Bernie’s Redbird Review: DeWitt Is Looking To The Future To Take The Cardinals Back To Their Distinguished Past.

BERNIE’S REDBIRD REVIEW

I want to write about the Cardinals’ future and frame it in a way that gives us a better understanding of why their new approach makes sense.

This grew into a much longer column … sorry ! … but I will try to make it easier to read by parsing it out in more digestible “Bird Bytes” that break up the long stream of words. I find that to be a better reading experience. I just wanted to explain. And in advance, please pardon my typos.

Thank you. Let’s get started …

1. If you’re still wondering why Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. signed off on the hiring of Chaim Bloom to conduct a forensic examination of the failed and outdated St. Louis player development and farm systems, then let’s dig into it.

2. Before I do that, keep in mind that Bloom had a master-class education in the Tampa Bay front office. And Bloom’s first hire in St. Louis was to recruit Rob Cerfolio to oversee the farm system. Cerfolio pitched for former St. Louis pitcher John Stupor and became a rising-star baseball ops guy in Cleveland. Tampa Bay and Cleveland have small payrolls, and it isn’t easy for those teams to trade punches with the big spenders. But the Rays and Guardians have regularly outperformed their low-level payroll rankings – and they often do this by a lot. And they limited-spending clubs get it down because they are outstanding at drafting and developing players – also also harvesting talent from the international markets.

3. The Cardinals must stop wasting money on stupid player/payroll decisions that go bad. This has been a terrible problem. And the problem exists because the front office has frequently been in the scramble mode to spend money on players, especially pitchers, to cover the shortfalls in home-grown talent. The Cardinals must get back to being what they used to be under chairman Bill DeWitt Jr: an organization that excels in the critically important area of drafting-developing-cultivating talent. Especially starting pitching. That’s become a debilitating weakness for the Cardinals over the last 10 seasons or so. This has to change, or the Cardinals will continue to teeter and disappoint. And DeWitt, finally, is getting back to his roots. He believes strongly in player development – which made it even more confusing for me to see BDJ let this area deteriorate.

4. The Redbirds have missed making the playoffs more times (5) than they’ve qualified for the postseason (4) over the last nine seasons. There are a lot of reasons for this, of course, but faulty starting pitching is near the top of the list. Another root cause is this team’s chronically inferior offense, which has finished 10th or worse among the 15 National League teams in runs per game in five of the past six seasons. And going back a ways. The Cardinals’ last homegrown All-Star position player was Paul DeJong. The last homegrown STL starting pitcher to be selected to an All-Star team was Carlos Martinez in 2017 – and he only became a Cardinal because Boston screwed up by signing “El Gallo” to a entry-level contract that MLB voided because of his contract due to discrepancies over his name and date of birth. Before that, the last internally developed All-Star starting pitcher was Michael in 2015.

5. Excellent starting pitching can compensate for a mediocre offense. If you can’t score a ton of runs, then you’d better put together a starting rotation (and bullpen) that’s pretty damn rigid at preventing runs.

6. Given their Tampa Bay and Cleveland training, I am intrigued by what Bloom and Cerfolio (and others) can do for the Cardinals. An enlightened understanding of payroll value for the dollar can go a long way in leveling the competitive field shared by the big-spending teams, and the small-market, coupon-clipping teams that (a) grow their own produce at home, and (b) specialize in finding high-value bargains while browsing the free-agent market or inspecting pitchers that have been designated for assignment by other teams.

7. I mentioned this in a recent video at YouTube, but here it is again: over the past 10 seasons the Cardinals have had an average payroll ranking of 11. Contrast that to Cleveland (23rd) and Tampa Bay (28th), two teams that don’t have nearly as much payroll muscle as St. Louis. Since the start of the 2015 campaign, the Cardinals have spent $150 million more on payroll than Cleveland, and have funded payrolls that cost $350 million more than Tampa Bay’s roster over the last 10 years.

8. Despite having a huge advantage in attendance and revenue and financial clout than the Rays and Guardians, the Cardinals have won fewer regular-season and postseason games than Tampa Bay and Cleveland since 2015. The Guardians and Rays each made the World Series one time from 2016 through 2020 … and the Cardinals haven’t competed in a World Series since 2013. How in the world can the Cardinals have less success than Tampa Bay and Cleveland over the last 10 years? Answer: mediocre player development, and too many strikeouts when spending money in an attempt to cover for player-development failures. It’s a formula that truly can damage a team.

