11 times the Cardinals allowed fear to drive poor decision-making under John Mozeliak

Fear-based decision #4 - The Dexter Fowler signing

After not signing Max Scherzer prior to the 2015 season, the Cardinals went on to win 100 games and earn another playoff berth as they sought out their fifth straight NLCS appearance and hopefully a third trip to the World Series in five seasons.

Instead, the Cardinals ran into that young Cubs team that was nipping at their heels, and despite jumping out to a 1-0 series lead and starting Game 2 off with a 1-0 lead, an ill Jaime Garcia blew up in the second inning, and the Cubs never looked back, beating the Cardinals three games to one and ending their incredible run in the first half of the 2010s.

The Cardinals missed the playoffs for the first time since 2010 during the 2016 season, finishing 17.5 games back of the team of destiny in Chicago, watching the Cubs go on to secure their first World Series title in over 100 years as the Cardinals were left looking in the mirror that offseason.

Prior to 2016, both Jason Heyward and John Lackey left the Cardinals to sign with the Cubs in what felt like a total gut punch to the organization. The pitching struggled big time in 2016, as Wainwright, Garcia, and Wacha all had down years, and Lackey's replacement Mike Leake was ineffective in their rotation.

The Cardinals really felt the loss of Heyward in their outfield as well, as Matt Holliday, Randal Grichuk, and Stephen Piscotty were all just slightly above league average offensively and the front office was desperate to get back into contention as soon as possible.

There are very, very few times I have outright hated a signing that the Cardinals have made over the last decade. I can usually see the silver lining or at least understand that it could work out. But man, their decision to sign Dexter Fowler away from the Cubs for five years, $82.5 million reeked of desperation and felt like it was going to fail from the start.

Fowler had a career year as the Cubs leadoff man, slashing .264/.363/.488 on their way to a World Series championship. During his first season with St. Louis, Fowler repeated that success, slashing .264/.363/.488 but only managing to appear in 118 games that first season.

Fowler was terrible for St. Louis the rest of his contract though, slashing .218/.320/.370 while regressing defensively and posting just a 0.1 bWAR over a three-season period. We'll get to this in a moment, but the Cardinals' constant search for an Oscar Taveras replacement led to poor choice after poor choice, and ultimately Fowler's contract kept them from going after the perfect solution to their problem (who we'll get to here in a bit).

The Cardinals' complacency allowed them to fall behind the Cubs, and instead of owning their mistakes and figuring out how to outclass them, the Cardinals just tried to steal the Cubs' magic and it backfired in a big way.