This offseason has revealed a concerning reality about the St. Louis Cardinals. Once considered among the elite teams in baseball, the organization now struggles to produce homegrown stars and has slipped into mediocrity.
Several factors have contributed to the Cardinals’ decline. The team has taken cost-cutting steps since COVID, reduced its coaching staff, prioritized spending on the major-league roster over player development, and lagged behind other organizations in technology. These issues have led to a gradual, steady decline.
For years, the Cardinals have had to trade prospects for star players or sign expensive free agents to fill rotation spots that could have been occupied by homegrown talent. Former prospects like Randy Arozarena, Zac Gallen, and Sandy Alcantara have flourished with other teams, while the Cardinals have seen mixed results from players like Jason Heyward, Marcell Ozuna, Paul Goldschmidt, and Nolan Arenado.
Cardinals’ president of baseball operations, John Mozeliak, attributes the organization’s downturn to a specific moment: the tragic death of Oscar Taveras on October 26, 2014, at just 22 years old.
In an interview with Martin Kilcoyne, Mozeliak reflected on the Cardinals’ past dominance. Between 2011 and 2014, the team reached the National League Championship four consecutive times and claimed a World Series title. During that period, they were considered a model of success in both player development and team performance.
John Mozeliak identified Oscar Taveras’s passing, an incident that had many ramifications, as that moment.
John Mozeliak reflects on how the tragic loss of Oscar Taveras marked a turning point for the Cardinals. Taveras was expected to be a cornerstone player, filling the gap left by Albert Pujols. After his untimely passing, the Cardinals faced a void in their lineup that they attempted to fill through trades and acquisitions. They first dealt top pitching prospect Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins to acquire All-Star outfielder Jason Heyward, but when Heyward left for the Cubs, they pursued further trades for Marcell Ozuna, Paul Goldschmidt, and Nolan Arenado in an effort to find a franchise cornerstone.
While Taveras’s passing was a critical blow to the team’s future plans, the Cardinals have continued to develop highly-ranked prospects such as Alex Reyes, Jack Flaherty, Nolan Gorman, Dylan Carlson, and Masyn Winn, though none have yet reached Taveras’s anticipated impact level. Jordan Walker shows promise, while JJ Wetherholt and Quinn Mathews appear as the organization’s next rising stars.
However, the Cardinals’ struggles run deeper than Taveras’s loss alone. A series of issues have contributed to their decline, including inconsistent player development, questionable trades, poor free-agent contracts, technological shortfalls, and the fallout from the 2018 Astros hacking scandal involving Chris Correa. Mozeliak sees Taveras’s death as a significant factor in the Cardinals’ downturn, but it’s clear that a broader set of challenges has impacted the organization’s trajectory.
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