Exhausting Nolan Arenado-Dodgers rumors kick up again as Cardinals get more desperate

If you'd thought that the Dodgers' weird will they, won't they with Nolan Arenado was over back in January, when Katie Woo of The Athletic wrote that LA had never been involved in trade discussions in the first place, that was the right instinct.

Not only did Arenado not make much sense for the Dodgers, who had reiterated multiple times that Max Muncy would be their Opening Day third baseman, Cardinals beat writers were almost constantly at odds about how much traction his market was gaining and which teams were actually interested. John Denton of MLB.com seemed convinced that the Dodgers were "downplaying" their interest, but Woo countered to say that interest was nonexistent.

So what's happening here?

The Dodgers, simply, don't need Arenado. His National League-leading 7.7 fWAR season in 2022 definitely looks like a flash in the pan with how his last two seasons have panned out, and Muncy was able to accumulate more WAR than Arenado in just 73 games to Arenado's 152 last season.

But Denton, the foremost Dodgers-Arenado truther, wrote on Thursday that trade talks had reopened with the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox in the wake of the Cardinals' trade for third baseman and outfielder Michael Helman from the Twins.

Nolan Arenado-Dodgers rumors get a second wind after Cardinals trade for a potential third base replacement

Denton added that potential trade talks with an unnamed team had fallen through in January when St. Louis was unwilling to maintain responsibility for $20 million of the $52 million Arenado's still owed over the next three seasons. That was, apparently, when the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox reentered the picture to discuss "possible restructured deals."

Again, there's still conflicting information about how in the Dodgers have been from the outset, and from two of the most reputable sources out there. For their part, the Dodgers haven't mentioned Arenado or the possibility of a trade publicly. The closest anyone got to it was Muncy acknowledging he'd seen the rumors online and would be happy to have Arenado on the squad as long as he still had a job in LA.

That's not a lot to go on. It's nothing to go on, really. If the Dodgers end up trading for Arenado, then fine, but they'd be better off letting him go to the Red Sox, who need a replacement for Rafael Devers at third. Better they get stuck with the declining former star than the Dodgers.