With the deadline less than a month away, the Cardinals will have to make some decisions about their plans. If they decide to be buyers, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak expects ownership to support that. “I do think ownership, if they saw we were in a spot and it made sense to do something, I think they’d support it,” Mozeliak tells Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Mozeliak elaborated that he hasn’t done a “deep dive” into how ticket sales and the club’s broadcast deal have impacted things, but he expects ownership to invest in a contending club.
The Cards went into the most recent offseason looking to transition into a new era. The club struggled to compete in 2023 and 2024 and their broadcast revenue was going to drop in 2025. The plan was to shift focus away from investing in the big league roster with a greater priority on development. As part of that shift, this is going to be Mozeliak’s final year in his role, with Chaim Bloom to take over after that. Currently, Bloom is focused on overhauling the club’s player development apparatus.
As part of that transition, it seemed the franchise hoped to cut payroll, but they struggled to do so. Well-paid players like Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras and Miles Mikolas were apparently unwilling to waive their respective no-trade clauses. Nolan Arenado was open to waiving his but blocked a trade to the Astros in the offseason and ultimately ended up staying.
When those efforts to trim the roster and the payroll stalled, the Cardinals essentially pivoted to standing pat. They could have tried trading players without no-trade clauses, such as Erick Fedde or Ryan Helsley, but didn’t seem inclined to. Their investments in the club were modest, to put it mildly. Their $2MM deal for Phil Maton was their biggest expenditure.
They now find themselves in a sort of limbo position, in more ways than one. Not only are they in this transition season between front office regimes, but they are also hovering close to contention. Despite the lack of investment in the roster, the club has gone 47-42. That puts them just half a game back of a playoff spot, as of this writing.
Taken all together, it would be fair to wonder about the bottom line. Even with the winning record, would ownership want to invest in a club when they were trying to cut the budget just a few months ago? Nothing is confirmed and Mozeliak suggests some conversations still need to be had, but he has been with the club for decades and presumably has a decent feel for the room in St. Louis. He adds that he has not been told to trim payroll.
It’s possible that the next few weeks will be key for the Cards. If they stay in the race through the end of the month, buying will be more likely. If they fall a few games back, the odds of selling should increase.
They could also do a bit of both, as Goold lays out. He mentions that the club believes in Michael McGreevy and wants to give him a shot in the rotation, but he doesn’t currently have a spot. The starting staff currently consists of Gray, Mikolas, Fedde, Andre Pallante and Matthew Liberatore. Perhaps a trade of someone in that group could be used to open a spot for McGreevy while the club simultaneously adds elsewhere.
Fedde would be the most likely candidate to go as an impending free agent. As mentioned, Gray and Mikolas have no-trade protection while Pallante and Liberatore can be cheaply controlled for years to come. They also have Helsley, Maton and Steven Matz as impending free agents in the bullpen. Perhaps the Cards would consider flipping someone from that group while still hoping to have an effective bullpen overall. If other clubs are interested, the Cards will seemingly pick up the phone.
“Trying to understand what someone may want to give you for something is probably worth hearing or at least listening,” Mozeliak said. “You can always say no. The mindset of us going in is to remain open-minded.”
For now, it’s all still speculative. Much could change in the coming weeks. The club’s wins and losses will be a factor while player health could also be a key factor. “I do feel like when you look at where we are that week leading up, the 72 hours leading up to the trade deadline, that may affect how we make our decisions,” Mozeliak said. He added that he and Bloom will both be involved in the deadline decision making as part of a collaborative process. “I hope we have really hard decisions to make come July 31 because that means we’re playing well.”
Photo courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski, Imagn Images
lol
The Cardinals DID trim payroll significantly just by letting their free agents walk and only signing one cheap Major League free agent in their place. They didn’t trim as much as if they had been able to trade Arenado, but claiming their efforts stalled simply isn’t true.
Also, they were always going to keep Helsley and Fedde to start the season even if they had traded Arenado, as there was always the possibility that they could wind up contended as they indeed have done so far.
Mozeliak expects ownership to invest in a contending club. The only problem is that this team is not a contending club.
