10 worst moves by St. Louis Cardinals John Mozeliak's front office since 2015

There have been some pretty big mistakes made by John Mozeliak and the Cardinals' front office over the last eight seasons

The St. Louis Cardinals' President of Baseball Operations, John Mozeliak, is one of the most accomplished executives in all of baseball. There's no mistake about it.

The Cardinals have the third most wins in baseball since Mozeliak became the club's General Manager prior to the 2008 season, have won a World Series, six division titles, and made it to the National League Championship series four times, advancing to the World Series twice.

Still, many would argue there have been opportunities to win even more than they have, and I don't know if Mozeliak would disagree with that sentiment. When you're a club with the history and pedigree of the Cardinals', your bar for success is much higher than most.

Every single baseball executive makes bad moves. It's comes with the territory of running a team. If anyone one of us took control of baseball operations today, we'd hopefully make some good moves, but we would certaintly make a lot of poor choices. What marks a good baseball executive is their ability to minimze mistakes and maximize on opportunites. Mozeliak has done that among the best in baseball.

Yet, in recent seasons, there have become more and more oppporunities to look at the Cardinals' front office decisions and question moves they have made. Whether it was a poor investment in free agency, a big swing trade that let go of talent that would go on to be elite somewhere else, or giving up on the wrong young players, the John Mozeliak and the rest of the front office have made some significant mistakes in recent years.

We'll spend some time another day looking at some incredible moves the front office has made in recent years, but today let's look at the ten worst moves the Cardinals have made since 2015 under John Mozeliak's leadership.

#10 - Trading away Patrick Wisdom

One frustrating theme you'll see in this top-10 is the Cardinals' letting go of prospects who may seem like dead weight on the 40-man roster, but end up being significant contributors for other organizations. Patrick Wisdom is one of those players.

During the 2018 Winter Meetings, the Cardinals made what Baseball America called "a small deal" with the Texas Rangers, trading away 3B Patrick Wisdom for 3B prospect Drew Robinson. Robinson would go on to appear in 5 games in St. Louis but was unable to be anything of significance for their roster.

Wisdom was drafted 52nd overall by the Cardinals in 2012 and made his debut with the club at age 26 in 2018. During that 32-game stretch, he had, he slashed .260/.362/.520 with 4 HR and 10 RBI for the club. The Cardinals clearly did not believe in his long-term upside and dealt him away to the Rangers.

When Wisdom didn't stick in Texas, he did end up finding a home with the Chicago Cubs, finishing 4th in Rookie of the Year voting in 2021 with a .823 OPS in 106 games, being a slightly above-league average hitter last season, and now booming with 12 HRs and a .931 OPS so far in 2022. Even if the Cardinals did not have a long-term fit for him on their roster, it's at least safe to say they did not get enough compensation for him in return.

If you look at this club the last few seasons though, Wisdom could have easily be at least a bench bat for the club, and this year could have seeen time at DH against left-handed pitching and spot started when needed. Instead, Wisdom is raking for the Cubs, and that's never a good feeling.

#9 - Andrew Miller signing

From 2013-2017, Andrew Miller was one of the best relievers in all of baseball. After struggling a bit for Cleveland in 2017, Miller was a free agent, and the Cardinals brought him in on a two-year, $25 million deal with a $12 million vesting option for the 2021 season.

During his Cardinals' tenure, Miller put up 4.34 ERA over 103.2 innings of work, never living up to the contract he signed, but was still a helpful lefty to have out of their bullpen. During the stortend 2020 season, Miller looked really good with a 2.77 ERA, but that was over just 16 games of work.

While Miller was certainly a bad signing at that value, I won't hate on the move too much since the idea of it made a ton of sense at the time, and the amount of dollars per year, about $12 million, wasn't enough to tie the club's hands if they wanted to make a significant move. But the move certainty did not pay off,

In general, as we'll see on this list, the Cardinals' investments in relievers have not really panned out, but this one was defensible in the moment and wasn't as disastrously as other moves they have made.

#8 - Brett Cecil signing

The offseason before signing Andrew Miller, the Cardinals decided to invest significant dollar in signing a different left handed reliver, Brett Cecil.

Cecil was just coming off a four-year stretch with the Blue Jays where he posted a 2.90 ERA over 205 innings out of the bullpen, which earned him a four-year, $30.5 million deal with St. Louis prior to the 2017 season. In 2017, Cecil was okay for the club, posting a 3.88 ERA over 67.1 innings of work, but his strikeout rate had fallen and home run rate rose, things that would get much worse in 2018.

