John Mozeliak Farewell Press Conference

John Mozeliak Farewell Press Conference

and legacy with the organization. Um he’ll take questions tomorrow. He’ll be with you tomorrow when we do the introduction with him. But before we start with Mo, we’ll open with Mr. Bill Jr. Thanks, Bill. Thank you all for coming today. John Mosak has been a member of the Cardinals family since 1995. In fact, we arrived here at essentially the same time. Since 2008, he has been our president of baseball operations. Mo’s long-term positive impact on our team has been immeasurable. In his current role, he has led the team to 10 postseason appearances, three NLCS appearances, two World Series bursts, and a World Championship in 2011. I’ve personally enjoyed working closely with Mo over these many years and I will miss that day-to-day interaction. We wish him all the best in his next chapter and I can assure you he will always be welcome at Bush Stadium. Thank you, Mo. [Applause] Yeah, the day finally came, kids. Uh, first off, I just want to express my gratitude. Um, first to my wife, my daughter Ally, my son Will. I thank them. I love them. They’ve been amazing support to me. I want to thank my parents, my mother-in-law. They’ve been uh rocks in my life uh throughout. I want to thank Bill Dwit um and the ownership group. Bill and I have had a unique relationship. I believe it’s one that’s uh very special in the game. I learned a lot from him. I grew from him and I’m grateful for our time together. So, thank you to all the Cardinal employees. I’m so grateful for the relationships I have grown over the years. From the simple hells in the hallway to the concerns about the team on why someone’s not hitting, you are all amazing. to the baseball operations group. I cannot name you all, but I want to thank you guys for everything. You’re amazing. But I do want to name a few. Johnny Vu, your loyalty and friendship I am forever grateful for. Linda Brower, day in and day out, you are the glue of our operation. Gersh Moy Flo, thank you for your dedication and hard work over the years. To Gary Lorac, the late nights, early mornings, but you always answer the phone. To Ali, the entire coaching staff, the medical staff, the clubhouse staff, I thank you guys for everything you’ve done. To the players over the 30 years, made a lot of friends, saw guys come and go, but without them, we’re not a baseball team. To Brian Barto and your team, thank you for all the support over the years. To the writers, I know you guys probably didn’t think this was coming, but to the gentlemen I admired and who passed too soon, Rick Hmel, Joe Strauss, Brian Burwell, to past writers Bernie Nicholas, Jeff Gordon, and Ben Frederickson. to the current writers Derek Gould, Lynn Worthy, Ben Hawkman, and Daniel Guerrero, and to Katie Woo, John Denton, and Jeff Jones. Relationships with media can be strained, but at times I hope you all understood or realized that I understood the difficulties of your jobs. Over the years, I do know, or at least I hope there were more ups and downs, but that most of all, you felt like you were treated professionally and with respect. So, I thank you all. To some media personalities, Martin Kilcoin and Frank Kusamano. Thank you guys for the friendship over the years. Special shout out to Jim Hayes who’s been doing this for a long time, but I can honestly tell you and I speak for both players and staff. We’re very grateful for the great job he’s done over the years. I’ve been asked over the past year why step down. And to me, it became simple. I love this job, but I also knew it was time for a change. Trying to reinvent yourself every year can be challenging. The drum beat was getting louder, candidly, real loud, for a new voice, and I heard it. Speaking of change, I do believe it can be a good thing. Having a fresh voice, a different perspective, new ideas will be healthy for the St. Louis Cardinals. What does change mean for the St. Cardinals organization and above all what does it mean for our fans? The economic landscape of baseball has continued to shift over the past decade. How you build rosters looks completely different based on your market size. The ability for a small market team to be successful will require the following traits. Innovation. Never lose sight of your core principles and remain nimble and flexible in the ever fluent environment. And finally, I want to wish the new leadership team success. It’s been a pleasure working with him and surf over the past year and I wish them the best. 30 years is a long time. 18 in the seat is a long time. But it has been an honor and a privilege to do this in this great city of St. Louis. It is a baseball city. It is my home. And I think the future for this city and this team is bright. So, thank you. Questions, Jeffrey. Oh, was you prepared to walk outside of here, step outside of this, and look at this as an outsider, what’s your view of where the organization is today, where you’ve left it, and what the next thing is? Well, obviously, uh, when we look back at the past few years, we haven’t gotten to where we wanted to, right? Um, I think under Bilder Derwit and that ownership group, we always went into it trying to to get to October and and hopefully get to the World Series and win. Um, obviously, uh, you know, there’s only one winner every year. I think the past few years, um, we’ve had some some headwinds, um, when you think back to to just like, you know, the revenues have changed. Um, but overall I think where the minor league system is, it’s in a strong spot. I think, uh, we’ve had a couple strong drafts, which is certainly going to be helpful. I think our international department has, uh, done yman’s work, and I think you’ll start to see some of those returns in the future. So, you know, net net, I feel like, um, our systems in a pretty good spot. So, I would be optimistic. How do you balance your career with all the highs and How much of this business is it? What have you done for us lately? How how do you balance the the highs and the lows throughout your career? Um, well, there are a lot more highs and lows. So, I think that makes it easy to balance. Um, but it is a a demanding job and uh and I understood that, you know, when you think about the 30 clubs you can work for, not all are the St. Louis Cardinals and have the history of the St. Louis Cardinals. So, you know, I took a lot of pride in in us being successful. Took a lot of pride in us trying to be innovative and creative throughout