A Time of Transition
The end of eras are rarely neat and clean
It seems that, so often, endings are messy. I guess that if things are going well, there’s no desire to have them end so there’s a little selection bias going on there, but it’s true. Truly riding off into the sunset or putting the last perfect stroke on a work seems only to happen in fairy tales and other works of fiction. Much like opposing hitters will tell a pitcher when he’s done, events are markers of the end of a era more than what plans are made by those involved.
One of the greatest eras in Cardinals history was the Whiteyball era, right? A decade of success (with a little more variation in that success than sometimes we remember) with three pennants and a World Series. Yet it came to an end in 1990 with the last team before 2023 to finish in last place, a fractured clubhouse, and Whitey Herzog retiring mid-year because he couldn’t deal with the players.
Overlapping that was the end of the Busch era. Gussie Busch, an owner/fan in ways we don’t see anymore, died in 1989 and the team was then run by the Brewery for a number of years. While the 1991 team did finish second in the NL East, the end of that era of Busch ownership were unremarkable, with two teams under .500 and one team that just barely cleared the mark.
That set the table for the Bill DeWitt reign. So far, this section of Cardinal history might be divided into the Walt Jocketty/Tony La Russa era, the John Mozeliak/TLR era, and the John Mozeliak/cast of characters era.
Walt Jocketty came on board after the 1994 season, so he predated the DeWitt purchase of the club. However, he made his reputation between 1996-2007, making trades for Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds, and Scott Rolen, finding veteran pitchers for Dave Duncan to work his magic, and always seemingly being able to add a piece at the trade deadline (or, like Larry Walker and Woody Williams, after). There was the initial burst of excitement in ‘96, the McGwire homers to cover up the blah of the late ‘90s, and then there was 2000-2006.
The Jocketty era, unlike many others, was undermined more in the front office than on the field. I will always continue to hold that the 2006 team is a better team than the legend of 83 wins has made people think of them. Still, there was definitely a drop-off from 2004 and 2005 and Jeff Luhnow’s sabermetric revolution was starting a schism in administration. So when 2007 wound up as a losing season, DeWitt made his choice and the Jocketty era was done, with the malaise carrying into 2008.
There was a longer run for TLR, of course. We think of his era going out on top because of the World Series title and that’s completely fair. However, think about how it would have looked had the 2011 squad won say two or three fewer games in the regular season. The 2010 team had been in first place in mid-August, only to fritter away the division to the brawling Reds. If the 2011 team hadn’t made the playoffs, four of the final five years of Tony’s tenure would have been empty of postseason action.
The sudden leaving of La Russa transitioned the team into a new era, one where the general manager (who eventually got promoted to President of Baseball Operations, even if the duties to the outside world didn’t change much). Mike Matheny inherited a team that was starting to reap the benefits of the Luhnow focus on drafting and developing. A NLCS in 2012, even if it took a wild card game to get there. A World Series in 2013. NLCS in 2014. It got to the point that when the Cardinals lost in the 2015 NLDS, there was significant concerns because there wasn’t another chance to reach a World Series.
The end of the Matheny era was a mess, of course, missing the playoffs for three straight years though they were still mostly a mid-80s win organization. Mike Shildt took them to the playoffs for three straight years, then got fired because of “philosophical differences” that I don’t think have been ever truly explained. Oli Marmol got them to 93 games and likely was just one healthy Ryan Helsley finger away from a deep playoff run.
And now we are here.
2023 was the worst year since 1990, of course, and while this season had a month of good play that put a nice shine on things, the fact is that if you go by the expected win-loss generated by run differential, the record would be almost identical to what it actually was at this time last year. The current squad has gone from being in the second wild card slot and 4 1/2 games out of the division lead at the All-Star Break to a team 11 games behind Milwaukee after Wednesday’s win and 5 out of the last wild card slot. The Cubs have even passed them in the division standings and the Reds are set to as well. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that by time the club returns from their short jaunt to Minnesota, they will be a last place team.
It sure feels like the end of an era, doesn’t it?
There is no doubt that John Mozeliak is a Cardinal Hall of Famer. He’s been integral to the longest successful run in team history. He has made deals that got the club Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. He was able to bring back Albert Pujols for an amazing finish to his career. There have been moves big and small that have helped shape playoff teams.
All that said, two straight under-performing years—not just “miss the playoffs” under-performing, mind you, but one that was barely over 70 wins and another that may also finish under .500—feels like a time for some sort of reset. While the old “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” canard is well overused, there’s a little bit of truth to that here.
The fact that tonight’s game had announced attendance of under 30,000 puts an exclamation point on all of this. The club is currently sixth in MLB in average attendance, well down from the second place finish they had in 2022. They averaged just shy of 41,000 that year and currently are a little shy of 37,000. With a good number of home games remaining and attendance trending in the wrong direction, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them down more than 5,000 over the last two years when it is all said and done. Multiply that by 81 home games and that’s a loss of 405,000 people from the bottom line. Assume an average of $50 per person, which is probably low after tickets and concessions, and that’s over $20 million less in the coffers. Even with the revenue streams they do have, that’s noticeable.
That doesn’t factor in the drop in TV ratings. Granted, that doesn’t affect current revenues—they get the Bally’s money whether anyone watches or not—but it’s not a great harbinger for the future. It’s hard to build a fan base when people can’t see the games. It’s disconcerting when people that can watch the games don’t.