In 40 games that season, Cecil posted a 6.89 ERA companied by a 1.96 WHIP, 6.9 walks per nine, and 1.5 home runs per nine innings of work. Cecil was just awful, and the Cardinals decided it was better to just go ahead and eat the rest of his contract, rather than making things work another year.

Eating $7.5 million in 2019 and $3 million in 2020 weren't the worst pills to have to shallow, but wasting money in that range or higher is never a good thing, and the Cardinals' can confidently say they did that with the Cecil signing. Where I do give them some credit here was, just like the Miller signing, they went out and tried to acquire one of the best left-handed relievers in the game, but both tries proved to be mistakes in the end.

#6 - Steven Matz signing

Let me start by saying, this ranks a bit higher on my list than you'd probably think because of the potential impact I think this may have on the Cardinals' for the next few years, and I also think it has a chance to move up the ranking even more if their front office doesn't admit the mistake here, or if Steven Matz can turn things around.

The biggest critique of the Cardinals right now is easily their starting pitching, and one major reason why it has taken such a downturn is bad investments like Matz. The Cardinals, like many of the bad signings on this list, love to shop in the "middle free agent market", where the players are not top-end talents, but also won't come cheap either. In my opinion, these are the absolute worst players to target in most cases.

The margin for error is huge for these kinds of signings. If you bring in a Matz to be a number four or five starter, there is a pretty good chance you have someone in your system who could fill his role for $14 million cheaper. But say you have a major hole at the top of your rotatoin like you do right now, it's a lot harder to fill the role of an ace with internal options on the fly. And yet, the Cardinals continue to invest signifcant dollars into back-end starters, relief pitchers, or "role players" for their lineup, when the dollar should actually be going to top-end talent.

So instead of going out and signing Marcus Stroman or Kevin Gausman, the Cardinals signed Steven Matz. Sure, it's a lot less money, but Stroman and Gausman's floors are closer to what Matz's ceiling is as a player, while the ceilings of Stroman and Gausman are players that can lead your rotation in the playoffs.

So far in his Cardinal career, Matz has made 18 starts and 5 relief apperances, posting a 5.42 ERA in 89.2 innigs of work. He's been awful, and while he could end up being an okay rotation piece eventually, his presence in the rotation may actually hinder the Cardinals' beyond just his performance. The Cardinals have Mikolas and Matz both signed through 2025, meaning they'll likely want them both in the rotatoin. That leaves just three spots, and the club also has arms like Matthew Liberatore, Gordon Graceffo, Michael McGreevy, and Zack Thompson ready in Triple-A, not to mention Tink Hence and Cooper Hjerpe eventually as well.

If the Cardinals use this "glut" as a reason not to add an ace in the near future, than the Matz signing will become even worse than it already is.

One way the Cardinals could redeem this signing if by making Matz into a reliever, especially if they need to "clear" rotation spots. Left-handed hitters are slashing just .156/.250/.250 off of Matz this year, which would make him a very good left handed reliver for St. Louis. If you don't think the Cardinals would pay a left-handed reliever $11 million a year, refer back to the Andrew Miller and Brett Cecil signings. The difference here is, Matz could actually be an elite option, unlike those two during their Cardinal careers.

#5 - Dexter Fowler signing

If you thought the beginning of the list was cringe worthy, get ready for the rest of the moves to come.

Dexter Fowler was fresh off being the lead-of hitter for the World Series Champion Chicago Cubs. The St. Louis Cardinals needed both a center fielder and a lead-off hitter. Match made in heaven, right?

I remember when they announced the five-year, $82.5 million deal with Fowler and being beyond frustrated with the deal. From 2008-2016, Fowler, has a 107 OPS+ and made his first career All-Star team in 2016 at age-30. Fowler wasn't a bad player by any means, that's a valuable player for any team. But handing him that big of a contract, and going into his age-31 season, seemeed like a disaster waiting to happen.

2017 was actually a very good year for Fowler, although he only played in 118 games. He slashed .264/.363/.488 with 18 HR and 64 RBI while playing pretty good center field for the Cardinals. But 2018-2020 were terrible years. During that stretch, Fowler slashed .218/.320/.370 with 31 HR and 113 RBI over the course of 271 games. He could no longer play center field either, finding himself out in right field most days. The Cardinals ended up trading Fowler to the Angels before the 2021 season, absorbing most of his $14 million salary.

In a vacuum, this move could be higher on the list, but I feel better about "burning cash" as a club than trading away young assets, which is why some of the trades outrank this highly for me. There is one more signing I would critique even more than this one, and you'll see why in a moment.

