{"id":20231,"date":"2025-07-25T04:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T04:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/20231\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T04:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T04:16:07","slug":"ryan-helsley-expects-to-be-traded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/20231\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Helsley Expects To Be Traded"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ryan Helsley<\/a> has stood as a logical trade candidate for upwards of ten months now, dating back to the Cardinals\u2019 declaration that they planned to reduce payroll heading into the 2025 season and focus on creating opportunities for young players. St. Louis surprisingly held onto Helsley all offseason and up into deadline season. After holding a Wild Card spot earlier this summer, they\u2019ve gone dropped 13 of their past 19 games and now sit nine games out of the division lead. They\u2019re still just two and a half games back in the Wild Card scene but have three teams to leapfrog.<\/p>\n

With the team\u2019s recent slide, indications have been that they\u2019ll wind up operating primarily on the sell side of the market. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has reported<\/a> in the past couple days that the Cards are listening on not only Helsley but also relievers Phil Maton<\/a> and Steven Matz<\/a>. Goold wrote this morning that the Cardinals aren\u2019t necessarily turning away interest in lefty reliever John King<\/a> or infielder Nolan Gorman<\/a> \u2014 among other unnamed, more controllable pieces. (Presumably, southpaw JoJo Romero<\/a>, who\u2019s controlled through just the 2026 season, is obtainable as well.)<\/p>\n

The reality seems to be setting in on the roster. Helsley told The Athletic\u2019s Katie Woo tonight<\/a> that the \u201clikelihood is probably as great as it\u2019s ever been for me to get traded\u201d before going on to add: \u201cI would say it\u2019s 90 percent I go, 10 percent I stay.\u201d Helsley made clear that his preference would be to remain with the Cardinals and win in St. Louis, but that\u2019s not a decision that\u2019s under his control at the moment.<\/p>\n

At least five clubs have shown interest in Helsley, per Woo and colleague Will Sammon. The Dodgers are known to have interest<\/a> in the 31-year-old flamethrower, and the Phillies were connected to him<\/a> earlier this season. Back in the offseason, the Blue Jays were among the teams with interest<\/a>, and it stands to reason now that they\u2019re clear deadline buyers, they could revisit their pursuit of the impending free agent.<\/p>\n

Helsley is earning $8.2MM in his final season of club control. The Cardinals could make him a qualifying offer and recoup a compensatory pick in the 2026 draft if he turns it down and signs elsewhere, though that would presume continued health and production from Helsley down the stretch. Neither is a guarantee. The most surefire way to extract some future value from the former All-Star is to trade him within the next week.<\/p>\n

Helsley is having a nice season relative to the average big league reliever but a down year by his standards. He\u2019s pitched 35 innings and logged a 3.09 ERA but has already blown five saves \u2014 more than he did all of last season (four). Helsley\u2019s 25.5% strikeout rate and 9.2% walk rate have both trended in the wrong direction. He punched out 34.6% of his opponents from 2022-24, but his strikeout rate has now dipped for a third consecutive season. His walk rate is up from both the 8.6% and 8.4% marks he posted in 2024 and 2022, respectively, though it\u2019s better than the 11.6% mark he logged in 2023 and right in line with his overall 2022-24 rate. He\u2019s still averaging better than 99 mph on his fastball, though even his 99.3 mph average represents a modest dip from last year\u2019s 99.6 mph.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Helsley doesn\u2019t have much trade value. He\u2019s one of the most talented relievers on the market, and the asking price on him will be considerably lower than on other marquee relievers like Emmanuel Clase<\/a>, Jhoan Duran<\/a>, Griffin Jax<\/a> and David Bednar<\/a> \u2014 all of whom are controlled at least one additional season (one for Bednar, two for Duran and Jax, three for Clase). Contending clubs covet power arms with high-leverage track records this time of year, and Helsley still checks those boxes, even if his results have dipped.<\/p>\n

If the Cards string together several wins, perhaps they\u2019ll ultimately wind up holding onto Helsley and plan to make him a qualifying offer. As things stand, however, the pitcher himself is bracing for a trade within the next week \u2014 and it sounds like several other Cardinals could end up on the move as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Helsley has stood as a logical trade candidate for upwards of ten months now, dating back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,21061,21060,591,21062,16080,16048,85,21063],"class_list":{"0":"post-20231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-john-king","11":"tag-jojo-romero","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-nolan-gorman","14":"tag-phil-maton","15":"tag-ryan-helsley","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-steven-matz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}