Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch let slip over the weekend that he’d gotten the sense from rival executives that the St. Louis Cardinals, who widely failed in their efforts to cut payroll outside of players departing via free agency, may still be willing to move starting pitcher Erick Fedde before the season starts.

True enough, the Cardinals did shed salary from the payroll overall, but mostly through sheer roster attrition via free agency.

They’ve been rebuffed in their efforts to trade Nolan Arenado, both by the player and his no-trade clause in addition to potentially interested teams, and they were also the only MLB team to not sign a big-league free agent this winter.

Think about that — no matter how frustrating the Twins’ offseason was, there was still a team who did less.

But even the shedding of money to this point hasn’t been enough, as Arenado chatter seems to stir up every few days and has been the talk early in Cardinals camp. Then again, that’s what happens when a player is shopped through the media.

And maybe the current Cardinals payroll number of $125ish million is acceptable in the eyes of ownership. Maybe moving Arenado is more about the team around him than it is about him; that is, that it makes little sense to have an aging All-Star on a team looking to rework on the fly.

But Goold’s note on Fedde is particularly interesting. As he notes, Fedde’s deal is far from prohibitive for any team — contending or otherwise. The two-year deal he signed with the Chicago White Sox last offseason expires after this season, and will pay him just $7.5 million in 2025, which is a pittance for how well he pitched last season (plus-3.4 fWAR in 177.1 innings between Chicago and St. Louis).

Moving Fedde is a reasonably easy dot to connect, even if it doesn’t quite jive with the team’s desire to drop payroll.

Former Twin Sonny Gray would make more sense from that standpoint, as the righty as two years left on the three-year, $75 million deal he signed last offseason.

But Fedde is headed into his age-32 season, and is an appreciably different pitcher not only from who he was before he went to Korea — for example, he accrued 70.8 percent of his career fWAR last season — but even how he was perceived upon his return.

If he’d have been a free agent this offseason, he’d have done far better than $7.5 million for this season.

The Cardinals are aware of this, of course, and it’s reasonable to think he’ll expect a multi-year deal next offseason worth substantial money as he enters likely his only window to get such a deal in his career.

So he’s almost likely a one(and a half) and done in St. Louis, and that’s if he even somehow completes this season there.

The Cards don’t need to feel any pressure to move Fedde, and if they do, there’ll be no shortage of suitors.

Fedde is better than Chris Paddack right now, and is going to make the exact same salary in 2025. So while the Twins haven’t found a taker — and to be fair, we don’t know how hard they’ve tried — for the cowboy this offseason, it’s not really an analogous situation for the Cardinals.

The Twins were reportedly in the market for Fedde when he came over last offseason, but their spending cut likely tabled any real interest they could show considering he signed a relatively modest deal with Chicago.

And it’s not as though the payroll situation has gotten markedly better, other than Derek Falvey shaking loose a few nickels from the Pohlad family to sign some free agents to fill out what is, to be fair, a pretty good roster as it stands.

But the Twins could still use one more established starter — and the price is right on Fedde (at least salary-wise).

The Twins were also reportedly interested in Fedde at the deadline, only to be rebuffed by a White Sox team that wasn’t keen on dealing him within the division — only to take a lesser return in a multi-team deal with the Dodgers involved (from whom the Sox got enigmatic infield prospect Miguel Vargas).

That never made sense, either; Fedde is only signed through this season, and the White Sox were never going to be more than a 60-win team (theoretically) this year.

The odds of Fedde actually coming back to hurt the Sox as a result of the trade were virtually nil, but that still kept Chris Getz from pulling the trigger (some rumors said the Twins offered the then-injured Luke Keaschall).

The Mets would be tremendous competition for Fedde, and that’s something the Cardinals like to see.

Even with some pretty solid starting pitcher options still on the free-agent market — such as former Twin and Cardinal Kyle Gibson — the Cardinals don’t have to feel like Fedde is burning a hole through their collective pockets.

If a deal materializes in the spring for Fedde, bully for the Cardinals.

If they’re forced to hold him into the season, and perhaps until the trade deadline, that’s even better.

The Cardinals get more back in a trade (theoretically) when they hold the, uh, cards in the trade, and if Fedde is dealt during the season, he won’t have the qualifying offer tag hanging over his head, like it did this offseason with Nick Pivetta, who just recently landed with the San Diego Padres after a fairly tumultuous offseason.

The Mets are coming into the season with a badly compromised rotation. Before considering that stud prospect Christian Scott will miss the entire season, one must also note that both Sean Manaea (strained oblique) and Frankie Montas (strained lat) will start the season on the injured list.

Right now, their projected rotation on Roster Resource is as follows:

Kodai Senga
David Peterson
Clay Holmes
Paul Blackburn
Griffin Canning

Senga was very good in his rookie season, but battled myriad injuries last season and threw nearly as many innings in the postseason (5.0) as he did in the regular season (5.1).

Holmes is transitioning from a reliever, Peterson uses an odd mix of grounders and walks which somehow worked last year despite his strikeout rate cratering, and Blackburn and Canning are interesting types for the Nos. 4-5 spots but are by no means sure things.

Fedde would fit quite nicely there.

And maybe the Twins seem like a murky fit. They were ninth in starting pitcher fWAR last season (plus-12.6) and did not lose anyone from that group.

The depth chart as it stands now doesn’t appear to have room for David Festa or Zebby Matthews, both of whom have looked intriguing, at the very least, in early spring action and could be this year’s answer to 2023 Bailey Ober (too good for Triple-A but no room at the big-league inn).

But at the end of the day, we all know the answer to “how much starting pitching does a big league team need?”

One would suppose Festa and Matthews are Nos. 6-7 (no matter the order) on the starting pitcher depth chart.

Twins starters were relatively healthy last season, and still needed seven-plus starts from eight pitchers.

The 2023 bunch was also fairly healthy, and still got 10 starts from Louis Varland, and 11 combined from Tyler Mahle and Dallas Keuchel.

A rotation of Pablo Lopez-Joe Ryan-Bailey Ober-Erick Fedde and any combination of Paddack/Simeon Woods Richardson/Festa/Matthews on the back end would easily be the best in the AL Central, if not the AL outright.

The time for skimping is over. Well, it was never actually time for it, but what’s done is done.

The Twins can put the rest of the division squarely on notice by trading from their deep cache of prospects to add one more playoff-caliber starter.

Fedde is that guy.