The trade that solidifies a new frontier for the Cardinals’ rebuilding efforts was finalized Monday as a winter of waiting culminated in the team’s lone 2025 All-Star being traded away.
Brendan Donovan is now a Seattle Mariner, as Chaim Bloom has orchestrated his first trade with the Cardinals that doesn't necessarily fit into the cookie-cutter mold of slashing the payroll.
With the deals involving Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras and Nolan Arenado, cost-cutting and salary dumping were central motives for the moves. If St. Louis is staring down a number of lean years on the field, none of those veteran contributors were destined to be around for the next time the Cardinals produce a winner.
Trading Donovan represents a steeper commitment to tearing away from the present to support the future, as the 29-year-old has two years of team control remaining before free agency. Whenever he gets it, Donovan's next contract will certainly reflect the value of his talents. Still, it arguably shouldn’t have been considered a back-breaking sum for a team whose future payroll commitments are virtually non-existent at this point.
But while recognizing the value Donnie brings, Bloom’s front office plunged forward with swapping his services for five assets that represent an opportunity to build up the future of the Cardinals. In a three-team trade, St. Louis landed switch-pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje and outfielder Tai Peete from Seattle. To round out the deal, the Cardinals also acquired outfielder Colton Ledbetter from the Rays, while adding a competitive balance draft pick from both teams.
The Cardinals now wield five picks among the top 72 selections in this summer’s draft. St. Louis will pick 13th overall in the first round before sprinkling additional choices at 32, 50, 68 and 72.
Cijntje, a 2024 first rounder out of Mississippi State, headlines the trade. Bloom has made a habit of targeting pitching throughout his first off-season at the helm of the Cardinals, and Cijntje arguably has the arm—or, arms?—with the most upside.
Though his ambidextrous nature has been a major talking point surrounding his prospect status, Cijntje (let’s get this part out of the way early: it’s pronounced SAIN-juh) was due to focus on pitching exclusively right-handed upon reporting to Mariners camp later this month.
As fun as a switch-pitcher might have been to follow, the Cardinals have labeled him as an RHP in their press release announcing the deal. In a press conference on Tuesday, Bloom didn’t want to get too specific about a path forward for his handedness, highlighting that the practice routine involving throwing with both arms has been something valuable that has gotten Cijntje to this point in his career.
Still, Bloom mentioned that the Cardinals view Cijntje's upside similarly to the way the Mariners did, perhaps signaling a sunsetting of the switch-pitching experiment, at least in a formal capacity.
“Broadly speaking, we see his strengths and his upside similarly to Seattle,” Bloom said. “I don’t want to get too specific, just because I think we owe it to ourselves and to him to get to know him a little bit first. But when you look at the stuff, the command, the upside—it’s not a shock that they were prioritizing the right side.”
For Cijntje, that right side is certainly tantalizing. In 98.1 right-handed innings this past season, Cijntje struck out 111 batters while walking 32 and holding the opposition to a collective .618 OPS. The 15th pick in the 2024 MLB Draft, Cijntje reached Double-A in 2025, posting a 2.67 ERA in 33.2 innings at the level.
From this article, of note on the decision the M's were prepared to make on Cijntje's switch-pitching:
— Brenden Schaeffer🎳 (@bschaeffer12) February 3, 2026
"Overall, Cijntje had nine strikeouts, 19 walks and was tagged for a 1.118 OPS when pitching left-handed in 9 2/3 innings, compared to 111 strikeouts, 32 walks and a .618 OPS… https://t.co/6sjfj9O7Sc
The No. 91-ranked prospect on MLB Pipeline’s top 100 prospects list, Cijntje instantly vaults among the top five prospects in the Cardinals’ system.
The Cardinals also landed a former first-round selection in the 20-year-old outfielder Peete, whose swing-and-miss tendencies probably place him into more of a lottery ticket status as a prospect. But again, it's another player with a pedigree and upside, an attitude that Bloom shared mattered greatly to the club when it was gauging a prospective return for Donovan.
“Didn’t want to get too rigid to miss a good opportunity, but we also wanted to make sure that we were getting talent that had great upside,” Bloom said. “You understand when you’re talking about prospects, talking about picks, there are no guarantees. But at least one piece, if not multiple pieces, that both had the upside to really impact a playoff-caliber team—and a reasonable path to get there.
“In this case, we do feel like we accomplished that. We also—with both the number of players we got and also the picks—we feel we gave ourselves a lot of chances to accomplish that, which is also important.”
St. Louis felt strongly about adding the draft capital that they were able to acquire in the deal, with Bloom stating Tuesday that the deal wouldn’t have happened without it.
“They are obviously really important,” Bloom said of the draft picks being included in the trade. The Cardinals landed two competitive balance picks, the 68th overall selection from Seattle and the 72nd overall selection from Tampa Bay, for the upcoming MLB Draft. “The deal would not have happened without their inclusion.”
“As I’ve talked about all off-season, we wanted to set a bar pretty high if we were going to contemplate something like this,” Bloom continued. “As much as we are thinking long-term, there still should be a pretty high bar when you have someone who is as valuable as Brendan.
“The value of those shots in the top 100 picks of the draft is real. Obviously, it’s on us to maximize them.”
Though Donovan’s substantial impact on the Cardinals should not be underestimated, the longevity of his Cardinal career fell victim to the current state of the organization, which lends toward prioritizing the future over the present.
Donovan is a player who, in any other era of the franchise, might have been earmarked with a priority stamp, destined to become a Cardinal for life. To see a player like that shipped off for future assets is a sign of the times for the rebuilding Cardinals.
But within those suboptimal circumstances, Bloom’s front office piled up a handful of shots on goal as it works to stock up talent for the next era of the Cardinals to take form.