cardinals because, at 33 years old, he wants to play for a team that can compete for the World Series.
“It’s like his biological clock is ticking,” said Arenado’s agent, Joel Wolfe, on Tuesday at the winter meetings. “And if the team’s not winning it’s driving him crazy every day, every night all through the offseason. And he takes it so personal, like it’s all on him.”
Arenado, an eight-time All-Star and 10-time Gold Glove winner at third base, is also open to switching to first base. He hit .272 with 16 home runs and 71 RBIs this year, which was his worst season in ten years.
St. Louis traded for Arenado from Colorado before the 2021 season. In his first two years with the Cardinals, they lost in the wild-card round, and they failed to make the playoffs in consecutive seasons after that.
“The Cardinals are changing direction, which is fine. All teams do that,” Wolfe said. “So if that’s the way it is and they’ve said it might be beneficial to move you and they were open and communicated about it, he’s like: ‘I get it. Let’s just try and find a place where they’re in a different place,’ where he could just jump in and help the team go to the next level.”
Arenado has played 1,629 games in the field during his career, all at third base. He won Gold Gloves every year from 2013-2022, tying with Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki for winning the award in his first 10 seasons.
Arenado told Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak that he’s willing to switch positions.
“If it would make Mo’s job easier to get to the right team, Nolan is more than willing to move around,” Wolfe said, quoting Arenado as saying, “‘I’m not insulted to go play first and I can win a Gold Glove over there if that’s what it takes.’”
“He wanted to be just the first to offer that so that Mo could tell other teams that,” Wolfe added.
Arenado has a .285 career batting average, with 341 home runs and 1,132 RBIs for both the Cardinals and Colorado Rockies. He has $74 million remaining on his contract for the next three seasons, part of a nine-year, $275 million deal.
Arenado has a full no-trade clause, meaning he has the final say in any trade decision.
“It’s more of just an ongoing discussion of: Would you be OK with this team? Would you be OK with that team?” Wolfe said. “We don’t want to waste Mo’s time and there are some hard no’s of where he would prefer not to go and things like that. It’s been somewhat dynamic in the discussion about how that works.”
