St. Louis president of baseball operations John Mozeliak was invited into the ESPN booth during Sunday’s Cubs-Cards game to chat with Karl Ravech, David Cone and Eduardo Perez.
One thing Mozeliak said stood out to me: he expressed admiration for how the Milwaukee Brewers build out their rosters, and suggested that the division rivals are a good model for the Cardinals to follow as incoming president Chaim Bloom begins to rebuild.
I like this because the Brewers have repeatedly shown they can win without throwing enormous signs of money at payroll.
No MLB payroll is totally efficient but the Brewers are about as intelligent as it gets in spending money wisely. There’s a lot more to it than that.
By the way, if you are new here I’ve been talking about the Brewers as a template for the last several seasons. I’m not jumping on a bandwagon. Despite spending less money, the Brewers have been outsmarting the Cardinals and Cubs for years, and that intrigues me. So I’ve studied it.
During the rebuild, the Cardinals will focus more on player development and the more cerebral aspects of building a successful baseball operation. Ownership-management will not be raising the St. Louis payroll to score cheap points with the fans. All that does is sludge the progress.
To borrow an expression used in smoking brisket or pork butt, the Cardinals will be going “low and slow” on the cooking temperature.
The goal is to construct something that will last for sustained success. It may not be the most popular way to do it, but it is the proper way to do it.
Some background…
* Since the start of the 2017 season, the Brewers rank fourth overall and second to the Dodgers in the NL for best winning percentage. The Cardinals and Cubs rank ninth and 10th overall, respectively, over the last nine seasons. The Brewers have also made the playoffs and won the division more times than St. Louis and Chicago.
* Milwaukee’s average annual payroll ranking over the last nine seasons is 17.5 out of 30 teams. The Cardinals’ payroll average is 12th, and the Cubs’ annual average ranking is 8.8.
* Since the start of 2017, the Cardinals have spent approximately $370 million more than Milwaukee on payroll. As Brewers owner Mark Attanasio noted last offseason, a study showed that Milwaukee has the best rate of victories per dollar of any MLB team.
* How many times have each of the franchises had a Top 10 MLB payroll in a season over the last nine years? Answer: Milwaukee none, St. Louis three times, and Chicago seven times. Milwaukee’s highest rankings during this stretch were 12th in 2019 and 13th in 2023. The Cardinals were eighth in 2019 and 10th in 2021 and 10th in 2022. The Cubs were among the top five teams in payroll in 2024 for 2023, 2020, 2019 and 2018.
Of the three midwest-based rivals, the Brewers get a lot more value for the dollar than the Cubs and Cardinals.
OK, let’s pivot into all of the areas where the Brewers have an advantage over Chicago and St. Louis. This isn’t a complete list, but it features the most important elements.
The Brewers are…
1. Outstanding at developing starting pitching within their draft-development system – and also correctly identifying renovation projects when other teams give up on an arm. The Brewers have a plan to fix the pitcher and do a terrific job with it. Since the start of 2017, the Brewers are fourth overall and second in the NL in starting-pitcher ERA.
“When I was in talks to come here, that was one of the first things I talked about: They do something good with their pitchers. They pick the right guys at the right time,” starting pitcher Jose Quintana recently said. “Just look at Quinn Priester. So great, first-round pick, he’s always had that talent in there. And they were able to fix it.”
2. More advanced in technology, analytics and instruction. The Brewers are on the short list of teams that set the pace within the industry.
3. They’re more diverse offensively. The Crew isn’t a power-heavy team, and isn’t a finesse team. They have many ways to score runs to beat your team. There’s some power, a lot of speed, a large pile of stolen bases, and superb all-around baserunning. The Brewers have weaponized their blazing team speed to enhance their small-ball attack. Unlike the Brewers, the Cardinals are very limited athletically.
Since the rules were altered to promote more stolen bases, the Brewers quickly adjusted and rank third in the majors with 475 steals since MLB made the changes to get teams running more often. The Cardinals rank 24th with 258 steals.
4. Their emphasis on speed and athleticism also strengthens the team defense. Since the start of the 2017 season campaign, here are each team’s total count in defensive runs saved:
Brewers, 435
Cubs, 333
Cardinals, 321
5. The Brewers have spent more time cultivating and signing amateur talent in North and Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. The Brewers’ updated Top 30 prospect list released Monday by Baseball America is loaded with talent from these regions. The Cardinals are improving in this area and should do more (and better) with Bloom in charge.
6. Because their front office is so astute and advanced, the Brewers have an eye for finding gems that other teams have overlooked or given up on. And the Crew’s baseball people already have developed a plan for improving each of these potential gems before bringing them in.
Examples from this year’s team that has the best record in the majors (73-44) includes outfielder Isaac Collins, pitcher Quinn Priester, corner infielder Andrew Vaughn, outfielder Blake Perkins, third baseman Caleb Durbin, closer Trevor Megill and pitchers Chad Patrick and Tobias Myers. This organization does a masterful job of going on scavenger hunts.
