Nolan Arenado Reportedly Invoking No-Trade Clause To Block Deal With Astros

The Cardinals are known to want to trade Nolan Arenado this offseason, but negotiations are complicated because he has a full no-trade clause in his contract. According to a report today from Mark Feinsand, John Denton and Brian McTaggart of MLB.com, the Cards and Astros were negotiating a deal to send him to Houston before Arenado told St. Louis that he will not waive his no-trade clause. to join the Astros. Katie Woo and Chandler Rome of The Athletic provided additional details.

The Cardinals plan for 2025 to be a reset year, which has put Arenado’s name in trade rumors for the past few months. At the winter meetings last week, Cardinals president of baseball John Mozeliak said he intended to try to get a deal done. This idea can be seen as mutually beneficial. Arenado turns 34 in March and could get a chance to go to a club with immediate goals to play competitive baseball. The cards will save money and open up playing time for players who aren’t quite as strong yet Nolan Gorman or Jordan Walker.

But that being said, Arenado gets a say in that part of the no-trade rule. It was reported last week that he would approve a trade to six teams: the Angels, Dodgers, Padres, Phillies, Mets, or Red Sox. It wasn’t clear if that was a complete list, but the Astros weren’t on it. According to today’s report from Woo and Rome, that list originally included the Astros but was removed, possibly due to the latter. Kyle Tucker trading and uncertainty around Alex Bregman situation.

Speaking of Bregman, he has been the third baseman in Houston for a long time, although there are some signs they plan to move on. In the years leading up to his free agency, they had repeatedly said they wanted to re-sign him but no deal ever came together. He hasn’t been signed yet but there was reportedly a gap in negotiations, with the club offering him $156MM over six years while looking at more than $200MM.

In addition, the Astros made a big trade last week that earned them Bregman’s spot at the hot corner. In sending Tucker to the Cubs, the Astros returned three players, one of whom was Isaac Paredes. While Paredes has played all four infield positions, he has played third base more than the other three spots combined.

But after that trade, it was reported that the Astros were emerging as a “serious suitor” for Arenado. Since Arenado is famous for his third base defense, the plan may be to move Paredes to first base, as that is also a target for Houston. Although it appears that Arenado is not available, that puts the entire program on ice for now.

It’s unclear what the full deal was or why Arenado decided to put the kibosh on it. All reports have suggested that winning is Arenado’s main motivation for his next theoretical team and the Astros would seem to fit the bill. Although they recently traded Tucker, they still plan to compete again in 2025 and have been one of the winningest clubs of the last decade. Perhaps his decision has to do with the state of affairs, the Astros sign-stealing scandal or the Astros-Cardinals data breach scandal, though that would be speculation. The report by Woo and Rome suggests that he wants more time to make a decision and this is not the end.

Despite Arenado blocking the deal, the most notable thing in today’s report is that the Cardinals were apparently willing to spend money. Arenado will make $74MM over the next three years but $10MM is covered by the Rockies as part of the trade that sent him from Colorado to St. Louis. There’s also a reversal, which appears to lower the current value of what’s owed from $64MM to about $60MM, according to an MLB.com column. But the Cards were willing to chip in $15-20MM so the Astros would only be on the hook for $40-45MM of that. The Athletic says the Cards were willing to eat $5MM per season for the rest of the deal, or $15MM.

That’s a reasonable position for the Cards to take. Although reducing payroll is their annual reset goal, it is already expected to be below their recent spending levels. RosterResource projects that the 2025 payroll is about $40MM below 2024 levels. Trading Arenado, even if they cost some of the money, would only widen that gap while allowing the club to get a more significant return on a young talent.

It may also have helped the Astros stay under the competitive balance sheet, with RosterResource currently putting their number at $225MM. If they were to take the roughly three years and $45MM of Arenado’s deal, that would add $15MM to their number and put them near the $241MM base cap.

Now the big questions will be what comes next for each team. Both reports suggest the Astros and Cardinals will continue to hold talks, but they may turn to other options while they are available, depending on how much time Arenado wants to make up his mind about Houston. The Astros could look to restart negotiations with Bregman or pivot to a first baseman like him Christian Walker. The Cardinals may try to negotiate a new deal with one of the clubs Arenado might be more hesitant to join.

Arenado was an MVP finalist a few years ago but his offense has declined in recent years. In 2022, he hit 30 home runs and slashed .293/.358/.533 with a 149 wRC+. When combined with his good glove work, FanGraphs credited him with 7.2 wins over the replacement that year. But over the past two years, he’s hit .269/.320/.426 with a 104 wRC+, above league average. He’s still worth close to 3 fWAR every year during that time because of the defense, but it’s clearly a relative decline. Most of his home runs come from the pull side, so playing in front of Houston’s Crawford Boxes might be good for him, but he’ll have to look for it.