Mozeliak on Trade vs FA

(Busch Stadium) Taking a break between the phone calls and other business of off-season business, St. Louis Cardinals General Manager John Mozeliak welcomed St. Louis Baseball Weekly into his office this week for an extended conversation on a variety of topics.

Here are some of the highlights of the first half of the conversation…

Are the Cardinals still fact finding or already engaged in trade/free agent negotiations?

“It’s a little of both,” answered Mozeliak. “Last week, at the GM Meetings we spent a lot of time trying to understand what the free agent market and the trade market landscape would look like, clearly, they’re not independent of one another so there’s a lot of fluidity if you will with it. So as we sort of explore what we could do on the free agent market, we’re trying to balance that with how we could improve this club via trade. Clearly, my takeaway from last week was when you look at the trade market as a whole, there’s no on team or two teams that are clearly just saying ‘we’re blowing it up’ and so there’s sort of some uncertainty on how you could actually approach this and get better.

“But, I can tell you that myself and my staff we’re actively looking at everything and I think that as we get through the Thanksgiving holiday, you could see some movement between now and then, but I would imagine the following week and when we enter the Winter Meetings you’re probably going to see the most activity throughout the game.”

Using pitcher Jaime Garcia as an example, Mozeliak explained the many directions the Cardinals could go this off-season.

“A lot of people have been speculating, are you going to trade him or not?,” he began. “The answer is we don’t know. But having him be on our roster right now has value and in terms of what we end up doing, it’s hard to say. There are some scenarios where you could see us maybe moving a different pitcher and then having Jaime on our rotation moving forward, but there are scenarios too where I could envision us just simply trading him for something that could either help our club or maybe add a prospect to our system. We’re really open to everything but as far as we sit here in mid-November, we don’t have a concrete path we’re walking down–we have multiple different strategies that are in play and I think probably in the next 4-6 weeks, we’ll see how they play out.”

Noting the role David Price could’ve filled not just in terms of production on the mound, but in also taking the leadership torch from Adam Wainwright down the road, is that sort of pitcher on the Cardinals radar?

“I think it’s a great observation,” said Mozeliak. “I think it’s something that you have to be cognizant of. I think the good news for us right now is we still have Adam Wainwright and he’s not going away anytime soon. So it’s not as if we have to attack this as something that has to be done now but to be thinking about what we want to see the club to look like in 2019-2020, you would certainly like to see someone become that next leader.

“I think the success of this organization has always been based on a quality clubhouse, a tight clubhouse, a disciplined clubhouse and certainly we don’t want to sort of fall prey to not following through with that and so even though I don’t feel it’s on the forefront of something we have to focus on this year, it’s certainly something we have to consider.”

“I don’t see a scenario where that would happen this year, but again, there’s lot of things that could happen between now and the time we get to Spring Training,” added Mozeliak.

Keeping the conversation nameless and faceless, Mozeliak also updated the status of the team’s pursuit of a new outfielder.

“The good news for us, Grichuk gives us a lot of flexibility,” said Mozeliak. “It really just depends on what we end up doing in terms of how the market plays out. I would feel–or at least, I would think we’re a pretty desirable place to be for someone to end up here, so my hope is it’s something that we will focus on. It’s something that we will definitely pursue.”

“We’re also exploring what we might be able to do on the trade market there as well. The difference between trade versus free agent is purely money versus talent and so my preference would be to try and keep as much talent as possible in our system.”

Could Stephen Piscotty move to left field?

“I think Piscotty, in my mind, profiles very well in right–like his arm strength, like his ability to play out there. Do not want to see this were it’s overly-evolving if you will, where we’re moving too many pieces. For me, just the simple move will be to find a centerfielder or find a leftfielder without over-complicating it.”

photo credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports, Bill Greenblatt/UPI