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The major headline from the first full day of the MLB Winter Meetings was the deal that didn’t get done, as an off-the-field incident postponed a deal that would have sent Cincinnati Reds reliever Aroldis Chapman to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
A trade has already gone down on Day 2, with the St. Louis Cardinals sending outfielder Jon Jay to the San Diego Padres for infielder Jedd Gyorko. San Diego is covering part of the $33 million Gyorko is owed on his contract, which only makes the move better from the St. Louis side.
Gyorko hit 23 home runs and drove in 63 over 486 at-bats with the Padres in 2013, on his way to finishing sixth in the National League Rookie of the Year voting. He signed a contract extension on the heels of that rookie season, but Gyorko has mostly struggled since then before a decent finish last season (.259/.299/.440 slash-line with 13 home runs after the All-Star break).
Gyorko is mostly a second baseman by trade, so he doesn’t look like a great fit for the Cardinals with Kolten Wong solidly in place at that spot for them. But Gyorko did play 29 games (28 starts) at shortstop for San Diego last season and he played some third base (13 games) in 2013, so being used as a sort of utility player that will see 400-500 at-bats by season’s end looks likely.
The Cardinals are one of the best-run organizations in all of baseball, and arguably in any of the the major sports. They’ve essentially shed an overpaid ($6.225 million in 2016) extra outfielder in Jay, and bought low on Gyorko’s potential, with Tuesday morning’s trade. So if I’m declaring a winner of the deal, it is clearly St. Louis.
Brad Berreman is a Senior Writer at Rant Sports.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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