the years. And um you know, did we get it? Were we 100% perfect? No. We made mistakes. We recognize that. But there is something to be said. If you’re not making mistakes, you might not be trying. So, you know, overall, when I look back at at these last 18 years or the 30 years, I do it with great great pride. piggy back on both of those questions. I know you’re you’re familiar with like the concept of Steuart and I’m wondering, you know, Bill mentioned all the things you accomplished. We all know what’s happened over the last few years. I wonder in your seat right now how you look back from where you got the position on Halloween night in 2007 to now, maybe behind the scenes, maybe in different details, how you feel you’ve left it better for the next person. Well, it’s, you know, I’m not up here to pat myself on the back, but I hope that the people I’ve worked with that I have had some positive influence on them. And, you know, obviously there’s going to be a new regime. There’s going to be changes and there’s going to be things done maybe differently than I may have done them, but that doesn’t make it right or wrong. Um, but that’s the ability to or the good thing to have that new voice. Um, you know, as I think back at my career and the people you’ve touched or the people that you were involved in, and there’s so many of them, but I I feel like I I when I look back at my career, I I hope the impact I made on them was something positive and lasting. Prior to the season starting, you made it very clear that the priority of this season was to hopefully answer questions going into years to come, especially with this current roster. Do you feel that you’ve accomplished that? And if so, what was answered? Yeah, probably not as clearly as we’d hoped. Right. Um, I think some players we were hoping to to little learn a little bit more about, but in the end, I think that’s the challenge of this off season and what really lies ahead in the future. And I I don’t want to get into what I think each player needs to do. I think that’s uh that’s him and his team and Oi have to like decide what that looks like. But, you know, I I do think the one that one takeaway I do have on this year was a lot of those younger players learned a lot. They had a drink from the fire hose. Maybe they didn’t make the the right adjustments or the adjustments soon enough, but hopefully they grow from that. Um, you know, when you get an opportunity to play every day, the co the goal is can you produce, can you post? And if you can do those two things, you can be in this game a long time. But if you’re not doing those two things, things can be difficult for you. And I think our players learned a lot from that this year. You uh you referenced some headwinds in the last few years. I think in the past you referenced how do you feel like what’s been challenge since that point? feel like you guys have handled that in terms of things. So like as you guys can imagine, we’ve always had just like a successful group of core players. um you know dating back to when the Cardinals first acquired Mark Maguire and then the emergence of Albert Padier Molina but at that same time we acquired Jim Edmond Scott Roland and then you fast forward to Matt Holiday and then the emergence of a Matt Carpenter and then acquiring Burkeman Beltran and then that led us into the Goldmid Aronado era. But what ended up happening in that time was, you know, the the elite player lost a step. And that’s the tough part to balance because, you know, we definitely felt like internally we were still producing a lot of those complimentary players, but we didn’t have the type of player that emerged as the next great. And when I reflect on this, I mean, I even go back to something like when Oscar Dvarus passed away and all of a sudden we had a pivot because we lost that future middle-ofthe-art order hitter that we thought we were going to have. Uh, and those are difficult challenges, but some of those headwinds are also what’s happening in our city. Um, with, you know, fans sometimes complain about parking, um, the safety, and these are all issues that have to be addressed as we continue to move forward. But I think, you know, with the investments that are happening downtown, I think everybody should be excited about where this city is headed. And so the Cardinals have always been successful, not because of our TV contract, but really from our fan base. And if we can get people to feel safe in wanting to come back down here again and re-engaged, I think that’s where the Cardinals will take that step forward. And as far as like the infrastructure of what’s happening with the the baseball operation specifically, um they’re going to be positioned well. Smart group of guys working upstairs. They understand where they need to go, what they need to accomplish. And um from that standpoint, now that I put my fan hat on, I’m excited about the future. Just kind of this year, how different was your able to do baseball just yeah my hands were tied really no I’m kidding um it was it was fairly normal uh you know my my interactions with with him surf on what was happening on the player development side you know we had a standing meeting every Monday so kept in the loop I did not spend a lot of time traveling to minor league cities like I’ve done for the last 17 years but um that’s why I have confidence in directionally where this is going. Um, but as far as like the day-to-day, I was still very much involved and kind of did my normal job. Big question is what am I going to do tomorrow? Right. That’s the stress. Mo, uh, from the day you were hired until now, can you share some insight into how building a baseball team, just the business of being in the front office has changed, evolved? Sure. Um, I guess you’re asking me to go back to always our, you know, 1993. Um, payrolls were much different. Um, I think free agents were were paid on what they did, not what they might do. Um, collectively the draft had unlimited rounds, so you could take a lot of shots on goal, if you will. And but what’s changed is just the economic landscape of the game. And I think what’s happening right now in baseball is you’re starting to see a wider and wider spread of the halves and have nots. And so if you’re not part of the halves, then you got to be really really smart on how you start strategically thinking about roster building. And so, you know, under Bill Dwit, you can think back to like 1998, you know, when we draft or 1997 when