As Milwaukee senior vice president and GM Matt Arnold said recently: “You have a lot of guys in our clubhouse who have been overlooked for a long time.”
7. The Brewers don’t worry about getting ripped by their fans if the front office makes the decision to improve the team, long term, by trading an established veteran. (Corbin Burnes, Josh Hader and Devin Williams are just three examples.) I believe Bloom will do the same type of thing if he believes it will make the STL roster stronger instead of going for instant-gratification moves that don’t generate much value while also clogging the payroll.
Here’s a couple of examples of how it works in Milwaukee:
— Devin Williams was ready to take over for Hader as closer, and the Brewers flipped Hader to San Diego for a package of young talent that included lefty starting pitcher Robert Gasser and outfielder Esteury Ruiz. Gasser, a gifted talent, is close to rejoining Milwaukee’s starting rotation after undergoing elbow surgery in June 2024. Ruiz was flipped as part of a three-team trade that resulted in an absolute theft by the Brewers, who acquired catcher William Contreras for virtually nothing.
— The Brewers paid Burnes, a Cy Young winner, around $18.5 million for less than five seasons of major-league service service. The Crew traded Burnes to Baltimore in a deal that brought in their future starting shortstop (Joey Ortiz) and effective swingman pitcher DL Hall.
The Orioles paid Burnes $15.5 million for one season, and he departed as a free agent. Arizona gave Burnes a six-year, $210 million deal before this season. But he started only 10 times before snapping an elbow ligament and requiring surgery. By the time Burnes pitches again for the Diamondbacks in 2025, the team will have paid him around $65 million.
– The Brewers received Durbin and starting pitcher Nestor Cortes in the deal that moved Williams to the Yankees. Cortes made two starts before suffering an arm injury, but once he healed up and was ready to pitch again, the Brewers moved him to San Diego at the deadline for speedy outfielder Brandon Lockridge, who rates in the 99th percentile among all MLB players in sprint speed. He also has exceptional range in the outfield. In other words: a very useful bench piece for a Brewers team that’s had some injury issues in the outfield. And Cortes, who becomes a free agent after the season, had no future with the Brewers.
8. The Brewers don’t hesitate giving contract extensions to young players. See: outfielder Jackson Chourio and starting pitcher Freddy Peralta. They’re reportedly working on another such extension with the imposing rookie starting pitcher Jacob Misiorowski.
9. The Brewers’ front office always has a succession plan in place, and there is no panic during a time of change. Wrote Tyler Kepner of The Athletic: "It’s not just that the Brewers do more with less. It’s the fact that the big spenders keep poaching their leaders, yet Milwaukee keeps right on winning. Owner Mark Attanasio lost GM David Stearns to the Mets and manager Craig Counsell to the Cubs, but recognized there was no overhaul needed. Instead of hiring from the outside, he promoted Matt Arnold and [manager] Pat Murphy.”
10. A lot of teams talk about fostering a winning culture. But the Brewers haven’t just talked about it. They’ve done it.
“Same way we do it every year,” outfielder Christian Yelich told The Athletic. “We just find ways to win games. We have a standard, an identity of how we play. And everyone who comes in here slots into that.”
The Brewers must prove that they can go deep into the postseason, but I chortle at Cardinals fans who ridicule Milwaukee’s regular-season success because of so many early eliminations in the playoffs.
Where are the World Series trophies, Bernie? I haven’t seen any World Series trophies won around this neighborhood since Milwaukee conducted a sweeping makeover of its baseball operation after the 2015 season.
What I have seen, however, is Milwaukee kicking STL’s carcass around since 2017 – despite the Cardinals having a massive advantage in payroll spending.
From 2018 through 2024, the Crew made the postseason six times in seven years, and that soon will be seven times in eight years.
Since 2018, only nine major-league teams have competed in more postseason games than Milwaukee.
And the Brewers have eight postseason wins, the same as the big-spending Mets and more than the lavish-spending Blue Jays and Giants, and more than a Mariners team that’s loaded with talent.
From 2017 through 2024, the Cubs and Cardinals each have four postseason wins. Milwaukee has twice as many playoff victories than St. Louis and Chicago combined.
So if the Cardinals plan on trying to use the Milwaukee template for renewed success, I’d say that’s a smart plan.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him weekdays on the “Gashouse Gang” or “Redbird Rush Hour” on KMOX, and he is a regular guest on the “Cardinal Territory” video show hosted by Katie Woo of The Athletic. Bernie does a weekly “Seeing Red” podcast on the Cardinals with his longtime pal Will Leitch. You can also catch Bernie every Friday morning (10:30 a.m.) as a guest on the Randy Karraker Show here on our site.