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

Fear-based decision #7 - Prospect hoarding after getting burned in multiple trades

When you look over at the Philadelphia Phillies, you see a complete team whose dynamic offense is led by Harper, and their excellent pitching staff is headlined by Zack Wheeler. Oh, and fun fact, those two could have easily been teammates with the Cardinals.

At the 2019 trade deadline, the New York Mets shopped starting pitcher Zack Wheeler, and when the Cardinals came calling, they asked for one of Tyler O'Neill or Harrison Bader. But remember how the Cardinals decided not to sign Bryce Harper and instead bet the house on O'Neill, Bader, and Carlson? Because of that, the club decided that was too rich of a price to pay for Wheeler and declined to add him to their roster for a postseason run.

The 2019 Cardinals were swept by the Washington Nationals in the NLCS, but man, I think things could have gone differently if they had a trio of Harper, Goldschmidt, and Ozuna in their lineup and Flaherty, Wheeler, and Wainwright leading their rotation.

Don't forget, Flaherty had one of the best second-half performances in baseball history that year, and while Wheeler became the ace he is today after the 2019 season, he was still a very good starter that would have helped the Cardinals in a big way.

The Zack Wheeler trade is the big whiff we have good reporting about, but the Cardinals really became gun-shy when it came to moving prospects after the Ozuna trade and letting Randy Arozarena go for Matthew Liberatore. Bad trades are going to happen, they just are. It's frustrating that moves like Ozuna and Liberatore were based out of desperation, making it far more likely that things would go wrong, but if the Cardinals had hit the reset button in their hearts and decided to be aggressive rather than reckless, they could have turned valuable prospects into top-tier talent that could have made them a real contender from 2019-2022.

The Juan Soto saga remains one of those tough-to-diagnose situations as the Nationals' asking price was historically high. Look at what James Wood, CJ Abrams, and Mackenzie Gore are now doing for Washington - Dylan Carlson and a few random prospects weren't going to get Soto to St. Louis. But had the Cardinals pushed all the chips in, meaning a package resembling something like Carlson, Jordan Walker, Masyn Winn, Nolan Gorman, Tink Hence, Matthew Liberatore, and perhaps more, they could have gone on a postseason run with Soto, Goldschmidt, Arenado, and the red hot Albert Pujols (or if they had made better decisions years prior, Harper would be in that mix instead of Arenado).

While that package of players as a whole has not panned out, there's no guarantee that Washington would have taken even that deal, and had they done it, the Cardinals would have likely needed to trade Soto after the 2023 season like the Padres did. But even so, it is now hard to argue against someone who feels like they missed on the opportunity of a lifetime again here.

Sean Murphy was someone who they balked at the price of in recent years and so was Josh Donaldson. There are probably a lot more stars who were moved in trades that the Cardinals could have been in on, but instead, they trusted their farm system, and it was a massive mistake.

And the biggest tragedy of this point specifically is that deep down, the Cardinals should have known it was a poor choice on their end. Because as we've begun to see in recent years, the Cardinals quietly allowed their once incredible player development system to fall behind, and it has resulted in a frustrating stretch for Cardinals fans.