Cardinals trade Aledmys Diaz to Blue Jays

The Cardinals traded infielder Aledmys Diaz to the Blue Jays for minor-league outfielder J.B. Woodman on Friday night, per a team release.

Diaz, 27, hit .259/.290/.392 with seven homers in 79 games for the Cards during his sophomore season in 2017. He regressed significantly from a stellar 2016 campaign in which he was named an All-Star and finished fifth in NL Rookie of the Year voting, even being demoted to Triple-A for a significant stretch.

Diaz is primarily a shortstop but also has seen time at second and third for St. Louis, so he’ll provide an insurance policy behind the oft-injured Troy Tulowitzki and Devon Travis. He re-purposed himself as a utility player during his stint in the minors this year, learning new positions in an effort to provide versatility in the majors moving forward.

Diaz is under team control through 2022, giving the Jays five years of control over his services.

Woodman, 22, was Toronto’s second-round pick in 2016 out of Ole Miss. He hit .240/.320/.378 with seven homers in 96 games for Single-A Lansing this year and was ranked by MLB Pipeline as the Jays’ 28th-best prospect at the end of the year.

Woodman is seen as having solid (but not stellar) tools across the board and he could profile either as a center-fielder or right-fielder in the majors. He’ll add yet another outfield option to a Cardinals’ system that has stockpiled young outfielders in recent years.