Though they did not make a move on July 31st, the St. Louis Cardinals received a gift at the Trade Deadline this season when they acquired Matt Holliday from the Oakland Athletics.
Holliday was one of the best hitters in the league in 2007 when he was with the Rockies. His .340 average, 36 homers and 137 RBIs were all indications that baseball had a new slugger in town. But when the Rockies sent Matt to the Athletics, who went after Holliday with trading him for prospects down the line as their driving factor, his numbers started to drop and it was assumed that his 2007 season was a product of Coors Field.
With a .286 clip, 11 home runs and 54 RBIs staring down the throats of Billy Beane and the A’s, it looked like a play to rebuild their farm system by trading two of their best young guns (Gio Gonzalez and Carlos Gonzalez) and their closer (Huston Street), had backfired.
However, as the deadline approached, the St. Louis Cardinals, who were desperate to get a bat to protect Albert Pujols, offered a package that included top prospect Brett Wallace to Oakland, and Beane bit the bullet.
10 games after this move, and the Cardinals already look like the biggest winners of the MLB Trade Deadline.
It seems like Holliday has been resurged, recharged and rejuvenated by his move back to the National League. Well, I guess batting behind the best hitter in baseball doesn’t hurt.
Still, these numbers are unbelievable: .541 batting average (20-for-37), three home runs, 10 RBIs, .946 slugging percentage, eight walks and six doubles.
Until yesterday’s game against the Astros, Holliday hat hit safely in all nine of his games as a Cardinal and was doing a perfect job of filing in for Pujols while he goes through an unusual slump. So if Holliday is doing all of this without Pujols doing anything positive in front of him, how scary will the Cardinals be when both of them are on their game?
St. Louis is currently a half game ahead of the Cubs for first place in the NL Central and will be playing a two game set against the injury riddled Mets starting Tuesday, while Chicago will be facing off against the Reds in a three game set, with game one today.
If Holliday can even contribute at half of the pace that he is going at right now, the Cardinals should be poised to make a run at the World Series, and that should pay off his one-year rental.
