Grading Mozeliak, Girsch and the St. Louis Cardinals front office at the season’s midway point

President John Mozeliak and general manager Mike Girsch have been a close-knit team running the St. Louis Cardinals since 2018. But they’ve never seen a season play out like the first half of this one.

The Cardinals are 33-47 through 80 games and in last place. In the power-starved NL Central, last place is an achievement, albeit a very negative one, and that goes double in St. Louis.

In fact, it’s the first time the Cardinals have been below third place this late in the season in the Mozeliak-Girsch tenure. And that raises a very obvious question for a team picked as the consensus pre-season division favorite; What’s happened?

Grading the St. Louis Cardinals at the midway point of the 2023 season

What follows is a mid-term assessment of the Cardinals’ personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 World Series with a particular focus on the extent to which those decisions have helped or hindered the team’s performance.

The standard of measurement is Wins Above Average (WAA), a variant of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). For this purpose, WAA is preferable because unlike WAR, it is zero-based. That means the sum of all the decisions made by Mozeliak and Girsch impacting the 2023 team gives at least a good estimate of the number of games those moves have improved (or worsened) the team’s status this season.

A team’s front office impacts that team’s standing in five ways. Those five are:

1.       By the impact of players it acquires from other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim.

2.       By the impact of players it surrenders to other teams in those same transactions.

3.       By the impact of players it signs at free agency or extends.

4.       By the impact of players it loses to free agency or releases.

5.       By the impact of players it promotes from its own farm system.

Here’s how Mozeliak and Girsch stack up by those five yardsticks.

Acquired or traded

Based on the data, the trade strategy for Mozeliak and Girsch was to not have a trade strategy. Since the end of the 2022 season, they have acquired only one major league talent in dealings with other teams. That was pitcher Anthony Misiewicz, bought from the Royals in February, and he idled through six weeks of spring training before being sold to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Misiewicz was not only the only player Mozeliak acquired or bought, he was also the only one they traded away or sold. This apparent apathy toward inter-team dealings is in stark contrast with the established Mozeliak-Girsch pattern, which in previous seasons has fleeced such talents as Nolan Arenado, Marcell Ozuna, and Paul Goldschmidt from other clubs.

And it’s not like Mozeliak and Girsch habitually wait until the trade deadline to swoop in. Ozuna, Goldschmidt and Arenado, their three biggest trade catches, were all winter steals from the Marlins, Diamondbacks and Rockies, respectively.

Their deadline moves have been less spectacular and less productive. Last season, for example, they got pitcher Jordan Montgomery at deadline, and he came at the cost of Harrison Bader. They got Jose Quintana from Pittsburgh, but the cost was blossoming starter Johan Oviedo.

So while the Cardinal front office may have some deadline-related tricks up their sleeve in the next month, their behavior is already out of character with their track record.

Free agency

The big offseason free agent splash in St. Louis involved the signing of catcher Willson Contreras, formerly of the Cubs. The Cards needed somebody to step in for the retired Yadier Molina, and Contreras was available, although at a premium cost. The Cardinals got Contreras through 2028 at a cost of just under $100 million.

What did they get? Apparently, they got a catcher they’re not happy with; less than two months into the season, the Cardinals abruptly decided Contreras was better suited somewhere beside behind the plate.

The uproar that change of plans created forced a rethinking within the week, but it didn’t change the numbers. Contreras finishes the first half of his first season in St. Louis batting just .215 with sharply negative defensive numbers.

In his final season, veteran pitcher Adam Wainwright has been even more of a liability than Contreras. Signed for that career swan song season, Wainwright looks like a guy who didn’t know when to go home: He’s carrying a 7.45 ERA in 10 starts, good for a -1.4 WAA.

Reliever Giovanny Gallegos got a friendly extension through 2025, the result being a 4.83 ERA in 30 appearances and a -0.4 WAA.

Overall the Cardinals signed, re-signed or extended seven players, not one of whom has produced a positive return on their investment.

Overall

What’s gone wrong with the St. Louis Cardinals? Pretty much everything, and it has started with the front office. For once in their tenure, the Mozelika-Girsch free agent strategy bombed, the trade strategy was non-existent, and the farm system has produced a crate of stale goods.

Here’s the first-half report card on the Cardinals front office. Note that grades for players departing the organization are based on the reverse of those players’ WAAs with their new teams.

Mode                    WAA               Grade

Acquired                 0.0                   C

Traded                  -0.2                   C

Signed                  -1.7                   D

FA Lost                 -1.0                   B

Rookies                -2.7                   D

Overall                  -3.2                   F

The striking thing about the Cardinals’ front office activity is that there’s been so little of it. Mozeliak and Girsch have only made 15 personnel decisions affecting the big league roster since the end of the 2022 postseason; that’s less than two per month.

And contrary to their usual pattern, almost none of those personnel decisions have redounded to the benefit of the Cardinals. Here’s a stat that will ring loudly with Cardinal fans: Not one of the 12 players added or returned to the St. Louis roster by Mozeliak and Girsch has produced a positive return to the team.

That includes their big catch, Contreras, who’s at -0.2.