{"id":12103,"date":"2025-05-09T01:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T01:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/12103\/"},"modified":"2025-05-09T01:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T01:30:09","slug":"cardinals-ryan-helsley-could-be-trade-deadlines-most-coveted-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/12103\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals&#8217; Ryan Helsley could be trade deadline&#8217;s most coveted closer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The best reliever available is expected to be Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley, who\u2019s a free agent after the year. The 100-mph-throwing Helsley is employing a curve more.<\/p>\n<p>As for lefty relievers, the trade supply is almost nil. The Mets\u2019 signing of Brooks Raley is especially prescient with Danny Young and excellent A.J. Minter officially out for the year.<\/p>\n<p>The pitching injuries are getting crazy but aren\u2019t evenly divided. The Cardinals, who sometimes employ a six-man rotation to combat baseball\u2019s bad pitching injury history in March and April (old friend Steven Matz is the swing man), have only one pitcher on the IL. Meantime, the Orioles have nine (and quality ones; Zach Eflin could be back this weekend), and the Dodgers had as many as 12.<\/p>\n<p>The Yankees <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/05\/08\/sports\/george-lombard-jr-proving-to-be-complete-yankees-package\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">may have a great one in George Lombard Jr<\/a>. He could be the future third baseman, but at 19, it\u2019s probably not this year. \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The best reliever available is expected to be Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley, who\u2019s a free agent after the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[72,5,48,160,4,3449,863,185,430,428,673,67,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-12103","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-alex-bregman","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-cardinals","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-mlb-trade-deadline","14":"tag-rafael-devers","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sports-columnists","17":"tag-sports-plus","18":"tag-st-louis","19":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","20":"tag-stlouis","21":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114475292154093035","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}