4 deft trade deadline moves by Cardinals' John Mozeliak and 1 dismal one

Trades, particularly those at the trade deadline, are where general managers make their bread and butter. A general manager is giving up assets that may be valuable to his or her team in order to make improvements or set the team up for success down the road.

St. Louis Cardinals' President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak has often operated as a buyer during the frenzied summer trade session. Excluding 2023, Mozeliak has been able to enter the deadline with a team that has playoff -- occasionally World Series -- aspriations. Therefore, he has dealt prospects the team may hold dearly to acquire game-changing players.

Most of John Mozeliak's deadline moves have been acquisitions on the margins. Players like Edward Mujica, Zach Duke, Rafel Furcal, and Brandon Moss were all players who filled a very specific need for the organization. Large trades rarely happen during the trade deadline historically across the league, anyway.

In addition to these minute transactions, Mozeliak has been able to swing some larger deals to have a greater impact on the roster at the time. Using hindsight, we can see which deals have proven to be beneficial or harmful for the organization since 2007, John Mozeliak's first year at the helm of baseball operations.

Mozeliak has made more than two dozen deadline deals in his tenure. The bulk of those deals fall somewhere in the "not too bad, not too good" range. They were such minor trades that neither team saw a great impact positively or negatively (see the Chris Duncan-Julio Lugo trade as a prime example). About 10-12 other trades that Mozeliak has done at the deadline fall into this category as well.

By and large, John Mozeliak has performed quite well with deadline deals. Trades like the one for Jose Quintana in 2022 are evidence of this. The Cardinals received a starting pitcher who would eventually be their first choice for a playoff game that postseason and a serviceable reliever in Chris Stratton while giving up an infielder who was blocked in Malcolm Nunez and a pitching prospect who hadn't performed in the majors up to that point in Johan Ovideo. No one expected this deal to favor the Cardinals, but it ended up paying dividends.

Here are 4 trade deadline deals orchestrated by John Mozeliak that played in the Cardinals' favor and 1 that didn't.