MLB Advent calendar may leave no goodies behind its doors for ‘patient’ Cardinals
An indication of the level of roster activity for the St. Louis Cardinals at this year’s MLB Winter Meetings is that a significant portion of Wednesday’s media availability with President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak covered the status of Alex Reyes, the long-time prospect pitcher who has missed almost all of the last three seasons with various injuries.
“As I we sit here in Advent, not to be religious, but it’s a hoping time,” Mozeliak said. “Hope’s a good theme. I think we all sort of appreciate that with him.”
That hope extends beyond Reyes to organizational decisions which have been made in the last year and those which are to come on an undetermined future timeline.
The search for a left-handed bat which occupied so much of Monday’s discussions has stagnated as the team has turned instead to the pitching market.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s press conference Wednesday has the Cardinals reflecting on their own experience under MLB’s investigative eye. The rapidly moving market, for starters, has them stuck between pursuing free agents and diving into the trade market.
Their baseball Advent calendar might have treats behind its doors, but the Cardinals are hesitating to pop them open to check.
Free agent pitching market
Mozeliak referred to starting pitching as “the strength of this (free agent) class” in his discussion of the market. Pitchers like Madison Bumgarner, Dallas Keuchel and Hyun-Jin Ryu are still lingering on the market. Top targets Gerrit Cole (Yankees, nine years/$324 million) and Stephen Strasburg (Nationals, seven years/$245 million) signed enormous deals this week, but the bottom of the market moved substantially as well.
Kevin Gausman signed a one-year, $9 million deal with the Giants. Former Cardinal Michael Wacha, the 2013 NLCS MVP, signed a one year deal with the New York Mets which guarantees him $3 million in salary while containing incentives which could increase the deal’s value to $10 million.
Asked whether the team is more likely to add a pitcher via trade or free agency, Mozeliak opted to hedge.
“I don’t think I could handicap that right at this point,” he said. “We’re just trying to understand what these acquisition costs look like, whether it’s just cash versus prospect. In terms of what we may or may not do, who knows? In either case, we need a mutual party.”
Commissioner Manfred’s Wednesday media session included significant discussion of his office’s investigation of the Houston Astros, who have been accused of using video equipment to assist in illegally signaling hitters at the plate to alert them of the pitches being delivered.
“I think that this is probably the most thorough investigation that the Commissioner’s office has ever undertaken,” Manfred said. “I think we’ve interviewed already nearly 60 witnesses, 76,000 e-mails, a whole additional trove of instant messages. That review has caused us to conclude that we have to do some follow-up interviewing.”
Was hitting coach the right hire?
One of those witnesses was Cardinals hitting coach Jeff Albert, who was a minor league instructor in the Houston organization in 2017, when the cheating is alleged to have occurred.
Mozeliak confirmed to the media that Albert was contacted by Major League baseball, and that Albert assured him that there are no concerns that he may face future discipline.
“For transparency I did speak to him about this,” Mozeliak said, “and he reassured me that I have nothing to worry about.”
Mozeliak also quibbled with the suggestion that the Cardinals could develop regrets around their decision to hire Albert, who was an instructor in the St. Louis system before he was hired by the Astros, based on the possibility that some of his pupils may have received illicit assistance at the Major League level.
“I think one of the things or one of the reasons we chose to hire Jeff Albert was much more overarching,” Mozeliak explained. “With this hire, we did it with someone who would help create a true curriculum from top to bottom. So I think we looked at it a little differently.
“We weren’t looking at solely Houston’s success at the major league level, we were looking really at the success of what was coming through their pipeline. And knowing Jeff because he used to work for us, we felt like he had the ability to create that.”
Mozeliak described “a lot of angst and sleepless nights” during the period in which the Cardinals were investigated for hacking the database of the Astros, despite his personal confidence that he was not involved in any wrongdoing.
“It’s not very comfortable,” he said. “You know what your involvement was or wasn’t, so you have your own self confidence or awareness, but a lot of this is not in your control.”
Playing it patient
What is in the control of the Cardinals is how they take their next step in the player procurement market. Thus far they’ve been content to rest and wait for the market to approach them.
Mozeliak, for one, sees advantage where others see stagnation.
“I actually think time is on our side,” he said. “By having some fictitious or self-penalized...deadline, I don’t think that’s in our best interest. I think for us, we’re being patient.”
As the Cardinals are patient, observers are left to wait. The days are falling off the Advent calendar, and at some point, it’s fair to wonder whether those doors will hide any secrets at all.
