Earlier this week I did a video here on STL Sports Central, talking about the Cardinals’ rebuild, and what they must do to get their fans back to the ballpark in larger numbers.
I also explained why the last 10 seasons put the Cardinals in such a bad spot, that any idea of a quick-fix solution was absurd. Nope. A rebuild was overdue. It’s a shame how the Cardinals allowed a consistent-winner powerhouse team to fade and fail and slowly vanish from baseball’s postseason theater.
The Cardinals were such an October force that we just came to expect to see them make a run through the playoffs every autumn. I was there for all of those postseason games and the experience was as good as it gets for a baseball fan or someone that had the privilege of writing about it for Cardinals fans around the globe.
I wanted to dive deeper into this and (A) show just how irrelevant the Cardinals have become in the postseason, and (B) how they messed up such a beautiful thing.
The way to do this is to separate the last 30 seasons of Cardinals baseball into two parts.
The 20 seasons from 1996 through 2015.
The 10 seasons from 2016 through 2025.
You’ll be stunned by contrast … especially in the postseason accounting.
REGULAR-SEASON WINS
First 20 years: 3rd in the majors.
Last 10 years: 10th in the majors, which isn’t bad. But being a top 10 team while admirable in a lot of ways, loses the shine when dropped into the October darkness of (mostly) empty postseasons.
MAKING THE PLAYOFFS
First 20 years: 13 times, tied for second with the Braves, with the Yankees on top with 17 postseasons.
Last 10 years: 4 times, from 2019 through 2022. For a while it wasn’t so bad. Making the playoffs in four consecutive seasons should be commended, but those St. Louis teams, which had ample starpower, failed to do much with their opportunities.
DIVISION TITLES
First 20 years: 10, tied for most in the majors.
Last 10 years: Only 2, in 2019 and 2022.
POSTSEASON WINS
First 20 years: 71, which ranked 2nd to the Yankees.
Last 10 years: Only 4 postseason wins; that ranks tied for 19th. Sad.
POSTSEASON GAMES PLAYED IN
First 20 years: 135, second to the Yankees.
Last 10 years: 15 … and 11 were losses! Ugh. The “before” and “after” contrast in this category is extreme and depressing.
NUMBER OF POSTSEASON SERIES WON
First 20 years: 17, which includes the 2012 NL wild-card victory.
Last 10 years: Only one. Sigh. The Cards defeated the Braves in the divisional-series round.
NL PENNANTS & WORLD SERIES TITLES
First 20 years: 4 pennants and 2 World Series trophies.
Last 10 years: Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch.
APPEARANCES IN THE NLCS
First 20 years: 10.
Last 10 years: 1. (Good grief)
VICTORIES IN THE NLCS
First 20 years: The answer is 27. That’s a lot!
Last 10 years: None … Not even one … None.
POSTSEASON HOME GAMES
First 20 years: 65. Good times in downtown St. Louis!
Last 10 years: 6 … all in 2019 … damn, it sure got quiet up in here!
POSTSEASON WINS AT HOME
First 20 years: Can you believe the number was 42 home postseason victories? I’m sure many of you were there. Only the Yankees had more postseason home wins than St. Louis over the 20 seasons.
Last 10 years: Just 1 … ONE! … Makes me wanna holler. The Cards beat the Braves in Game 4 of the 2019 NLDS.
LET’S MOVE ONTO PART TWO
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
I could write a book on this.
1. The player-development system began to dry out, mostly because of neglect, which was caused by complacency. Cardinals ownership-management believed “The Cardinal Way” would thrive forever, and failed to update their model after other organizations caught up. The Cardinals once set the industry standard for using analytics to their advantage … and that slipped as well. Complacency. Arrogance. Laziness.
2. Overhyping their own prospects. Even when the Cardinals seemingly developed some exciting prospects, they overhyped them. And too many of the prospects were busts or big disappointments. A long list would include Tyler O'Neill, Jordan Walker, Dylan Carlson, Alex Reyes and Nolan Gorman. Other prospects became excellent players, only to be derailed by injuries. Two obvious examples are starting pitcher Michael Wacha and starter-reliever Alex Reyes.
3. The October 2014 death of young outfielder Oscar Tavares was a shocking blow. The Cardinals planned to build their offense around him. The Cardinals had years and years to recover from this from a baseball standpoint, but never put together a good outfield that lasted.
4. Notable trades that didn’t work out. This part isn’t intended to be the size of the Warren Commission Report. (Google it, kids.) I’m just going with a few deals that went the wrong way.
— Before 2015 the Cardinals traded their impressive young starting pitcher, Shelby Miller, to the Braves for outfielder Jason Heyward. The plan was to sign him to a long-term contract after Heyward entered free agency after the ‘15 season. But Heyward said no thanks and defected to the Cubs, who proceeded to win the 2016 World Series.
