The Chris Moeller Archives

September Song/One hasn't got time for the waiting game

I wish I could share in some Cardinals fans' satisfaction with the "overachieving" hometown team this year, but as a full-time rooter and part-time financial contributor, I feel like I got taken to the cleaners. Tony LaRussa, his staff, and the players at his disposal did enjoy a nice season, almost to the man, but I never saw 2008 as a rebuilding year. In modern baseball, for a team with the Cardinals' bountiful resources, there should never, ever be a rebuilding year.

Management's curious new commitment to sacrificing its short-term success for the sake of developing the long-elusive flourishing farm system is nothing more than a public relations fraud designed to hold down payroll. The Cardinals have had a subpar farm system for a decade and more, and still the team managed to participate in 61 post-season games in the 7-year stretch of 2000 to 2006. This is because they have the financial resources to go out and purchase (or deal for) proven players that know how to succeed on a baseball field at the big league level.

The new build-from-within model is all a ruse by the team's ownership group to keep player salaries down and to ride-- upon the backs of hard-working Cardinals fans-- all the way to the bank. There's been a gradual, systematic dismantling of the team that surrounds the Great Pujols from the time the owners got their new stadium on the fast track early in the decade. The payroll has remained virtually unchanged for the last three years despite the shiny new ballpark, the auctioning off of even the shit that was bolted down at the old park, the nearly annual sharing in of Major League Baseball's post-season television pot of gold, and booming profits from online advertising and subscription access to radio and television broadcasts. They've bought up the radio station that originates the game broadcasts and now three of their minor league franchise affiliates.

It was obvious to all that the 2008 Cardinals had one glaring weakness-- their bullpen-- that was going to sabotage the whole season, but the front office followed up an inactive off-season with an even more inactive trade deadline period. The post-season was ripe for the picking, as we see now with the Brewers having fired their manager on the brink of another September stumble, and the Mets-- with their Billy Wagner-less bullpen surrendering 14 runs in its last 5 games-- having dropped three in a row and resurrecting painful memories of last year's epic collapse. The Cardinals, by all rights, should be right there to vulture into the playoffs, but instead they've lost 12 of 16 games since August 27th, finally giving out under the weight of 30 blown saves for the season, four shy of the highest total recorded by any team since 1969.

Oh, but who could have predicted all of these late season injuries? It doesn't take a wizard. Every team needs reinforcements late in the year. The last impact player the Cardinals picked up at the trade deadline was Larry Walker in 2004, and the team followed that move by sprinting into the World Series that October. In those heady days, the annual July 31st trade deadline was like Christmas morning for Cardinals fans. It was Mark McGwire arriving in 1997, Will Clark in 2000, Woody Williams in 2001, Scott Rolen in 2002, and Walker in '04. Then the strategy inexplicably shifted, and what do we see? The 2006 club, despite its October spark, went 12-17 during the month of September, the '07 club 13-18, and this year's team 4-9.

Was fixing the bullpen ever a priority this year? Apparently not if it meant parting with any one of 6 to 8 minor leaguers deemed untouchable by GM/yes man John Mozeliak. The old Cardinals front office, with Walt Jocketty at the throttle, would have dealt for a pending free agent stud closer like Brian Fuentes and plugged up that hole-- then for good measure signed the left-hander to a multi-year deal before he was allowed to hit the off-season free agent market. The Jocketty Cardinals were the team in the division that always landed a CC Sabathia-level impact player. Now they watch Milwaukee make the biggest splash, and the 2007 AL Cy Young Award winner, acquired in exchange for an assemblage of minor-leaguers, has responded by going 9-0, with six complete games and three shutouts in just 13 starts for the Brewers (entering tonight).

What do the Cardinals hope to achieve from this new philosophy? What wasn't working before that required this radical paradigm shift? Do they anticipate a more successful, extended run than they've already experienced over the last decade? Would I have traded a "blue-chip" prospect like Colby Rasmus to get a proven slugger like Matt Holliday? I would have traded Colby Rasmus to get Mark Grudzielanek.

After tonight's loss, the Cardinals find themselves losers of six in a row, just six games above .500, and trailing three teams in the division-- Chicago, Milwaukee, and Houston-- with a combined zero championships in the last 99 years. It's infuriating.

But kudos to the manager-- "not a long-range thinker" by his own description-- for calling out his bosses last week. The inactivity by the Bill DeWitt front office this year was a direct slap at the collection of players that did so much to overachieve for five months. It's obvious now there was never any commitment to 2008 coming from upstairs. A feisty and competitive bunch on the field kept the club in contention, but it never mattered. The division and the playoffs were conceded from the very beginning. If the Cubs take the series this year while the Cardinals are in the middle of this counterfeit rebuild, the entire front office-- Chairman DeWitt down to the lowliest accountant in the finance department-- should have his or her ankles and wrists confined in stocks on the grounds of the Jefferson Expansion Memorial for the duration of winter.

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Who could have predicted the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage crises? Ralph did.

posted by CM @ 8:27 PM