Birdos in Brief: Reporting, Buckets, & a Podcast

Today at 09:00 AM

Good morning, Viva El Birdos!

Yesterday at The Athletic, Katie Woo wrote an article entitled "The St. Louis Cardinals have lost their way. Now they must fix their failure." It's an investigative piece on the failures of the Cardinals' player development system, their minimalist approach to system-wide instructional coordinators, and the impact that has had on the shape of the current roster.

Talk about a Friday news dump! Woo's work represents some of the best analytical writing on the Cardinals that I've read in quite a while. Here's a small sample:

"Some [anonymous Cardinals officials] lamented the organization's emphasis on directing more money to the big-league payroll, even if it meant skimping on hiring the coaches, instructors and modern technology that are vital to refining players as they progress through the minors. Those decisions have left the organization to reckon with the harsh reality that they have fallen behind their rivals."

There's so much more! If you haven't read it, you should. Seriously. Read it.

One of the things I find fascinating about Woo's work here is the way she intentionally ties the decline in player development to payroll. We've talked frequently about the "bucket" of revenue that the Cardinals draw from to finance baseball operations. When it comes to the baseball side of the Cardinals organization, there's just one bucket. One amount. One bottom line that all player-related expenses have to fit within. That includes signing free agents, paying arbitration eligible players, the MLB draft, coaches, front office personnel, technology, and, yes, even roving instructors.

If something is baseball-related at all, it's paid for out of the same bucket.

Woo writes: "To make up for the slippage in the Cardinals' homegrown player pipeline, major-league payroll has climbed in order to keep pace with attempts to field a strong major-league product every season. But the team's investment in player development has not followed suit, staffers believe, and as a result they have neglected the foundation that for so long had allowed the franchise to remain competitive. 'We have gotten ourselves into a cycle,' one employee said. Breaking that cycle has proven to be a complex task."

Woo's analysis is correct and also somewhat problematic. The Cardinals' payroll peaked heading into the 2020 season. In 2021, the team cut back to recover from revenue lost to COVID. Opening Day spending has steadily risen since, with a notable jump from '21-'22. What has happened from there depends on how you chose to calculate payroll. My method, based largely on reporting provided by Derrick Goold and a basic ability to both read and add, indicates that Opening Day payroll has remained largely static over the last three seasons - 22, 23, and 24.

Woo is right: payroll has climbed — particularly the team's Luxury Tax or CBT payroll. So has their Opening Day payroll relative to the post-COVID MLB spending landscape. Not all of those increases are related to players themselves. Costs for contract issues like player benefits and health care have risen significantly. At the same time, Opening Day contracts — the amount of money that the Cardinal are actually spending on the salaries of the players on the field — hasn't moved very much over the last three years.

Put it together and walk back to player development.

Personnel-related expenses have risen for the Cardinals. Player contracts increased early and are now holding steady. The revenue in the bucket has started dropping and is at risk of dropping even more. (We've covered that extensively.) To make up this gap, the Cardinals have... chosen to scale down their player development strategy?

That brings me to the question I've asked myself all day: Is that worth it? Is it worth it to prop up the MLB roster with free agent spending at the expense of player development? On a team that considers itself a draft-and-development rather than a spend-to-win franchise?

It doesn't make any sense to me.

How much do roving instructional coordinators make, anyway?

How much would it cost the Cardinals to bring in a clown car full of catching instructors to work with Ivan Herrera on his throwing?

How much would it cost the Cardinals to field a gaggle of glove experts to teach Jordan Walker how to play the outfield?

I'm guessing — and this is a guess; I could be wrong — that the Cardinals could hire, pay, staff, and outfit a significantly expanded player development staff for less than the amount they gave to Matt Carpenter or Brandon Crawford. Not Carpenter AND Crawford. Carpenter OR Crawford.

What's my point? It's about priorities. Choices. Strategic decisions. The Cardinals have chosen to sacrifice player development to maintain a competitive roster and are failing to do both. That's not a decision that Gary LaRocque, former Director of Player Development for the Cardinals, is making. It's not a strategy coming to Front Office from Jose Oquendo. That's a decision made by John Mozeliak either with the guidance of or the support of Bill DeWitt.

That's why the Cardinals are now having significant internal conversations about their future, the "John Mozeliak situation" as MLB reporter John Denton labeled it, and it appears that there will be significant changes coming to the front office and to the organization's strategic plan as soon as this week.

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, if you're looking for more Cardinals content this weekend the VEB writers put out a podcast yesterday. Unfortunately, we recorded before Woo's article broke. Still, our conversations are relevant, and some of the conclusions we draw fit with the information that came out yesterday. It's worth listening to!

You can find the podcast right here!

That's enough from me today. I'll have a special announcement coming in my article on Wednesday. Until then, the day is yours, Viva El Birdos.