While clear that he missed October baseball this past season, St. Louis Cardinals Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. also remains optimistic about his team’s chances to win in 2017 and the method of putting that team together.

Get The Latest News!

Don't miss our top stories and need-to-know news everyday in your inbox.

“We try to compete every year,” said DeWitt during a Monday media session at the team’s Winter Warm-Up. “I think some clubs take a little different approach–they feel  like this is our window and they go all out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. When you go all out and you trade a bunch of kids for veterans or you use a lot of resources on free agents, you just do that–you use up resources.

Outfielder Dexter Fowler is now a member of the St. Louis Cardinals“I know there’s been talk about payroll recently, we do have a high payroll this year relative to the industry and the industry average, but in terms of how we utilize our resources, it’s not just about payroll.”

According to Baseball Prospectus, the Cardinals finished last season with a 40-man roster payroll of $178,298,756 million–which ranked 8th in MLB. They already have over $130 million on the books for 2017 and that doesn’t include the likes of Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha, who are headed to arbitration.

“We, this past year, spent a lot of money internationally,” pointed out DeWitt. “We felt like it was a window to exceed our cap–which is very punitive. You have to pay dollar for dollar for every dollar you spend over your cap. But we were in a position where there weren’t some of the bigger markets out there who can outbid you on any player you might want. We feel like we had a really good year in the international market and the year continues because it starts in the middle of summer and goes until the end of next June. We’ll continue to be aggressive in that marketplace.

“Again, those are investments we make for the future but ones we feel will payoff more so than other investments we might make. That’s the approach we’ve taken. We won 86 games, which is a winning season but not our goal–which is always to win 90+ and then we feel like we have a really good shot at the playoffs. If we can do that on a consistent basis, that’s what we’d like to do. We don’t want to have to get into a rebuild mode where we have to trade off good players, productive players for kids. We want our own players coming through the system.”

Article continues after sponsor message

St. Louis Cardinals introduce new pitcher Brett CecilBut with St. Louis missing the playoffs last season, the Chairman understands some unrest–especially when the rival Chicago Cubs are the ones who won the division and World Series.

“Cardinals fans I think support what we’ve done,” continued DeWitt. “We don’t hear a lot of ‘Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that?’ And they’re very supportive of how we’ve approached it. It’s played out pretty well over the years. If we can continue to do what we’ve done–and that is be in a position compete for a playoff spot, hopefully win a division, and hopefully go well beyond that and you have a chance to that every year or most years, I think that’s a pretty good goal.”

NO HACKING UPDATE…YET

–The time may finally be drawing near for a conclusion in the hacking incident involving former St. Louis Cardinals Scouting Director Chris Correa and the Houston Astros.

“I think, I expect and hope that it will play out before the start of Spring Training,” said DeWitt. “I know the goal is for the Commissioner was to get things completed by late January, hopefully early February at the latest. They’ve done a lot of work. They’ve done a lot of investigative work and they’ve reviewed everything that occurred in the federal procedures. At this point, I think they’re in pretty good shape with what’s going to get them to make a decision.”

The Cardinals conducted their own internal investigation which resulted in the termination of Correa from his position. He has since plead guilty and been sentenced to prison on five counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer.

“At this point, there’s nothing further that we plan to do internally,” said DeWitt. “We’ll react to what the Commissioner says and whatever punishment he imposes.”

photo credit:  Bill Greenblatt/UPI