I’m not old enough for this to be personal experience, mind you, but it sounds a lot like the down decades of the 1950s and the 1970s, when the product wasn’t memorable and fans didn’t make an effort to get out to make memories. I don’t think the Cardinals want to go down that road again. Which means something has to change. Probably a lot of things.
I’m just a fan with a Substack, a couple of podcasts, and no real idea about how anything works. So looking to me for answers or much of anything really is a fool’s errand. I could understand the limited changes going from 2023 to 2024. That felt like an aberration, one that an investment in “pitching, pitching, pitching” could fix. While I would have liked to have seen a little higher quality investment, at least this felt like a team that could compete in the weaker NL Central.
It doesn’t feel like an aberration anymore. It feels like the new normal. Which is not at all how you want things to feel.
I think Oli Marmol has done a fairly solid job as manager. I think most of the coaching staff is fine as well. (I think there’s a very good argument Turner Ward needs to go, but he’s the exception.) However, in baseball staffing changes happen whether they really should or not. There are optics that must be satisfied, it seems.
Would the fan base be OK with the coaching staff returning if there was significant overhauls of the roster? Perhaps. It’s hard to imagine what those overhauls are, though. Paul Goldschmidt is a free agent and I can’t decide whether he’ll look at this season and realize he doesn’t have it anymore or if he’ll look at this season and not want to end it that way. (Be careful what you decide, Paul—for every Albert Pujols last year there’s a Yadier Molina….or a Joey Votto.) Many of the players are young and controllable options that aren’t going anywhere, or at least are unlikely to, especially at the low point of their value. As we said back at the trade deadline, if you wanted to maximize return you’d have to trade Ryan Helsley or Alec Burleson.
Could either or both be moved this winter? Perhaps. It’s also possible that the club doesn’t pick up the option of Lance Lynn and/or Kyle Gibson, though odds are they’ll keep at least one of them. With a payroll that is already fairly full, it would seem unlikely there are major additions from the market coming. It’s not at all out of the realm of possibility that 85% of this roster returns next year. Might they be better? Of course. Young players continuing to grow. Jordan Walker figuring it out. Nolan Gorman finding some sort of consistency. Nolan Arenado turning back the clock a bit. It could happen.
Anybody want to bet on it?
The organization has to show that there is some concern, some worry, maybe even a little bit of panic. For years, it’s been a steady hand on the tiller, a ultra-conservative approach to everything. There’s no doubt that a lot of why the Cards have been so successful for so long owes a lot to that consistency.
However, it’s innovate or perish and the club hasn’t done much innovating in the past decade. There’s got to be some wholesale changes in the club to have any hope of drawing back fans in 2025 at a level that the team has gotten used to. Which brings us back around to Mo.
John Mozeliak’s contract is up at the end of 2025, but it feels more and more to me like he will step away after this season. Maybe he’ll work on some other project for the team, maybe he’ll be a special assistant to the owner, he’ll do something but he’ll give over the reins to someone else.
Who that will be might rely on the report Chaim Bloom was putting together. Mo indicated that it would be a look at the whole organization with recommendations of changes that could be made. If they like what they see, the DeWitts might think that Bloom is the man to put those changes into practice. That’s assuming, of course, that Bloom wants the job, that he wants to move his family from Boston to St. Louis. We assume he’d be interested in that but we don’t know.
If he’s not, I still think it would behoove the organization to look outside the box. Not that Randy Flores, Michael Girsch, and others aren’t quality people that could do a fine job. I’ve been saying for three years now that the Cardinals need to do a better job of tapping people outside the organization for any and all jobs. They need the fresh blood, the outside perspective, the differing backgrounds.
A change in the face of the administration and a refreshed approach to roster construction would help revitalize a fan base that has become weary of the same old failings. Obviously it probably wouldn’t fix things overnight—it’s hard to imagine 2025 being a lot different no matter who is in charge—but it would give hope. Rebellions are built on hope and so are fan bases.
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. The time has also come for a fresh start in St. Louis. All eras have to end, no matter how incredible they have been.
I divide the DeWitt ownership into three periods Old School, the Team of Rivals, and the Mo Show. The Team of Rivals period includes your part of your Jockerty/TLR era and all of your Mozeliak/TLR era. I see DeWitt's hiring of Jeff Luhnow as the start of the Team of Rivals period. During that period there were factions within the Cardinals that had differences of opinion about how things should be and they didn't like each other. Jockerty (and later TLR) seemed to the senior person among the traditionalists, Luhnow was the champion of analytics and change, and both were sort of independent power centers. They couldn't fire each other, and ultimately Bill DeWitt wanted them both with the team. It was Mo's job to make it work. He was able to balance the creative tension between those factions to make organization was greater than the sum of its parts. Personally, I think Mo did an outstanding job during that period. Then in 2011 that creative tension disappeared with the departure of TLR and Luhnow and Mo was the guy left at the head of baseball operations.
Nice, thoughtful piece. I remember the 70s, but somehow I don't remember feeling as frustrated as I do now. Maybe I was, and those feeling have just faded with the success of the last 25 years or so. I do remember, "there is always next year" in those days. I'm not so optimistic about next year these days. In 1980, Gussie Busch made a bold move in hiring Whitey Herzog and giving him a free rein. Uncharacteristic for Busch in those days. Whitey made some bold controversial moves, but it paid off. Maybe the Cards are in a similar place they were in 1980.