9. One area is starting pitching. Over the last 10 seasons the Rays rank No. 3 among 30 MLB teams in starting-pitching ERA, and the Guardians are right there with them at No. 4. The Cardinals are No. 8.

10. In starting-pitching Wins Above Replacement (WAR) over the last 10 seasons, the Guardians ranked 4th, the Rays were 5th and the Cardinals were 9th. Now, don’t me wrong; being ranked eighth or ninth in starting-pitching performance over a 10-season stretch is no cause for embarrassment. But that isn’t the point.

11. According to the salary-tracking site Spotrac, here’s what each of the three teams have invested in starting pitching for the major-league roster over the past 10 seasons. And I included the average starting-pitcher (SP) payroll ranking during the 10-year accounting.

St. Louis:   $384 million, SP payroll average 9.8
Tampa Bay:  $161 million, SP payroll average 22nd
Cleveland:  $135 million, SP payroll average 23rd

Yes. That’s right. Since the start of the 2015 season, the Cardinals have spent $223 million more on starting pitching than Tampa Bay, and $249 million more on starting pitching than Cleveland.

And despite that extra-large payroll advantage over the last 10 seasons, the Cardinals have won fewer regular-season and postseason games than the Rays and Guardians, have not made a World Series (unlike the Rays and Guardians) and rank behind the Rays and Guards in starting-pitching ERA and starting-pitching WAR. Good grief.

12. There’s more. The Cardinals haven’t had a pitcher win an NL Cy Young award since Chris Carpenter in 2005. Before that, the last Cy Young was earned by the immortal Bob Gibson in 1970. Now think about that for a few seconds before I drop another meaningful fact on you … OK, are you ready?

Since 2012, Cleveland and Tampa Bay have combined to produce six American League Cy Young winners: David Price, Blake Snell, CC Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Corey Kluber and Shane Bieber. The scorecard for Cy Young award winners in either league over the last 13 seasons: Cleveland 4, Tampa Bay 2, St. Louis 0.

13. Not only that, but over the last 10 seasons the Guardians and Rays have scored more runs than the Cardinals.

14.  And yet despite all of this evidence, whenever I write or talk about how the Cardinals would be wise to emulate Cleveland and Tampa Bay in terms of drafting and developing and pitchers and position players, I always get blowback from a percentage of Cards fans who for some bizarre reason seem offended by the opinion. It usually goes something like this:

15. The Cardinals should emulate the Rays and Guardians? How many World Series have those teams won, Bernie? Why should the Cardinals emulate Tampa Bay and Cleveland? Don’t you know that in St. Louis, our standard is winning world championships! And you tell us we’re supposed to look to Tampa Bay and Cleveland to learn something about winning?

16. First answer: Tampa Bay came into existence in 1998 and the Rays haven’t won a World Series. No wonder. Teams with mini-sized payrolls are at a significant historical disadvantage in the pursuit of World Series titles but can still outperform financially empowered teams like the Cardinals over a long period of time. The Guardians haven’t won a World Series since 1948 … but no apologies are necessary. Over the last 10 years the Guardians have made the playoffs six times, and the Rays and the Cardinals have done it five times each.

17. My second answer: YES. The Cardinals can benefit from emulating the player-development model of the two brilliant organizations. And they should emulate the payroll-efficiency (re: no waste) demonstration because those two teams have been more successful than the Cardinals over the last 10 years. And those teams are doing so with meager, measly payrolls. And those teams are producing Cy Young-caliber pitchers. And they somehow find a way to hire better managers and coaches than St. Louis. No excuse for that.

18. So yeah … you are damn right – the Cardinals can learn a lot from the way the Guardians and Rays do their business in constructing rosters that can pitch well, and hit well and cult slight competitive advantages that make a positive difference. Analytics can be highly effective for teams that care about them, invest in them, and know how to use them. That’s Cleveland. That’s Tampa Bay. That isn’t St. Louis.

19. And if we’re talking about the World Series, sure the Cardinals get to brag because of their distinguished historical track record that cannot be matched by Cleveland and Tampa Bay. But the Cardinals haven’t been in a Fall Classic for 11 consecutive seasons. They haven’t won a World Series since 2011.

