Cardinals acquire Peter Bourjos from Angels for David Freese

One of the features of old-timey baseball, back before Branch Rickey of, appropriately enough, the Cardinals standardized player development, was the flash-in-the-pan player. These were players who usually came up a bit older than the traditional prospect, either because they hadn’t come to the attention of scouts, took some extra time to develop in the lower minors, or simply found that they liked the nice weather and better-than-majors salaries of the Pacific Coast League, and had a good season or two before vanishing again. Because aging curves and small samples weren’t well understood, these players sometimes got mistaken for arriving stars rather than lucky journeymen, but quite often they’d play themselves back to the bench or the minors in fairly short order. It took a couple of decades, but eventually Rickey’s farm system largely euthanized the “late bloomer,” which meant fewer surprises but better career value for both teams and players.

That might be it for Freese in terms of All-Star-type seasons. Although he made it into 138 games this year, he was hampered by a back injury he sustained diving into the stands during spring training and hit only .262/.340/.381 with poor defense, making him a sub-replacement-level player on the season. He continued to hit poorly in October. Not only is a back injury the kind of thing that might linger and/or become chronic, but Freese is heading into his age-31 season, a point at which many players with a mid-range skill set are already starting to slip -- a player who starts slow and loses half a step is often in trouble. Further, Freese has more than established that he has a friable body; staying healthy is a skill he does not possess, so there is likely more downtime and further erosion of his skills on order. Add in that he’s going to a park in Anaheim that is unlikely to give him much help (not that Busch Stadium did either) and you have a picture of a player who stands a pretty good chance of continuing to underwhelm.

There’s no way to know for certain how this deal will play out for both teams, but that doesn’t mean that everyone won’t offer their opinions on the matter. Thanks to the glory of Twitter, we can easily round up those opinions! The general consensus is that this trade is a big win for the Cardinals, and anywhere from perplexing to shrewd on the part of the Angels.

Keith Law also weighed in on the trade on ESPN Insider. He likes the deal for both teams: