Mozeliak: "Some Changes" Coming For Cardinals, But Not A Rebuild

[MrCrowesGarden]

Thanks for sharing, Magneto. I think it's mostly fair, but I'd disagree with with him about saying they aren't arrogant or complacent. They very much are. I also know he's pointing to the Mets (and to some extent the Padres) about teams that spent more and aren't thriving, but recent history shows spenders win.

I think there's two refinements I'd make to this. One is that recent history doesn't show that spenders always win, if you look at the last 5 or so years the win totals have as many non-spenders(Tampa, Milwaukee, Cleveland, etc) as big spenders(Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, etc). They do rarely lose as big as the Cardinals are this year though. The other is that especially in the last couple years, spending on free agency in particular hasn't been a great path to consistent success or even short term success. Contrast the short and long term fortunes of the Mets and Phillies with the Dodgers and Braves, all 4 are among the highest payroll teams and none of them have ignored free agency altogether, but the consistency of success among those who use it to supplement talent they developed/extended(Dodgers/Braves) vs. the main driver of their payroll(Mets/Phillies) is pretty clear this year in particular.

Tampa, Milwaukee and Cleveland have all won zero World Series in the last 5 years. Only one of those teams have even won a World Series at all, and they are the team with the longest active drought. The Red Sox and Dodgers have won a World Series in that timeframe.

I wouldn't use the outcome of playoff roulette as validation of particular methods of team building, but the point isn't that frugality is a virtue. If you spend more you're more likely to have a better team than if you didn't. It's that a lot of these conversations get reduced down to spending being the singular axis that defines how you can be consistently successful, for a bunch of understandable reasons(it's within a team's control, righteous indignation at the people who own teams, etc). In practice, the structure of roster building has been on a slow slide such that spending is less correlated with building a great team as it's ever been, at least without other qualifiers. The Mets are proof positive that you can't free agent your way to consistent 95 win seasons, because free agent classes get older/worse nearly every year, player development narrows the margins at the ends of rosters, etc. In some ways this should be encouraging for the Cardinals, because they've long done well with player development and acquiring impact players outside of free agency. At the same time, player development outcomes are the results of your work from 5 years ago, and as a lagging indicator that means this year's reversion should be as worrisome on that part of the process as it is an indictment of not having paid for Nathan Eovaldi or whatever spending was preferred but nixed by ownership.

I think calling it playoff roulette is unfairly reductive. It helps to be a juggernaut now. Player development is greatly important, but man the Cardinals are great at developing 2-3 win players who then plateau. And, as I've pointed out before, having a great analytics team is probably the best way to get the most bang for your buck, but you're more or less doing that just to keep pace... and it's still not even going to come close to the impact that just signing Shohei Ohtani would have (I know this won't happen.)

[ghostrunner]

Would've liked a question on why Tres Barrera sat around for a month

[Magneto2.0]

There's something a little backwards here where it doesn't make sense for bad teams to spend money. Are teams good because they spend or do they spend because they're good? It does make sense for teams with a good foundation to go into the free agent market to put them over the top, which is what's been frustrating about the Cardinals.

It's of course both because there's no way to add 30 wins through free agency.

Yeah you need at least a foundation to build off to turn a good team into a great team through free agency. I would say the last 5 years the Cardinals had the base for a team that could transform from a good team to a great team with a bump in payroll and they just refused.

[sighyoung]

Would've liked a question on why Tres Barrera sat around for a month

Hopefully the egg hatched.

[MrCrowesGarden]

I do think there's this misnomer about free agency that it all has to happen at once. If you're counting on going for it when your top prospects all arrive, you should probably already have some top free agent signings who've been with your club for a year or two already. The Cubs and Lester make me think about this.

[MrCrowesGarden]

[haltz]

I do think there's this misnomer about free agency that it all has to happen at once. If you're counting on going for it when your top prospects all arrive, you should probably already have some top free agent signings who've been with your club for a year or two already. The Cubs and Lester make me think about this.

This is absolutely true but you have to do it quick. Not that you don't know this but free agents are almost always entering their decline phase, which is just the nature of being ~30 years old.

[MrCrowesGarden]

Oh absolutely. But if you're one of those teams who feels all you're missing is a shortstop, you should've signed one last offseason or the one before it. You have to throw timing out the window a little there.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

One thing I don't see addressed in the interview or here with our analysis: How much did the rules change affect the 'ptich to contact' strategy and thus, cause us to miss how much our pitchers would suffer by the new rules? Maybe this was an unintended consequence that nobody saw coming?

[Lesson]

They haven’t. Someone asked why they don’t sign high end starters. That’s why. There’s a difference between eating $40 million and $160 million. They refuse to assume the larger risk.

Giving $44 million to an injury-prone pitcher in Matz and giving $17.5 million to Wainwright during his swan song in his age 43 season and having those two be considered a part of a rotation isn't exactly a great way to spend almost $40 million in a season, either.

I get being risk averse to spending on pitching and having arms give out and injuries, but at some point, you can't just keep signing middle-of-the-road or below-average starters and hope for a different result.

They've had this same exact issue for 3 seasons now and have said they'll address it in the off-season after 2021 and haven't.

I fully expect them to say Mikolas' contract basically replaces Wainwright's and re-invest in another lower-end guy with the $ made available with Flaherty leaving. If Montgomery leaves or they don't get anyone of value in a trade for him, next season could be way worse.