That’s the only reason he said that, this ownership group is way to cheap to spend more money. The crowd size is down this year, so the fans have had enough of the terrible ownership.
Cardinals ownership has been fine for the most part
Check the standings again. Whether or not you think they can keep it up is irrelevant to their current status.
They waited way too long to trade Arenado.
They will have to practically give him away now just to save a few bucks.
His salaries for the last two years of his contract are more reasonable, especially for 2027. If anything, holding on to him will allow them to eat less dead money (alongside helping them contend this year), if they ever move him at all.
The Cardinals have a good record, but their core issues (none of the offensive core has a high ceiling – Brendan Donovan’s 120 OPS+ aside – and pitiful strikeout totals from their rotation) haven’t really changed since Opening Day. They’ll move Fedde to open up a spot for McGreevy, but Fedde has badly struggled in his last two starts (8.2 IP, 14 ER, 2K) and fits in the back end of any postseason rotation.
I figure they’ll try to get a AA return (ideally a right-handed outfielder) for Fedde, less than what they got for Montgomery at the 2023 deadline, and acquire a rental bullpen piece. Shelby Miller fits the bill if the D-backs are willing to sell. It’s not an organization that makes unexpected moves often.
You don’t actually need that many high ceiling players when the depth of average or better players is so high.
Need to move Helsley and Fette, release Mikolas. See also if they can move Arenado.
Also, Gorman needs a new place to play and new approach. Gorman believe it or not has a big upside that will benefit the Cards getting return in Double A or Triple A potential. King also will bring in low level but minors talent potential
Have you been watching Gorman lately? He’s finally getting back to where he was. The issue now is how to get him playing time once Herrera returns from the IL.
Now Walker is the one who might need a change of scenery..
Meanwhile, Fedde could be movable in the right deal, but they need Helsley to continue to contend this year. He’s not going anywhere until the offseason unless the Cardinals fall out of the race before the trade deadline.
They had Pozo playing first today and he could not figure out which foot to use at first to stretch to get an out on a close play. It’s the right foot Pozo Bozo to have the best stretch.
Clearly need to rebuild, and are already in the process. You can’t re-tool with a mediocre farm system. I’m a lifelong Cardinals fan and I’ll take a few rough years at this point to get us out of the consistently middling teams under Mo and Oli. Sell Arenado, Mikolas, and Matz for whatever they’re worth. We’re stuck with Contreras. Sell high on Helsley. I’m down.
Wow, everythiong you just said is wrong!
They don’t need to rebuild. They have not started doing so. The farm system isn’t great but neither is it mediocre. Even if it was, retooling with a mediocre farm system is perfectly achievable as long as you have a good enough core at the MLB level, which the Cardinals do have. They’ve done an excellent job with the retool so far, and they should improve even further over the next couple of years.
Arenado, Matz, and Helsley are helping the team contend right now, so they aren’t going anywhere as long as that remains true this year. We’re glad to still have Contreras rather than being stuck with him.
Mikolas has a no trade clause he probably would’ve waive, so he’s the one we’re stuck with unless his recent stinkers continue and he gets DFAed. It’d be a shame, since he was so much better in May until he started sucking again, but that’s baseball.
Mikolas acts like he’s pitching in the 60s his stuff just looked like little league pitches to the cubs today
Well, that’s what most MLBTR commenters seem to want, for pitchers to stop throwing hard. It really doesn’t work well as far as getting these hitters out though, does it? At least Mikolas won’t be having Tommy John, so he can keep going out there every 5 days and throwing his junkballs.
They left Miles out there as he threw lollipops. Just gave up. Cubs brought in position player Berti who threw everything under 50 mph and they got themselves out scoring on 2 of their 3 hits. Otherwise they were almost no hit after 3 straight shutouts. Ollie and Dusty are just nothing but lineup makers and bad at guessing
Hope for their fans sake this is true, because we Reds fans know what it’s like not to have ownership support when it is needed.
I was at the game today and it appeared they gave up on winning after the top of the third and made Mikolas “wear it”. It was obvious he didn’t have it today, hard to believe he made it through six at 102 pitches. He looked uninterested in being out there.