NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Adam Eaton profiled as perhaps the perfect acquisition for the St. Louis Cardinals. He was the 11th-best position player in the major leagues last season based on FanGraphs' WAR. He is one of the best defensive outfielders in the game and is playing under a contract that over the next five seasons figures to pay him $38.5 million. That's roughly half of what one team, the Colorado Rockies, committed Wednesday to Ian Desmond, who didn't fare nearly as well in most metrics. And at 28, Eaton is three years younger than Desmond.

Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak has said it every time he has been asked so far this winter: He is trying to make the Cardinals younger and more athletic next season without burdening himself with a contract he will one day regret.

But rather than fill a gap he would have fit in perfectly at Busch Stadium, Eaton will be playing next season for the Washington Nationals, whose home stadium is about six miles north of where the winter meetings are being held.

So what did the Nationals have that Mozeliak and the Cardinals didn’t? The answer to that question gets to the root of why these winter meetings have been so frustrating for Cardinals fans and, so far, for the team's front office. The Nationals had the game's most valuable commodity, upper-echelon prospects with "wow" appeal. And, crucially, the Nationals had enough of them to not only swing an impact deal but to leave themselves feeling comfortable that their future wouldn't include yearly forays into the increasingly costly and barren free-agent market.

Another team that had a similar wealth of prospects, the Boston Red Sox, landed the biggest name discussed all week, ace lefty Chris Sale, from the same team that dealt Eaton, the Chicago White Sox. In all, the White Sox landed six prospects, five of whom were in the top 50 in MLB.com's prospects list.

“If you have young players, that's the greatest commodity in the game," Philadelphia Phillies GM Matt Klentak said.

Mozeliak wouldn't discuss Eaton by name, because he has a policy of not publicly discussing the players of other teams. But he hinted that moving his best young pitcher, Alex Reyes, might have gotten the deal done. Shortly before Mozeliak chatted with the media, his entire coterie of assistants walked out of his suite. Minutes earlier, the Eaton news leaked on Twitter. You can imagine the air in the room being instantly sucked out of it.

"I do think Reyes would have been a name that could acquire you a lot, but we just didn't feel like that made sense for us, to give him up," Mozeliak said.

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The Cardinals feel there are a couple of waves of young talent in their system, but unlike the Red Sox and Nationals, their overall pot of prospect gold doesn't rank among the top 10 in baseball. That means that to part with a prospect like Reyes would have compromised their future in a more debilitating way than it would the Red Sox or Nationals.

"To acquire a player with this skill set with years of control and a favorable contract, it takes good players in return," Nationals GM Mike Rizzo said. "We were fortunate enough to trade from a position of depth."

One could easily argue Rizzo got the worst of the deal after he parted with his Nos. 1, 3 and 6 prospects in Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning, but only the most demanding critics in Washington are going to care about that if the Nationals win the World Series next season with Eaton playing in their outfield and batting leadoff.

The Cardinals are aware they're going to have to overpay one way or another to fix a team that didn't reach enough balls in play, dropped too many of those balls and threw a disconcerting number of them away. But it's hard to overpay when you don't have the funds, and the Cardinals might not have the wealth of prospects to swing a deal for an impact outfielder. That means if they are to land their man, they might be at the mercy of the agents for free-agent outfielder Dexter Fowler, who is sitting pretty after the Rockies gave Desmond $70 million over five years on Wednesday.

"Alex has such high value, we would have had to have been overwhelmed to do something," Mozeliak said. "Perhaps the way to think about it is, we just didn't have that next tier to compete with some of the names that are being bandied about. We have that gap. We have positives in our system, right below that gap, a lot of depth. The problem we run into is quantity. How much are you willing to part with if you're not willing to move Reyes?"

Mozeliak gave off hints that Fowler's camp could take offers and counters all the way into January, but ultimately, he acknowledged something that should make Cardinals fans feel better -- that their team will go into spring training with a little more agility than they did a year ago.

"You're typically going to have to step out of your comfort to get something done," he said.

If you can't get it done with prospect gold, it might be time to reach for cash.