20. But if we’re counting World Series trophies in comparing the Cardinals, Rays and Guardians … Well, what the heck does that have to do with the last 10 years or so?

21. Are you really trying to tell me that the Cardinals – right now, and for the last 10 years – can flash World Series titles from 1926, 1931, 1934, 1942, 1946, 1964, 1982, 2006 and 2011 to “prove” that they’re superior to small-market teams that have outperformed them for more than a decade?

That’s laughable. I didn’t know that a case of World Series trophies can be transported into the future to hold up high and give you a free pass to an automatic spot in the playoffs and a guaranteed place in the World Series. I must have missed that.

22. The irony? Cardinals fans (some of them) who are so snotty about being inferior to the Rays and Guardians are obviously failing to recognize something: the arrogance, complacency and the desire to tout past achievements is EXACTLY what Bill DeWitt Jr. and John Mozeliak have done. So congratulations, folks … you love to rip ownership and management, even though you have the same bragging-about-the past attitude. But at least DeWitt knows he can learn something from smarter baseball franchises. And that’s good!

23. I wonder how you would like it if DeWitt held a press conference and barked out something like this: “I don’t care that we’ve been No. 22 in the majors in winning percentage over the last two seasons and rank 18th in postseason wins since 2015 … WE WON THREE WORLD SERIES IN THE 1940s!”

I don’t think that message would be received very well. But a percentage of STL fans are essentially doing the same thing when looking down at the Rays and Guardians while displaying a smug and delusional superiority. I mean, do you care about the past more than the future? If so, then I suppose you are saying that it’s fine with you if Cardinals ownership-management continues to put those pennants and trophies on display and parade them around instead of doing something to really improve the team and restore the Cardinals’ high standards.

24. Locally there’s an obsession with payroll – as if that’s the only way to win divisions and pennants and World Series prizes. A large or jumbo-sized payroll sure does help, but it doesn’t matter much unless (a) wealthier teams are also doing a stellar job at drafting and developing a steady supply of homegrown players; and (b) doing a really shrewd job of spending money rather than incinerating money on idiotic, short-sighted payroll decisions.

25. Here’s how it works best for a team like the Cardinals: They can, have and will continue to outspend the Tampa Bays, the Clevelands and the Milwaukees. And I’ve written about Milwaukee before. Just a reminder: the Cardinals have outspent the Brewers by more than $400 million since 2017, only to have the Crew win more regular-season games, win more division titles, and make the postseason more times than the Cards over the last eight seasons.

26. The Cardinals can outspend those three clubs, but that won’t get them very far if they can’t develop and grow their own talent that sets up the ideal model for winning. Before your favorite team (St. Louis) fixes to start throwing more money around, it better fix the player-development and minor-league operation.

You see, having an abundant flow of young and talented players that are cost-controlled for six years will save the Cardinals enough money to spend more money. (Think about it; it makes sense.) Because if your own players are carrying a good share of the load and putting you into position to win, it creates more payroll space for the team to go out and trade for, or pay for, the missing pieces that can put the Cardinals back in the high life.

27. But the first part is the hardest part: restoring a development-farm system that once upon a time rated among the very best in the majors. Do the hard part, and the rest is a lot easier. After a delay, DeWitt is willing to do the hard part.

28. This is how DeWitt Jr. did it in the early aughts, hiring Jeff Luhnow from outside of the baseball world to come to St. Louis with his advanced knowledge of analytics and data that started the sustainable procession of young talent from the farm. That gives your team a chance to flex the financial advantage that it has over more revenue challenged teams like the Rays, Guardians and Brewers. This is precisely what DeWitt established and proved through Luhnow’s execution of DeWitt’s preferred philosophy.

29. And this was why the Cardinals – from 2000 through 2015 – were second in the majors (and first in the NL) in regular-season wins, No. 1 in the majors in postseason wins, No. 1 in postseason games competed in, made the playoffs 12 times in 16 seasons – and stacked four NL pennants and two World Series championships.

30.  I’m delighted that the Cardinals hired Bloom and Cerfolio and those who are coming with them. These gentlemen will modernize the Cardinals. They will make the Cardinals more efficient and effective in spending. And because Bloom and Cerfolio and their recruits understand what must be done to create a better future, the Cardinals will have a much better chance returning to their past to win at a high level again.

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie