Grading the St. Louis Cardinals offseason using 3 different perspectives

It's not often that the St. Louis Cardinals offseason is effectively eight months long.

Since the Cardinals were arguably out of contention in June and officially waved the white flag on the 2023 season in July, all eyes have been on the 2024 for some time now.

There were pretty big expectations set on the club going into the offseason to turn the ship around. Yes, there was plenty of talent already on the roster, but the clear deficiencies on the pitching side of things created a massive to-do list for the Cardinals' front office. They came into the offseason wanting to add three starting pitchers, two established relievers, and some more pitching depth on top of that.

They achieved each of those things, leading to some pretty solid grades from most national outlets:

USA Today: B-

The Athletic: C

FOX Sports: B

While the national outlets seem to rate the Cardinals offseason somewhere between average and good, the feeling around St. Louis seems wide-ranging. Some believe the offseason has been a complete failure and the club is destined to fail again, while others have been really excited about the team they've put together. Most fans fall somewhere in between.

Now that Spring Training games are underway, I wanted to give my final offseason grade for the Cardinals, but I wanted to add two other perspectives as well. While the third grade you'll see here is my overall opinion of the offseason, I thought it was too important to acknowledge two other realities as well.

The first grade I'll give is based on the expectations that many of us had going into the offseason. While some fairly doubted the Cardinals' ability to make splashy moves, they were certainly talking the talk in a way they had before (you can see my points on why their rhetoric was different from prior offseasons here), but they ultimately underwhelmed many of us.

The second grade I gave was based on the constraints that ownership gave the front office. While Bill DeWitt III started the offseason with a promise that they would "climb in the payroll rankings", it became clear as the months went on that the payroll they were giving John Mozeliak to work with was much lower than most of us thought.

And finally, the third grade I'll give is my official grade, the one that factors in all of those realities and grades the Cardinals based on the totality of the offseason, which is a reflection on both ownership and the front office.

Here are my grades based from those perspectives and my official grade for the St. Louis Cardinals' offseason.

Based on expectations: C

I was tempted to make this grade even lower, but the way the Cardinals constructed their bullpen as well as some of their front-office additions were too impressive for me to grade them much lower, even with how disappointing the overall rotation rebuild was.

Let's start with the rotation. It always felt like Sonny Gray was going to be a Cardinal, so there was no surprise there. In all honesty, Gray continues to go under the radar amongst many fans with just how good he is. I am a huge fan of the move for him and can't wait to see him on the mound for St. Louis this season. Gray has the potential to put up the best individual season from a Cardinals' starter since Jack Flaherty's electric 2019 run.

But it was the two starting pitchers the Cardinals signed before Gray that really frustrated many who follow the club. While the additions of Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson have grown on me and I'll explain so later in my grades, grabbing both of those guys instead of adding another front-line starter to pair with Gray was a massive whiff from the Cardinals. Again, I like what both Lynn and Gibson can provide the Cardinals, but with Steven Matz and Miles Mikolas taking up the other two rotation spots, the Cardinals really needed two of the three starters they acquired to be high upside.

While talks of Yoshinobu Yamamoto were real according to people like Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat, the Cardinals ultimately folded from the conversation as the prices skyrocketed. Tyler Glasnow was someone they apparently called about, but the Dodgers gave up a ton of trade capital to acquire him. Talks of a potential Dylan Cease or Jesus Luzardo trade have continued, but the White Sox and Marlins seem to have their asking prices too high.

Still, other names like Eduardo Rodriguez, Shota Imanaga, and Marcus Stroman were available to sign. Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery are still available. And yet, the Cardinals appear to be done adding to their rotation.

Still, the Cardinals went out and made a lot of really promising additions to their bullpen mix this offseason. Keynan Middleton and Andrew Kittredge are two veteran arms who can play high-leverage roles for the club. Riley O'Brien, Nick Robertson, and Ryan Fernandez have really interesting upsides as well. Many thought the Cardinals may cut corners when it came to bullpen targets, and yet, they seemed to be really aggressive and shrewd with those moves.

That may be at least in part due to the hiring of a new front office advisor, Chaim Bloom, who was a home run move this offseason. Bloom, who was let go from his role running baseball operations for the Red Sox, is one of the most well-respected executives in the game today and was a huge part of building the Rays' pitching development infrastructure, something the Cardinals desperately need to replicate. He's also someone who has a long history of identifying under-the-radar arms, hence why four of the relievers the Cardinals acquired have ties to Bloom in their career.

Bloom may be the heir to Mozeliak's leadership in St. Louis, and that alone may be the best move the Cardinals made this offseason. On top of that, the Cardinals poached an exciting executive on the business side of things from the Toronto Blue Jays and added another advisor to the mix who you may have heard of before, Yadier Molina.

While the overall rotation moves may be closer to a C- or a D+, the bullpen and front office additions are much closer to a B+ or A-. Based on expectations, I have to say this was a pretty average offseason. There was so much more they could have done, but instead, they settled for some safer upgrades.

Based on payroll constraints: B+

Now here's the second reality. Yes, it's John Mozeliak's job to lobby with ownership to have a higher payroll, but at the end of the day, he cannot control the final number. That's on the Bill DeWitt Jr. to set for the club. And frankly, given the limited budget the Cardinals had compared to what we thought they would be working with, they made quite a bit of moves.

Before I get into payroll numbers, let me preface by saying the Cardinals do not release their official books, so all we really have to work off of with these numbers is great reporting from people who cover the team and the contract details released this offseason.

The Cardinals' Opening Day payroll for 2023 was right around $178 million. As of today, their Opening Day payroll for 2024 sits around $171 million, about a $7 million decrease from last season. While we don't know the exact numbers, it's at least clear that they did not take a major step forward like they indicated they would, and although some of that falls on Mozeliak's shoulders, it's far more likely that this is around the number that ownership gave him to spend this offseason.

The Cardinals' payroll entering the offseason was somewhere between $136 million and $141 million including their projected arbitration numbers. That means Mozeliak has been allowed to spend between $30 million to $35 million this offseason in his pursuit of three starting pitchers, two established relievers, and other pitching depth.

The Cardinals were able to free up some cash by backloading Gray's contract as well as non-tendering and trading away some pieces, but the expectation this offseason is that Mozeliak would have somewhere between $50 million and $70 million to work with and see their payroll somewhere between $185 million and $200 million come Opening Day.

If the front office was given that kind of budget to work with and settled for this kind of offseason, that would be a disaster on the part of Mozeliak. I just highly doubt he decided on his own to spend $20 million to $40 million less than DeWitt allowed him to. Given the constraints the Cardinals' front office was given by ownership, I think they had a really productive offseason.

Again, this is considering the budget that is self-imposed by ownership. This grade is purely looking at the offseason moves with that as the imposed reality, because that's what the front office had to work with. We can talk all day about how ownership needs to spend more, and they do, but unless they say they'll cut the checks, Mozeliak can't spend more than he is given.

So with that in mind, getting one front-line starter and two innings-eating veterans while also overhauling the bullpen with upside arms is a really nice offseason in my opinion. Again, it's less than we were expecting, but if we all came into the offseason knowing that payroll would go down instead of go up, I think we'd be pretty impressed by the haul the front office acquired (again, not defending ownership's spending habits, just giving props to the front office for making something out of the expired lemons they were given).