Three lessons the Cardinals can learn from the World Series Champion Texas Rangers
The Texas Rangers spent nearly a billion dollars in free agency over the last two winters, hired one of the most successful managers in the history of baseball to guide them, and fell head over feet into a free tentpole slugger in the middle of their lineup.
The blueprint for other teams to follow couldn’t be any more obvious.
Assuming that most teams will be unwilling or unable to be quite so bold or quite so lucky, there are still lessons to be gleaned from the Rangers’ first World Series win in franchise history. For the Cardinals, who undoubtedly sat at home Wednesday night looking askance at the mass of their former compatriots who were on the field celebrating, there are some direct data points that stick out as obvious discrepancies.
Free agency opens Monday. Only the weekend remains for last minute studying.
1. Truly, there is no such thing as too much pitching
As far back as the dwindling days of July ahead of the trade deadline, the public plan for the Cardinals has been to acquire three starting pitchers and then fill in the roster around them. The mechanics of baseball mandate that a team’s pitching staff somehow gather up at least
27 outs in order to secure a win, and the Cardinals have been spackling and patching together those outs for many consecutive seasons until this year, when a hole was blown through the innings wall.
Since the opening of free agency ahead of the 2022 season, the Rangers have acquired (by either trade or signing) Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney, Jordan Montgomery, Jake Odorizzi and Max Scherzer to start, as well as Aroldis Chapman, Ian Kennedy, Will Smith and Chris Stratton to pitch out of the bullpen.
Oh, and they re-signed Martín Pérez as a free agent starter for good measure.
One oft-repeated lament in St. Louis is that there is only so much opportunity to go around, and the Cardinals feel as though they’ve missed out on talent because they haven’t been able to guarantee the innings that other teams were putting on the table; this was especially a concern, for instance, in their (lack of) pursuit of José Quintana last winter.
There are always innings. There are always opportunities. An inability to sell the team’s situation should not be misconstrued as due to a mystical innings cap. A pitcher who’s unconvinced by a situation will always be convinced by more money.
It used to be the case that the Cardinals were enough of a destination that those relatively paltry concerns could be overcome. If that’s no longer true, it’s the first (and largest) issue to address.
2. If given a chance, you might find a player you didn’t know you already had
Adolis García’s story has been well told, up to and including the Rangers themselves giving up on him before stumbling into his skill set. Once he found a spot in the lineup, though, he
was given sufficient runway to spread his wings without looking over his shoulder for the lineup card every third day.
The Cardinals have cycled through a seemingly endless string of outfielders without finding the right combination and seem poised to yet again this winter cycle out some of those (Moisés Gómez, Juan Yepez) who they’ve determined won’t be able to help them without that being truly tested. And indeed, their commitment to Lars Nootbaar and Jordan Walker does seem to show they’ve finally slowed the cycle.
St. Louis was a strong offensive team in 2023 before collapsing into a pit of journeymen in the season’s last month, but not so strong that they couldn’t have afforded some run for players already taking up precious 40-man oxygen. They’re also likely to move on from Tyler O’Neill this winter after certainly more than a fair shot, so perhaps they feel like their evaluative tools have improved. They need to be correct.
3. Outside perspectives can work wonders
Bruce Bochy will not be available for every team to interview and hire this winter, and if 30 of him did exist, he would no longer represent a competitive edge. The actionable lesson of his tenure at the helm of the managers, though, is that empowered people with varying perspectives can be important in breaking up the monotony of a decision tree.
That’s not to say the Cardinals should be pursuing a change at the head of the dugout, but it does appear as though they would like their biggest staffing change to bring back Yadier Molina, soaked in the franchise’s dye for the last two decades. The inner circle of decision makers in the front office have all been in St. Louis for the better part of a decade, and even Randy Flores, widely viewed as the future of the team’s leadership group, came up through the system first as a player. The Way upstairs continues to be Cardinal.
There was a period of time in which that could’ve been discussed as virtue, not vice.
Yet for a team which is approaching the 10th anniversary of its last win after the first round and is now halfway through a World Series drought which would equal that between 1982 and 2006, the brand has taken some hits. A consistent winner has consistently come up short.
On the last day of the regular season, Oliver Marmol bristled hard when asked if Adam Wainwright’s departure signaled a downward trend in the team’s results and expectations. It’s his job, after all, to maintain the culture and attitude day to day, and he’s been committed to that since he, too, first became a Cardinal a decade and a half ago.
It’s time for a serious internal audit to find out where that went askew, and to look at the horizon for outside help which can get it back on course.
