St. Louis Cardinals ‘meaningless’ deadline moves were an investment in their prospects
The modern player development system which fetishizes measurables of fast-moving prospects and lends itself to displays of overwhelming velocity and light tower power does a fantastic job at getting fans and analysts ready for the pending arrival of the next big baseball stars.
What remains in question is whether that system is best calibrated to serve the players themselves.
The moves made by the St. Louis Cardinals at the trade deadline were more patchwork than transformative, adding veteran lefty starters J.A. Happ and Jon Lester in an attempt to remove stressful innings from young righties Johan Oviedo and Jake Woodford.
Early returns on those deals have been, generously, mixed; both covered five innings in Cardinal losses, though Happ pitched well and Lester did not.
Both veterans, though, have put in their time and know how to feel their way through. The younger pitchers are still learning.
“The thing about breaking in is everybody wants the opportunity for them to break in, but no one has the patience to allow it to happen,” Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said this week on the field at Busch Stadium.
Former Cardinals first baseman Matt Adams, who was recently released by the Colorado Rockies and lives in St. Louis, was at the ballpark on Tuesday as a spectator. Shildt managed Adams in 2009 at rookie level Johnson City (Tennessee), and seeing him brought to mind memories of other players Shildt shepherded through the minors who were given the time to develop at their own pace.
“I was talking to somebody today about Jon Jay, and (Daniel) Descalso, and, you know, saw Matt Adams here last night,” Shildt recounted. “These guys played a full season in Double-A, a full season in Triple-A, repeating a season in Triple-A. I had them in rookie ball. They all played in Peoria, they all played in Palm Beach. These guys don’t do that anymore. They don’t.
“You think the physical development that takes place is important. You don’t think the emotional and mental development that takes place is important?”
Adams was 25 years old when he established himself as a full-time major leaguer. Descalso was 24; Jay was 26.
Oviedo is 23 and has made only four starts at Triple-A, all this year. Woodford is 24 but rocketed up through the system. He spent less than a full season at each of Peoria, Palm Beach, and Springfield.
In part the two current Cardinals were rushed along due to extenuating circumstances arising from the pandemic, but they’re also both emblematic of the shifting values and dollars throughout minor league baseball.
Young players are, frankly, cheaper than older players.
Lester’s salary is approximately nine times as much as the duo’s; Happ’s is about 15 times greater. And in a content creation universe, teams are sharing more of their young players than ever before. That drives fan excitement and, in turn, whether organizations admit it or not, has the potential to influence advancement decisions.
“Those guys came up and were a big part of the 2011 club, and spent four or five years in the minor leagues in a non-social media era,” Shildt said of the group of Cardinals alums. “Oviedo had 122 innings in Springfield and goes to the big leagues. And now he’s in a market that’s a big market and a competitive market. And he’s performing where people are tweeting things in live time during his competition while he’s competing.
“Because they were ready,” Shildt said of the professional success of Adams, Descalso and Jay. “They were acclimated emotionally. All these different things that come with all this, it’s real.”
For the second time in less than a week, Shildt also invoked the late Oscar Taveras, who died at the age of 22 in a single-vehicle drunk driving accident in the Dominican Republic following the 2012 season.
The prior discussion was about pressures placed on the mental health of players in the context of Simone Biles’s admitted struggles during the Tokyo Olympics. In the context of player development, Shildt spoke of Taveras as a player he fought to keep at Double-A.
“We had Oscar, we had Kolten (Wong), we had (Trevor) Rosenthal, we had Carlos (Martínez), we had Greg Garcia. And guess what we did? We were the youngest team in the league,” Shildt said. “We took our lumps, they stayed, they got better. They stayed the whole year.
“They were talking about moving them, moving them, moving them. I wasn’t trying to keep them to win the Texas League championship. I was keeping them because I knew they were going to help St. Louis win a World Series championship.”
Quietly, the Cardinals are realistic about the likelihood of the 2021 season ending in a celebration. The moves at the trade deadline were made late, and are insufficient to change that trajectory in any meaningful sense.
They were not designed with that goal in mind.
If J.A. Happ and Jon Lester contribute to a Cardinals World Series championship, they will do so indirectly by offering a shield to other, younger players who could take the mound to that end.
That value, the Cardinals hope, could justify the dollars even as it acts to quiet down the hype.
