5 front office missteps that defined the 2024 Cardinals

The St. Louis Cardinals' playoff hopes in 2024 are rapidly dissipating as the once-proud franchise looks poised to miss the postseason for the second consecutive year. The front office and ownership have appeared out of touch with fans, as Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III made a comment in May where he laughed at fans who said that they wouldn't show up to games at Busch Stadium.

The calls for John Mozeliak to step down as the team's president of baseball operations have amplified after a nightmare 2023 season, but a report from Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested that Mozeliak is planning to hold his position until his contract is up after 2025. His eventual replacement, which appears to be former Boston Red Sox executive Chaim Bloom, is nearly a carbon copy of Mozeliak in terms of their risk-averse natures when running an organization.

It's difficult to blame fans who are pining for change. The Cardinals front office made several questionable decisions in 2023, especially regarding its baffling treatment of Willson Contreras, and it has continued to show that it seems to have no plans for the direction of the franchise. The team's comments on its potential attempts to re-sign Paul Goldschmidt after he has had a historically poor 2024 drew the ire of fans, and it would likely cripple the Cardinals if they were to play him every day.

The team has continued its downward trajectory thanks to more befuddling choices by Mozeliak and company this season. These five front office decisions were the biggest mistakes that have doomed the Cardinals to mediocrity in 2024.

The distrust of Ivan Herrera

Ivan Herrera looked to have the job as Willson Contreras' backup catcher locked up to begin the season. But as the season has worn on and Contreras has battled a litany of injuries throughout the year, the Cardinals have made it clear that they prefer Pedro Pages behind the plate, leaving Herrera in a questionable position.

Herrera has proven that his bat can play at the major league level, but the Cardinals have been reluctant to let him play regularly behind the plate, as they left him in Triple-A when Contreras returned from his broken arm, choosing to keep Pages up instead.

The Cardinals are desperate to control the running game, and Herrera has thrown out only three of 48 attempted basestealers. Pages, though, hasn't been much better, nailing 10 of 51 base thieves. This small discrepancy isn't enough to justify playing Pages over Herrera given that Herrera is a significantly superior hitter to Pages, with a .707 OPS compared with Pages' .658 OPS. The role of the pitchers in allowing stolen bases can't go overlooked either, as many bases are taken off of the pitcher rather than the catcher.

It's possible that pitchers simply prefer throwing to Pages over Herrera, but when your most pressing concern throughout the season has been offense, it's more important to bolster the lineup with the most thump possible.

Many teams in the league would likely love to use Herrera in a major league catching role, but the Cardinals have appeared committed in 2024 to starting an inferior hitter who provides only a slightly better arm behind the plate than his hitting-adept counterpart.

The mishandling of Jordan Walker

Watching the Cardinals continually misuse Jordan Walker elicits a sense of morbid fascination, like gawking at a car accident. The team's former top prospect and seemingly budding superstar spent most of the 2024 season in Triple-A in an attempt to unlock his power. After scuffling for much of his tenure in Memphis, Walker began to find a groove, and the Cardinals called him up in August only to platoon him against left-handed pitchers despite his splits showing that he was more effective against right-handers. He was then sent down again so he would receive more consistent playing time.

2024 has been an extension of the Cardinals' abhorrent treatment of Walker that began in 2023, when he was producing well at the major league level but was demoted because the Cardinals wanted him to find a more optimal launch angle after nearly half of his batted balls were on the ground.

Walker has never been a player with 40-homer potential, so it's mystifying that the Cardinals are attempting to mold him into one instead of maximizing the strengths he already possesses. The Cardinals can't seem to decide how to best utilize Walker, and that likely comes from disagreements between management and the front office. (More on that later.) It's beginning to curtail what looked like limitless potential, through little fault of Walker's.

Walker still has a strong chance to blossom into an excellent player, but the Cardinals' inability to handle him properly could doom him to becoming another "what if" story — at least until another team gets its hands on him.

The dumping of Dylan Carlson for nothing

It was clear in 2024 that Dylan Carlson's time in St. Louis was drawing to a close. He was completely overmatched at the plate and had even regressed in the outfield. So when the Cardinals traded him at the trade deadline to the Tampa Bay Rays for relief pitcher Shawn Armstrong, nobody was surprised. The shocking part would come after Armstrong had made 11 appearances with the Cardinals, when they designated him for assignment after a 2.84 ERA in 12.2 innings.

In a vacuum, the choice to release Armstrong wouldn't be an issue. It might raise a few eyebrows given that he had pitched decently and was coming off of his seventh consecutive scoreless outing, but the fact that the Cardinals cut bait so quickly on the only return for a former top prospect was a terrible look for the front office.

Carlson was the Cardinals' top prospect as recently as 2021 and still had over two years of team control remaining on his contract. Fans couldn't say that the Cardinals didn't give him a chance; Carlson totaled 1,619 plate appearances with St. Louis from 2020 to 2024. But he regressed every year, bottoming out at a .198 average before the trade. The Rays clearly found something to adjust, and he has already hit three home runs after failing to hit one in more than twice as many at-bats with the Cardinals in 2024.

Perhaps Armstrong asked for his release, and even if he didn't, he was unlikely to be retained after 2024. But the optics on the move are confounding: The Cardinals sacrificed a player they expected to be in their future plans to receive a a few innings of a pitcher whom they then released in order to save a few bucks. It's the epitome of a franchise in disarray.

The extension of Oli Marmol

Oli Marmol is not a bad manager. Let's get that out of the way. He has made some strange decisions, such as choosing to use Brandon Crawford as a pinch-hitter when he was the clear-cut worst option in a game-deciding at-bat, but overall, Marmol has done a respectable job, especially for a team that has been in so many one-run games. But the team's decision to hand Marmol a two-year extension at the start of the season doesn't look like it will age well.

Marmol and John Mozeliak appear to be at odds when it comes to the handling of a critical piece to the organization in the person of Jordan Walker. The two had separate interviews with Tom Ackerman in August, and they provided starkly different opinions on how to handle Walker, with Marmol saying Walker hit left-handers better than their current starting outfield — an untrue claim, as Lars Nootbaar and Brendan Donovan have superior numbers against southpaws — and Mozeliak stating that Walker had to play every day if he was going to be in the major leagues.

The conflicting opinions of Mozeliak and Marmol don't portend well for Marmol; fans only need to look back three years to see how "philosophical differences" with Mozeliak led the previous manager, Mike Shildt, to get the boot. If he and Marmol can't agree regarding Walker's use, Mozeliak may go a different direction and be forced to eat Marmol's contract.

The now frequently derided words of Bill DeWitt Jr., where he said that .500 baseball is not acceptable in St. Louis, are being put to the test. Mozeliak placed his trust in Marmol to handle the team through 2026, but the overall results and their opposing viewpoints don't paint a rosy picture for the future.

The Cardinals have been a mess over the past two seasons, and the front office deserves a significant portion of the blame. With Mozeliak likely in the chair for one more year, it's hard to see his tenure finishing on a high note. Maybe he has one more trick up his sleeve.