Mozeliak hints at Cardinals’ plan for this season ... and his plans beyond
The last time St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak spoke to the city’s amalgamated baseball writers was just before the team’s home opener on April 4.
Any number of season-altering events has taken place in the interim, but manager Oli Marmol has been left to answer for all of them, even those which begged obvious questions about the need for help from outside the organization.
On Saturday, though, the organization hosted an annual event which is geared toward publishers of fan sites and producers of podcasts, and Mozeliak made an appearance. At that event he confirmed that the organization does not consider a hot dog a sandwich, but was also asked about more pressing matters.
An audio recording of the event, provided to the Belleville News-Democrat by the blog Viva El Birdos, provides an illuminating window into how the team’s top decision maker sees his path forward through this season and beyond.
The Trade Deadline
With approximately six weeks before the deadline, teams are starting to sort themselves into the groups which will define their aggressiveness in adding outside help. Mozeliak acknowledged as much, and in doing so, drew a definite line between this year’s Cardinals and last season’s losing team.
“You’re starting to see clubs that really realize that breaking up their team now or in July probably makes the most sense,” he said. “We are not one of those. We are sort of in that ‘shop’ mode [of] how we can look to get better, even if they’re just small wins.”
What constitutes a small win for a team sunk in the morass of just-barely-below-.500 teams who are jumbled up in the race for the two final National League Wild Card spots? Mozeliak identified the areas of concern which have most obviously leapt off the page in the season’s opening months, but in doing so, did at least offer tacit acknowledgement that the team sees the same issues as outside observers.
“I would define small wins right now as maybe trying to find someone who could give us innings in that fifth [starter] role,” Mozeliak said. “Is there some right-handed bat we could add that could play center field from time to time? That would be helpful as well.”
Notably, with the 30-day clock ticking on Steven Matz’s rehab assignment and Tommy Edman pushing closer to live game action, Mozeliak still identified those areas as places seeking outside fortification. More rotation depth, given the lack of arms stepping up from the minors, is always welcome. And Edman, coming off a serious wrist injury and set to miss approximately half the season, may not be in a position to provide his typical production.
“We certainly feel like the team we have can get better,” he added later. “When we were doing this a year ago, we didn’t have that same confidence, and we might also have been 10 games [further] back in the loss column than we are. We feel like we are a much closer team.
“So as we approach the next six to eight weeks, we want to find some things that can help this club get better.”
The Organization’s Future
From the day this fall when legendary reporter Peter Gammons first announced that the Cardinals were courting former Rays and Red Sox baseball head Chaim Bloom – or at least from the day in January when the Cardinals acknowledged his addition – there has been barely veiled supposition about what Bloom’s presence means for Mozeliak’s future.
Having acknowledged multiple times that he intends to step down from his current position by the end of the 2025 season, Mozeliak praised Bloom as, “very valuable, very insightful” while again highlighting the virtues of outside voices.
“My [baseball operation] group has been together so long,” he acknowledged. “I feel like you can get stale if you don’t have just…something. Even if you feel like you’re the most disciplined, willing to take [a] chance kind of person, it’s just nice to get an opinion of really what’s going on, and maybe there are some things we can do differently.”
That group, structured with assistant general manager Randy Flores running the team’s amateur draft, is faced with a monumentally important task as they select seventh overall in the upcoming amateur draft, the team’s highest selection in more than 25 years. Flores faced some gentle criticism from Mozeliak during the event, especially in reference to the lack of success seen in early round draft picks.
“We’ve got to hit it this year,” Mozeliak said. “We can’t have a swing and miss. Look at a lot of his college drafts. They haven’t been what we had hoped or moved as quickly as we had hoped. His 2020 draft is going to end up being historic, and we need to find that right balance, or strike it.”
That plain and public a challenge to one of his subordinate executives is certainly out of Mozeliak’s norm.
“Change is inevitable,” he added. “Things are going to happen here in this organization. I’ve been here 29 years, and as I tell ownership, it’s probably going to be helpful to have a new voice at some point, and that’s coming sooner rather than later.”
This story was originally published June 10, 2024 at 3:56 PM.