John Mozeliak admits personal defeat for 2025 season in his final press conference

The St. Louis Cardinals and John Mozeliak held an end-of-season press conference, which ultimately was the exit interview for MO with the media. Mozeliak made his final closing statements, thanked members of the organization and media, and held a Q&A before he walked out into retirement. Many topics were discussed, including hindsight of his overall career, the state of the organization, and his plan for retirement. But one topic discussed was really intriguing, as it focused in on his most recent season as the active President of Baseball Operations. As many of the media members wanted reflection pieces covering the overall career of John Mozeliak, this reporter stayed true to the failed season that just took place.

The Athletic's Katie Woo hit Mo with the hard question of his runway season for the younger players. As mentioned before the season, the organization wanted to open up playing time to the younger core to see if these players would develop into future assets for the organization, or see if they are not going to pan out in St. Louis. Mozeliak took this to the extent of asking veteran players if they wanted to be moved, pushed very hard to trade Nolan Arenado, and sold at the 2025 trade deadline to create more runways on the roster. But as fans will remember from the season, none of these decisions panned out to better the team. Veteran players Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras wanted to stay, Nolan Arenado vetoed a trade to Houston, and the team fell out of contention in September and missed the postseason yet again.

With all of this in hindsight, Katie Woo asked MO directly about his biggest goal of the 2025 season. The question focused on if the runway approach to 2025 gave him and the organization a clear vision for the roster going forward into the future, and answered his questions regarding the uncertainty of the players in question. MO's direct response was "not as clearly as we hoped." He continued to say he hoped to learn more about these players during the season, but this now becomes the challenge for the new front office during the offseason. His one takeaway from this strategy is many of the younger players learned a lot over the full season, but indicated several players did not make needed adjustments or adjust in time, which cost them development at the big league level.