— Preparing for 2018 and in need of a big boost to the offense, Mozeliak traded pitching prospects Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen to the Marlins for power-hitting outfielder Marcell Ozuna. I liked the trade at the time – but that was before I knew Mozeliak made a mistake by not doing due diligence before the deal by checking on Ozuna’s sore shoulder. In two seasons with the Cardinals Ozuna averaged 26 home runs and 88 RBIs, which was fine. But Ozuna failed to come close to matching his booming offensive performance for the Marlins in 2017.
I’ll go with Wins Above Replacement to sum up this trade: Ozuna had 3.0 WAR in his two seasons here. Alcantara and Gallen have collectively amassed 35.8 career WAR while pitching for other teams since the trade. And Alcantara, who is still a Marlin, won the NL Cy Young award in 2022. Gallen has received Cy Young votes in three different seasons while pitching for the Diamondbacks.
— Mozeliak traded outfielder Randy Arozarena to the Rays in exchange for pitching prospect Matthew Liberatore. This one still may work out well for the Cardinals … but Arozarena exploded onto the scene in his first three seasons with Tampa Bay, cranking 70 homers and 94 doubles and driving in 252 runs. Arozarena starred in the 2020 postseason by putting up monster numbers to win the ALCS most valuable player award to lead the Rays to the pennant. My biggest gripe with this trade? The Cardinals never gave Arozarena a legit opportunity in the majors before trading him. That was stupid. This deal really stung the Cardinals for a while, but Liberatore has a shot to make the transaction look better over time.
5. John Mozeliak made some great trades as well over the past 10 seasons but didn’t follow through and build on them. “Mo” acquired Paul Goldschmidt from Arizona and Nolan Arenado from Colorado and they finished 1st and 3rd (respectively) in the 2022 voting for the National League MVP award. But Mozeliak didn’t put enough talent around Goldy and Nado, and both aging hitters entered a gradual decline phase in 2023. In their four seasons as teammates in STL, Goldschmidt and Arenado never won a postseason game.
6. The Cardinals failed to develop enough good starting pitching within their declining system. And that problem really pulled the Cards down over the past three seasons. The Cardinals are 22nd in winning percentage since the start of 2023. It’s hard to win with a starting-pitching group that ranks 25th in ERA and 28th in Win Probability over the past three seasons. Over the previous three seasons the Cardinals gave 167 starts to internally-developed pitchers. As a group they pitched to a 4.93 ERA, had only 41 quality starts, and collectively turned in a 51-60 record. Once upon a time, the Cardinals had a lot of homegrown starting pitchers that were key parts of successful rotation on so many winning teams.
7. The Cardinals decline had little to do with payroll … but the decline had a lot to do with horrible spending decisions. Over the last 10 years the Cardinals ranked within the top 10 of the MLB payroll rankings five five times and were 11th in payroll in another season. Their payroll was above the MLB average in eight of the 10 seasons
8. Bad payroll investments were a huge reason for the Cardinals descent into mediocrity. I will type in some names of free-agents signed by Mozeliak and then tell you how much total money was spent on them. And I should mention that Mozeliak made some really astute free-agent signings as well – usually with relievers.
Here are 15 names: Dexter Fowler, Mike Leake, Brett Cecil, Andrew Miller, Miles Mikolas, Greg Holland, Luke Gregerson, Jonathan Broxton, Steven Matz, Sonny Gray, Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson, Drew Ver Hagen, Kwang Hyun Kim and Willson Contreras.
I have no problem with the money spent on Contreras. Mikolas wasn’t a total bust, but his quality faded over time as two contract extensions kicked in. And I could have made the list much longer, just by including relatively inexpensive free-agent signings of dudes like Matt Carpenter and Brandon Crawford. But I wanted to go with the heft of the free-agent contracts that were bad or disappointing investments. And I included Contreras because I just thought it was important to account for all of Mozeliak’s major signings – even if I liked a signing. (And I didn’t like too many.)
Anyway …
Total contract years invested in the 15 free agents: 42 combined seasons.
Total combined cost of the 15 free agents: $501 million guaranteed dollars.
Yes, I said $501 million dollars. Real dollars that must be paid. Plus the Cardinals had to send quite a bit of cash to other teams when they wanted to dump Mike Leake and Dexter Fowler. And the Red Sox received $20 million from St. Louis in the Sonny Gray trade so Boston could defray the remaining cost of his contract.
OK, in terms of WAR, what did the Cardinals get for their $501 million (guaranteed) free-agent investments?
A total of 41.3 WAR.
And that is absolutely pitiful. Pathetic. Makes ya want to puke. I would argue that this preposterous waste was the No. 1 reason why the Cardinals fell apart.
And yet … a lot of fans were screaming for chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. to spend MORE MONEY, even though Mozeliak had already botched so many free-agent deals that burned a half-billion dollars. I never understood the shrieking to spend, spend, spend when Mozeliak was making the decisions on where to put the money.
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. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.