Nolan Arenado said no to Astros after Kyle Tucker trade made him ‘a little uncomfortable’

ST. LOUIS — Inside a place he prepared to leave, Nolan Arenado saw one of the destinations he did not desire. On Monday afternoon, Arenado took his final round of batting practice while several Houston Astros assembled outside the third-base dugout.

Arenado marveled at Jose Altuve, a man he called “probably the greatest hitter of our generation as far as bat-to-ball skills,” and “one of the best power hitters ever” in Yordan Alvarez.

“These are guys that I know are going to be good and I respect them,” Arenado said at Busch Stadium. “I know they have a great thing going. They’ve had a great thing going for so long.”

Whether Houston would be able to sustain it became the most consequential question of a circuitous winter for both Arenado and the Astros. Houston’s trade of Kyle Tucker to the Chicago Cubs aided Arenado in arriving at his answer, as did the Astros’ pursuit of Arenado himself.

“(Tucker) is one of the best players in the game. When you see a team trade him, 99 out of 100 players would probably be wondering, ‘What does that mean?’ That’s the question I asked myself,” Arenado said.

“And obviously if I went there, (Alex) Bregman wouldn’t have been going there — that’s another player.”

Five days after the Astros finalized the Tucker trade, Arenado invoked his no-trade clause to nix an agreed-upon deal that would’ve made him the centerpiece of Houston’s transformative offseason. The Astros pivoted to first baseman Christian Walker, who signed a three-year, $60 million contract worth a tad more than what they would’ve paid Arenado.

“I respect the Astros because they can’t just wait for me to make my decision,” Arenado said. “They have to move on and they have to make their team better, which they did. They got Walker and they did some other things. I can see how it was taken as ‘no,’ but they know I didn’t say ‘no.’ It was more of, ‘I need to see how this all plays out first.’”

The Cardinals could not find another suitor for Arenado, who confirmed Monday that the Astros were among the five teams on a list of preferred destinations that he presented to president of baseball operations John Mozeliak when the winter began.

The Cardinals committed to a youth movement and made moving Arenado their foremost offseason goal. Going to a non-contending team made little sense for Arenado, who will turn 34 on Wednesday. Including the Astros on his initial list of teams he would waive his no-trade clause to join seemed logical.

When he did, though, Arenado could not have known the Astros would author such a stunning blockbuster involving their best player. The team’s aggressive pursuit of him signaled its unwillingness to pay Bregman, one of the faces of its franchise and golden era.

“There was rumors of me going there and there was a chance, obviously, but at the end of the day, Bregman wasn’t going back there, I think that kind of threw everybody off,” Arenado said. “I think we all thought there was a chance he would retire an Astro. That group of players, it just seemed like they all jelled well together. When you saw that not happening, it’s kind of crazy.”

He said seeing both Framber Valdez’s and Ryan Pressly’s names appear in subsequent trade rumors only heightened Arenado’s apprehension about accepting a trade. Houston traded Pressly to the Cubs in a salary dump but kept Valdez.

The Astros traded Tucker on Friday, Dec. 13. Multiple team sources indicated that talks between the Cardinals and Astros intensified that same night. One source told The Athletic the deal got to “the 1-yard line.” Arenado’s approval is all that separated the two sides from a touchdown.

“I said, ‘I’m not saying no, I just can’t make a decision in the window that they needed it,’” Arenado said.

Arenado said that “window” was “a few days,” a length that “didn’t feel right to me” for such a consequential decision. Asked if he sought input from any Astros players or officials while making his decision, Arenado said, “Not really.”

“I didn’t want to rush into it,” Arenado said. “I didn’t feel comfortable making that decision within that time frame. I had to make sure they knew that because I didn’t want to bring them along for a long time and just tell them ‘no.’ That didn’t feel right.

“I’d rather just tell them, ‘Hey, I’m not making a decision now. If you guys have to go make your team better, you have to do what you have to do.’”

Arenado informed the parties involved on Dec. 19. The Astros agreed to terms with Walker on Dec. 20 — the type of quick, aggressive moves that have become the hallmarks of Houston general manager Dana Brown’s tenure.

What could’ve been is a curious question. The Astros targeted Arenado to fulfill one of their foremost offseason goals: strengthening a declining infield defense. Adding Walker, the owner of three consecutive Gold Gloves at first base, addressed this, as did moving Altuve to left field.

Arenado, like Walker, is under club control through the 2027 season. Walker is one month older than Arenado but had far more offensive success over the past three seasons, even if nothing he’s done during the first 15 games shows that.

Arenado said he does not believe this week’s series against the Astros will be awkward, but he believes some of the speculation of why he declined to play for them is unfounded.

“I think a lot of fans think I just said ‘no’ because I think they’re bad, which is obviously false and not true,” Arenado said.

“For me to get my family to leave St. Louis at that point in the offseason, with how everything transpired with the trades and all that, it made me a little uncomfortable.”

(Top photo of Nolan Arenado on Opening Day: Joe Puetz / Getty Images)

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