It's no secret that the St. Louis Cardinals were among baseball's biggest losers of the offseason. After falling short of the playoffs for the second consecutive year, it seemed like the organization was finally ready to shake things up, breaking up an aging and expensive core in favor of getting younger and more flexible while accumulating assets that could help the team find a foundation for the future.
Instead, none of that came to pass: After a potential Nolan Arenado trade with the Houston Astros got stymied at the last moment, St. Louis president John Mozeliak more or less sat on his hands, refusing to get off of any of the team's veterans while also refusing to add any talent (or payroll) that might help the team contend in the short term. All of which has put the Cardinals in just about the worst place imaginable: stuck in the middle, without much direction or vision moving forward.
And Mozeliak certainly isn't helping matters, asked recently about what he thought of his roster at the outset of spring training, he seemed as stuck as his team is right now, asking the sorts of questions that Cardinals fans should know he doesn't have the answers to by now.
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John Mozeliak continues to confirm the worst fears of Cardinals fans
“This club could be good, or it could struggle,” Mozeliak told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic.
"A lot of it just depends on how people obviously step up and play. Is Jordan Walker an impact bat? Is Nolan Gorman that middle-of-the-order type hitter? Is Brendan Donovan an All-Star outfielder? Is Willson Contreras adjusting from catcher to first base, and does the bat come alive even more? There are things that are in question. But if they come around to where we hope, it could be a fun team to watch.”
Once again, Mozeliak is focused on all the wrong things. The question isn't whether this team will be good or not in 2025; that ship sailed a long time ago, from pretty much the moment Mozeliak agreed to step aside following the conclusion of this season. The focus should be strictly on what's best for 2026 and beyond, that picture remains cloudy at best.
Nolan Gorman sure doesn't look like a "middle-of-the-order type hitter" right now amid a dreadful start to spring training, one that suggests his strikeout problem hasn't gone anywhere. Viewing Donovan as an All-Star outfielder is bizarre, considering that his primary value lies in his defensive versatility all around the diamond and sticking him in the outfield full-time risks blocking Walker, Lars Nootbaar and Victor Scott II — you know, potential building blocks for the future.
In the end, the question remains the same: What exactly is Mozeliak's plan here? Just run it all back and hope for the best despite all available evidence, praying that his players will vindicate him on his way out the door? At this point it sure seems like Mozeliak grasped on to the idea of a reset as a way to try and get everyone off his back.