we drafted Rick Ankiel and 28 other teams passed on him at the time and we took a shot. And so, Bill always had us thinking about drafting and development. And I think over the 30 years, I think we did a pretty good job at that. And now it’s what more can you squeeze out of that orange as you try to get more on the margins. And I think you look at teams right now that are successful that aren’t large market teams, i.e. Milwaukee. They’re doing a really good job at that. And that’s what we need to replicate. Thank you. I’ll preface this with hindsight is of course 2020, but when you came into this year, you made it clear that the intent was still to win, but there might be some organization decisions that prioritized player and development over winning that particular game. When you look at how the National League playoff picture ultimately shaked out, is it hard to stomach that or is confident that this is the right thing to do for the organization? You know, I was like reflecting back on this season last night. Um, and you think about like close games you lose or or games you give up in the ninth or in the extra innings. And that’s why like as a manager, as a coach, you’re always trying to impress upon players like everything does matter because it might not feel like it at that given moment, but it does. And when you finish three or four games out of something or you go into the final series finally being eliminated, it just shows you how close these margins are. And I don’t regret anything we did this year in the sense of of we knew it was going to be, you know, difficult to try to thread this needle. Um, you know, if you’re looking at hindsight, would it have been smarter to try to trade some of the players that we ended up trading in the offseason? But we wanted to give our fan base some level of hope. We wanted to try to see if a couple guys did click and get hot. And you know, unfortunately, we did come up short. Remember 22 you told me in St. Louis, you’re not allowed to rebuild, that you have to keep building on the fly. With the way it went downhill in 23, looking back, would you have done it any differently as far as starting a major rebuild in 23 as opposed to trying to keep it together? Um, I think You know, the the the unique thing about the role I had with the Cardinals is we never tried to rebuild. Um, you know, the words you may hear tomorrow might be different, but that’s for them to speak. But in terms of regrets, I don’t have any. Well, along the lines of what you reflecting back on this season, when you got to the trade deadline, the team was 55 and 55, right? when you could you give us a window into the decision at that point because if you’re looking for the holistic view of the organization you make the trades but you also had the pressure of knowing these were your final weeks and the brand of the Cardinals. How did you weigh those? What kind of discipline and what kind of influence was on the factor that you directly influence what followed by trading? Yeah, obviously we made trades, right? Um, and arguably you could have said we could have done more, but we were still trying to thread that needle as best we could. Um, and I and the irony is I do think like the bullpen stepped up when we, you know, lost some arms, but I think from an offensive standpoint, the consistency on a day in and dayout basis just became too much for us. And, you know, I think back to that, I think it was the right decision to do what we did. I think uh the acquisitions of some of the young talent we receive is going to be bode well for for the organization. Um and ultimately uh you know future roster decisions is up to a different group. But as far as uh trying to always do what’s right for the organization is always something that’s been in the back of my mind. Is there anything that been done in that stretch that you would have added? Uh not really because we were never offered anything that was that compelling for X Y or Z. that exist now in the way that it’s a little more stratified than maybe it was 20 years ago. How do you reflect on your role in that? The front office in Houston, for example, was for a long time staff by people who came out of this organization. I think Michael is talking right now in Baltimore. Do you do you reflect on that at all? Do you look at yourself as a person who maybe was somewhat the genesis of the way of some of those things happened? Well, I definitely think um you know, my experience and what I was exposed to um added to a more modern game of baseball as far as decision making, but I think like as far as like the halves and have nots, no. Um we’ve always tried to figure out a way to just keep up and you know that’s always been the challenge and it’ll be challenges in the future as well. But as far as like some of the people I worked with along the way, I mean those those are all really smart people and you know creative and innovative and now they’re running other teams. You imagine yourself running another team someday and when you talk to friends around the game and you tell them no that they believe you. To answer your question, I I don’t envision myself doing that. um have some connection to the game at some point possibly, but I I do think for the next couple months, I’d really like to just catch my breath and step away. Well, you mentioned the notion of maybe could have even gone a little bit further down more around the trade deadline. How much of the decision process this season was with a pretty heavy mindset on not wanting to make long range implication type of decisions? You mentioned a number of times like for the next group of tournament. How much did that play into potentially even going back to the offse and the way that you guys wanted to handle roster decisions this year? It was something in the back of my mind. But again, if we thought there was a right play to do something, we would have done it. U but there was just not enough uh it wasn’t compelling enough to say yes to. What are you doing? Nothing. The next few months. I mean, do you have an idea in place? There’s some projects still to be finished around here. Will you see any of those to completion? I I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Um, we’ll see. wish you well. You gave us a lot of memories. So, thank you. Well, thank you. Appreciate you guys. Cheers. [Applause] Thank you everyone. That concludes today’s press conference.

John Mozeliak discusses his tenure in St. Louis with the media.