Buy low trade candidate for the Miami Marlins

I wrote about one interesting St. Louis Cardinals trade target for the Miami Marlins. With some other interesting players around, a trade with St. Louis may be another good option. St. Louis is clearly rebuilding, and while they will probably not go this far. Why not check if they're willing to move on from former top prospect RF Jordan Walker?! It might be worth a shot.

Can the Miami Marlins target Jordan Walker of the St. Louis Cardinals in a trade?

This off-season will see the Miami Marlins hire a new manager. It will also however have The Fish looking at upgrading the roster. At least that's the expectation. Peter Bendix could be focusing on the OF, which is a clear area of improvement for the team. One such potentially available option is the aforementioned RF Jordan Walker.

It's important to point out that there's no reason to necessarily believe that Walker is available. He's still in his pre-arb phase, which means that he's relatively inexpensive. St. Louis is expected to lower their payroll this off-season, and obviously trading Walker is hardly helping them in this case. He's also a potential part of their future, which means that there's even less sense for them to move him.

So then why would St. Louis even bother trading him then? They might have decided that he wasn't what they originally expected him to be. He debuted for the team in the 2023 season. That season, he batted a solid .276/.342/.445, with 16 home runs and 51 RBI in 117 games and 420 AB. He was worth a disappointing -0.1 WAR however, due to a horrific -2.1 dWAR.

This season, Walker declined with a .201/.253/.366 batting line, with 5 home runs and 20 RBI in 51 games and 164 AB. This time he was worth a far worse -0.9 WAR, along with a -0.6 dWAR. It's possible that St. Louis is turned off by this performance and may be willing to move on, before his value hypothetically drops lower. It would be interesting to see if a trade with the Miami Marlins can then be worked out.