#4 - Mike Leake signing

Another deal that made seemed questionable at best at the time, the Cardinals pivoted to signing Mike Leake after striking out on both David Price and Jason Heyward in free agency.

Leake signed a five-year, $80 million deal with the club, having a 64-52 record with a 3.88 ERA from 2010-2015. In all honesty, this move felt a lot more like a team scrambling to find a backup plan, and they ended up giving way too much money to a pitcher with very little upside.

Leake's first season in St. Louis was not pretty, going 9-12 with a 4.69 ERA in 176.2 innings of work. The Cardinals ran it back with him in the rotation again in 2018, but after going 7-12 with a 4.21 ERA in the first half, the club dealt Leake to the Seattle Mariners.

In that deal, the Cardinals acquired minor league shortstop Rayder Ascanio, but also sent over $750,000 in international signing bonus money and $17 million to cover a large chunk of the money still owed to Leake.

While the next year's free agent class wasn't very strong, hence overpaying again for Dexter Fowler, the Cardinals would have been in much better shape if they had held onto their money and turned to internal options or a one-year deal in free agency.

#3 - Randy Arozarena trade

Following a brief but productive stint with the Cardinals during the 2019 season, St. Louis shipped outfielder Randy Arozarena, first baseman/outfielder Jose Martinez, and a Competitive Balance Round A draft selection to the Tampa Bay Rays for top prospect Matthew Liberatore, catcher Edgardo Rodriquez, and the Rays' Competitive Balance Round B draft selection.

Arozarena has gone on to rake as a Ray with a career 134 wRC+. In 2023, the outfielder is slashing .312/.394/.552 with 10 HR and 35 RBI while leading the best team in baseball to this point in the season.

While Randy has gone on to find major success in Tampa Bay, the Cardinals are still struggling to find consistent production from guys like Dylan Carlson and Tyler O'Neill. Had the Cardinals deal one of those two instead, this deal would feel much better, but instead, they gave up easily the most valuable outfielder they had at that time.

This trade does have the ability to age better if some things continue to go well for the Cardinals. Despite a few down seasons in recent years, Liberatore has been on the upswing as of late and just beat Corbin Burnes in a head-to-head matchup while spinning five scoreless innings.

The Competitive Balance pick that the Cardinals received from the Rays turned out to be Tink Hence, meaning the Cardinals may end up turning Arozarena into two very good pitchers for their club. Should that end up being the case, St. Louis will not have as much regret with this deal.

#2 - Adolis Garcia trade

That same offseason, the Cardinals traded away outfield prospect Adolis Garcia to the Texas Rangers for cash considerations. Garcia was coming off a .253/.301/.517 slash line with 32 home runs for Triple-A Memphis, but the Cardinals wanted to create 40-man roster space for Kwan-Hyun Kim.

While Randy Arozarena is a better player than Adolis Garcia, the fact that the Cardinals gave Garcia away for nothing makes this deal even worse.

This year, Garcia is slashing .252/.316/.503 with 11 HR and an MLB-leading 44 RBI. Again, Garcia would have been an excellent bat to have in the Cardinals lineup, but this was another example of the Cardinals giving up too early on a young outfielder.

At least in the Arozarena trade, the Cardinals got back Liberatore and the draft selection that they took Hence with, but in this case, Garcia basically left for free.

#1 - The Marcell Ozuna Trade

It's easy to forget the context of this trade. The Cardinals acquired Marcell Ozuna after coming off of a .924 OPS season where he had 37 HR and 124 RBI as a 26-year-old for the Marlins. The Cardinals were able to acquire Ozuna without giving up any top prospects, so the idea of Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen heading to Miami didn't bat many eyes.

During his two-year stretch with St. Louis, Ozuna slashed .262/.327/.451 with an average of 26 HR and 88 RBI per season. He played below-average defense for the club and was disappointing as a hitter, but he was not a bad player either. But honestly, Ozuna's performance is not the reason people look back poorly on this trade.

It's the fact that the Cardinals gave up two of the best pitchers in all of baseball, who are both still under the age of 28. Alcantara is off to a slow start this year but won the NL Cy Young last season after going 14-9 with a 2.28 ERA in 228.2 innings of work. Gallen finished 5th in Cy Young voting last year and is the early front-runner this year with a 6-1 record and 2.35 ERA.

Gallen recently made comments suggesting that the Cardinals' dealt him for missing voluntary workouts, something that further tarnishes this trade for the club.

This trade will honestly go down as one of the worst in baseball history and could continue to climb the rankings of bad deals if Gallen and Alcantara continue to be two of the best pitchers in the sport.