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The Cardinals have signed their general manager John Mozielak to a two-year extension, pushing the end of his contract back to 2018. Will we have figured out what the Cardinals Way means by then?
After two Baseball America Organization of the Year awards, two National League pennants and a World Series championship in six years, Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak has been rewarded with a two-year extension to his current contract, which now runs through 2018. Whether or not Mozeliak leads the best organization by anyone's standard other than Baseball America's depends entirely on how you define "best", however.
For some, the best organization is simply the one left standing last at the end of each season, something that only the Red Sox have rivaled the Cardinals in over the last decade and a half -- all of which have involved Mozeliak, who's been with the Redbirds for 19 years. With three World Series appearances since 2004 -- including two losses against those very same Red Sox -- and another NLCS appearance to boot, the Cardinals have been as successful as any team could possibly ask for.
If you're measuring things by innovation, however, it's a common perception that only small-market teams lead the pack, leaving mid-market teams like the Cards far behind in rudimentary measures like "wins per dollar spent". Because the Rays and A's have such a small margin for error, it forces them to become lean, mean, sabermetric-ing machines. This has developed into an intense focus on things like efficiently allocating resources, acquiring skill sets the market has undervalued and managing service time for their homegrown stars. It has also lead to a great deal of success, and it is usually the most common attribute associated with either squad.
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But it's not as though either team has a stranglehold on any of this, especially in the field of analytics. While number crunching is not commonly associated with the infamous "Cardinals Way", even the team's Director of Scouting Dan Kantrovitz has a master's degree in statistics (from Harvard.) And because of Mozeliak's direction -- along with his hiring prowess -- the organization itself relies heavily on their RedBirdDog scouting report system in order to function as a single organism from top to bottom. Like their World Series rivals, the Red Sox, St. Louis has figured out the perfect balance of building internally and shoring up deficiencies externally by using the techniques of yesterday and today.
This has lead to one of the best farm systems in the majors -- even managing to stay in the top ten after moving nearly all of their best prospects to the majors in a single season -- and one of the game's best young prospects in Oscar Taveras. It's also the reason that the team has the third youngest roster in the majors, with only one starting position player -- outfielder Matt Holliday -- older than 31.
None of this youth movement might have been possible, however, if the Cardinals also didn't have a bit of luck. That would, of course, be their inability to re-sign future Hall of Fame slugger Albert Pujols to a lengthy contract when the player tested free agency two seasons ago. Pujols would have likely provided the double whammy of performing far below his salary and blocking the development of players like Allen Craig, David Freese and Matt Adams by causing a logjam at first base.
Although the team has never been able to spend like the Yankees or the Dodgers, that hasn't stopped it from at least keeping up with the Joneses in the rest of MLB. While they've mostly kept their payroll in the range of 10-15th highest in the league, they've also stayed within striking distance of all but the most enormous of team budgets for much of that time.
All of this has added up to an insanely successful team with Mozeliak at the helm. He, among other things, helped developed the analytical system, resurrected the team's terrible farm system and didn't offer Pujols significantly more than he was worth. He's done this by learning to comfortably straddle the line between the chaos of innovation and the stability of tradition , all while operating like a small market team with what's essentially a big market team's budget.
And that's why, no matter which way you mean it, Mozeliak is one of the best.