Three Players Foiled Cardinals' Plan to Trade for Sean Murphy

Updated: Sep 10, 5:00pm UTC

News broke on Monday that the Atlanta Braves acquire catcher Sean Murphy from the Oakland Athletics in an unexpected three-team trade involving the Milwaukee Brewers. Atlanta was far from the only team after Murphy's services.

Just days after the St. Louis Cardinals found their Yadier Molina replacement with the free-agent signing of Willson Contreras, it's been revealed St. Louis was very much "in" on Murphy. After all the franchise just lost a cornerstone and had to be willing to cross every bridge to replace Molina's two decades of services.

According to Ken Rosenthal, it was simply the Athletics' asking price that foiled St. Louis' plans to pull off a Murphy trade. Three players in specific.

According to Rosenthal (and an original report from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch), the Athletics sought some combination of Lars Nootbaar, Brendan Donovan and top prospect Gordon Graceffo. St. Louis was unwilling to part ways with any of those players.

Instead, the Cardinals were willing to ship away some intriguing names. Rosenthal explains that St. Louis offered Oakland two of the following four players: Dylan Carlson, Nolan Gorman, Alec Burleson and Juan Yepez.

While the Contreras deal may have cost the payroll a fortune, at least St. Louis didn't have to part ways with key prospects and players on the current roster. As it stands, the Cardinals hold early +1800 odds to win the 2023 World Series on FanDuel Sportsbook.

Adam Taylor McKillop is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Adam Taylor also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username atmckillop. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in their articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.

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