PITTSBURGH — As the St. Louis Cardinals approach the final week before Major League Baseball’s trade deadline, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak finds himself in familiar territory. A year removed from the first selling season of his nearly two-decade tenure, the Cardinals’ 53-48 record has put Mozeliak back in the buyers’ category — and he intends to improve his club ahead of the July 30th cutoff.
“You’re always looking to find ways to make sure you’re entering August and September more with a bounce than a thud,” Mozeliak said Tuesday afternoon in a phone call with The Athletic.
The problem? Even with six days remaining before the deadline, the market remains unclear.
“There are definitely some defined sellers,” Mozeliak added. “But I think the majority of the league right now is straddling the fence on what individually they need to do.”
The Cardinals’ pledge to be competitive this year dates back to last season. Even after a historically bad year where the team finished 20 games under .500 for its worst record in 30 years, Mozeliak stated multiple times he desired to field a competitive club in 2024.
The Cardinals haven’t gone about their 53 wins this season in an orthodox way. Virtually nobody would have believed St. Louis could be successful without strong performances from Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt or would have predicted the bullpen being this effective. To manager Oli Marmol and his team’s credit, the Cardinals overcame a terrible start to the year and have established themselves as postseason contenders.
Manager Oliver Marmol helped the Cardinals bounce back from a rotten start. (Charles LeClaire / USA Today)
Now the question becomes how soon Mozeliak can solidify that position.
“We’re doing the best we can to assess the market and try to understand where we’re going,” he said. “But I’ve definitely spoken with teams that are just not sure where they are yet.”
The Cardinals will not be aggressive buyers this year. This should hardly come as a surprise based on their deadline history. However, the organization knows what areas it would like to improve. How the team plays over the next week won’t change that.
“Our focus is pretty narrow at this point,” Mozeliak said. “We’re going to continue to try to work towards that. In terms of how our club is playing right now, we feel pretty good about where our team is, and I don’t want to use six days to make a judgment on what we feel in the last two months that we’ve been able to accomplish. There’s a lot of optimism right now in our clubhouse. What we’re trying to do is find ways to get better.”
How can the Cardinals get better at the deadline? One likely area St. Louis will target is relief pitching, particularly another versatile right-handed arm to pair with Andrew Kittredge and Ryan Fernandez in high-leverage situations. Given the Cardinals’ history, they’ll pursue starting pitching depth as well, though it remains doubtful they’d acquire a true top-of-the-rotation arm given how high the demand will be. Mozeliak has typically refrained from trading from his major-league core and top prospect pool, and this year doesn’t appear to be an exception.
Finding additional bullpen arms in the second half is almost always a priority for contending teams. St. Louis was strategic in designing bullpen roles for each reliever entering the season. The approach to Ryan Helsley’s usage has been well-documented, as have the scenarios where the team uses Kittredge, Fernandez, JoJo Romero and John King.
But there is internal concern regarding the sustainability of the bullpen, as Fernandez, Romero and King are on pace for career-high usage, and Kittredge is in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery. This is where right-handers like Keynan Middleton and Riley O’Brien were supposed to help with that workload, but O’Brien has been out with a forearm strain since the first game of the season, and Middleton will miss the year recovering from forearm surgery. O’Brien recently began a rehab assignment with Triple-A Memphis, but will require significant time ramping back up.
Targeting a high-leverage reliever from the right side could alleviate stress in the bullpen, allowing it to remain a strength for the final two months of the season.
There is also the cost factor that could bode well for St. Louis. Only a handful of teams have fully pledged to selling — the Oakland A’s, Colorado Rockies, Miami Marlins, Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Angels. Other clubs have committed to selling over the last few days, but only to a certain extent. The Chicago Cubs declared their intent to focus on 2025, meaning they won’t participate in a full fire sale, and the Cincinnati Reds are listening on relief pitching offers, but aren’t full-on sellers — at least not yet.
But relievers are at a premium at the deadline and they are often the easiest asset for selling teams to part with. In return, a two-month rental reliever could improve the Cardinals without breaking the bank. Just how affordable relievers will be remains to be seen, though Mozeliak expects the market to start gaining traction by the weekend. Once it does, sellers will have a better sense of what to ask for in returns.
“If you are a seller, you’re not ready to sell because you can’t optimize your market yet, because you don’t understand who’s truly buying,” Mozeliak said. “There are a handful of defined teams buying, but there are so many teams that are still unsure. You might be able to strike a deal today, but you don’t know if you’ve really maximized it.”
So Mozeliak and his front office will wait out the clock for the market to show itself and adjust accordingly. Until then, there’s not much else they can do.
“Our group is going to take a patient approach,” Mozeliak said. “I think as we get closer to (the deadline), there’s going to be a lot more clarity.”
(Photo of John Mozeliak from Feb 15.: Kim Klement Neitzel / USA Today)
