Fallout from Sonny Gray trade: Can Cardinals' long-term vision coexist with fan urgency?
Best Podcast in Baseball
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
4.6 • 690 Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2025
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Two years after the Cardinals signed Sonny Gray as a free agent to headline their pitching, pitching, pitching offseason, the veteran right-handed waived his no-trade clause and renogiated his deal to allow a trade to Boston and underscore the Cardinals' new direction.
Pivoting, pivoting, pivoting.
In a brand new Best Podcast in Baseball, baseball writer Derrick Goold and editor Nathan Mills discuss the fallout from the Sonny Gray trade. They explore the next group of Cardinals likely to be traded with Mills giving a rundown of the left-handed batters and one left-handed pitcher that are generating interest from other teams and what players would be wisest to trade. The $20 million sent with Gray to the Red Sox in exchanage for two young talents, starters Brandon Clarke and Richard Fitts, is a sign of what the Cardinals are willing to pay for younger, cost-controlled talent. So what does that say about the Cardinals' willingness to cover millions of Nolan Arenado's contract to spur a trade of another All-Star?
The discussion arrives at a juncture for the Cardinals.
For years, the club and its fans have been defined by an urgency about what the game today or the move today did to help them win the next World Series. Now, the question seems to have shifted to what the move did today to help them win their next World Series -- in the future, whenever that is. During his press conference following the Gray trade, Chaim Bloom said the urgency fans expect and the long-term view the Cardinals have adopted can coexist, and he added that he welcomes the pressure such urgency puts on their daily decisions, even if the goal is in the distance.
Plus! Questions from chatters and a Thanksgiving thank you to the community of BPIB listerns who have made the podast possible going back to its earliest days of recording in a attic.
In its 13th season as one of the first and most widely heard podcasts on baseball and the Cardinals, the Best Podcast in Baseball has reached a new season-high with 30 episodes. Each episode is sponsored weekly by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and lead baseball writer Derrick Goold.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to a brand new best podcast in baseball. |
| 0:02.4 | The Cardinals have made their most significant trade of the offseason so far. |
| 0:05.7 | It's the first big headline of the Haim Bloom era, |
| 0:08.9 | and it does signal how we might be shifting the question we ask about the Cardinals. |
| 0:15.7 | Fans have long had an urgency about what do they do today that gets them closer to winning the World Series tomorrow? |
| 0:23.3 | That question might be shifting a little bit as I talk with Post Dispatch Editor Nathan Mills to |
| 0:28.6 | what do they do today that gets them closer to winning their next World Series, |
| 0:34.5 | whenever that is. |
| 0:35.9 | They're not putting a date on it. |
| 0:38.2 | Cue the music. |
| 0:48.4 | Hello, everybody, and welcome to the best podcast in baseball, brought to you by Closest |
| 0:51.3 | by Design of St. Louis. |
| 0:52.2 | I'm St. Louis Post Dispispatch baseball writer, Derek Gould. |
| 0:54.5 | joined this week by editor Nathan Mills. |
| 0:58.2 | We are, well, Nathan, happy Thanksgiving, first of all. |
| 1:02.7 | Thank you. |
| 1:03.4 | Happy Thanksgiving to you. |
| 1:04.9 | Almost two years to the date on which the Cardinals signed the Sunny Gray as part of their pitching, pitching, |
| 1:14.1 | pitching offseason. They have traded Sunny Gray to the Boston Red Sox to begin an offseason |
| 1:22.7 | that I guess we can call young pitching, young pitching, young pitching. What was it that struck you about the deal as we dive into the details of it and a discussion of what it means for the Cardinals' direction, which we kind of already knew, but now we have tangible evidence of. Yeah, yeah. So I was surprised, first of all, that it was so quick. And then, of course, learned afterward why. |
| 1:44.8 | But that was the first thing. And then, you know, to be honest with you, Derek, I kind of thought the Cardinals would get like a 40 future value prospect and maybe a lottery ticket or two for Gray, given that how much money he was owed. But restructuring his deal and sending some money up to the return quite a bit. know, they got a useful piece for 2026, |
| 2:02.4 | a guy who screams Cardinals pitcher, right, in Richard Fitz, |
... |
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