The Cardinals’ search for pitching relief mirrors their desperation to avoid another bad contract

Unstoppable forces from the past collide with immovable needs of the future in important offseason.

The Cardinals are a tale of two cities. They don’t want to compose a losing season, but they’re not going to outbid many teams in a free agent market that knows exactly what St. Louis desires. Starting pitching, and lots of it.

Big names require risky deals, though, ones that the Cardinals are desperate to avoid after a series of misses. You could say the desperations are about equal. How do you succeed without stepping on a landmine, one that looks familiar?

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There is no legit top dog in this starting pitching market. Lots of solid arms, but maybe not a true prom king. Aaron Nola would like suitors to look around his decent yet not great 2023 regular season, but he fills a need for any team. He’s an innings-eating strikeout machine who hasn’t posted an ERA below 3.28 in all but one of his seasons. He’s also 30, which is a Swiss Army knife of danger with a new contract.

Blake Snell is coming off his second Cy Young award. He now owns one in each league, claiming 2023’s prize with the San Diego Padres. The thing about Snell is outside of those two incredible years, he’s a question mark. Decent to pretty good at times, but not out there enough in others. He also turns 31 years old in about three weeks.

Jordan Montgomery had an amazing finish to the 2023 season, helping the Texas Rangers get over that nasty 2011 collapse. (HAHAHA!) After pitching for three teams in two seasons, Montgomery seeks a longer stay than “next year could be different.” Scott Boras is his agent, so there will be a steep price for a guy who is more of a sure thing than Nola or Snell.

“Monty” has started at least 29 games in the past three seasons, finishing with an ERA that never runs below 3.83. He showed that in the right setting, or three different ones, that he is a highly capable pitcher. The big time doesn’t scare him, and neither does the responsibility of pitching for a big name franchise.

All of them will be expensive. All of them could become a bust. The Cardinals enter this offseason as a team that doesn’t exist as a surefire squad to make a killing.

They’re the franchise that can pull off a great trade for a bat, but find themselves cursed and rigid on the pitching-acquiring front. Mike Leake was a bad deal. Lance Lynn and Michael Wacha were allowed to walk, yet thrived with other teams in recent years. Ask yourself when was the last great pitching contract from this team, and hold your breath while you do it.

The urgency to right the ship is unavoidable. John Mozeliak and Bill DeWitt Jr. can only point to 2023’s attendance numbers from a certain glance; there were a lot of empty seats at home games down the stretch. A losing team in 2024 will spell more. Doing less will increase the chances of a similar record.

Here’s what the team shouldn’t do: Lean on young Matthew Liberatore for starting answers. Fix a bullpen leak with his versatile left arm, instead of asking for something he can’t give. It shouldn’t shut down all future prospects of starting, only serving the team’s current needs. Or, he gets dealt in a trade.

There is no Jack Flaherty question mark this coming spring. There is no Adam Wainwright last stand mission of 200 wins, even at the cost of $20 million and a lot of rough starts. Only Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz own spots in next year’s rotation. The team doesn’t have anything special to celebrate in 2024, except getting back into competitor mode.

If you want something to highlight ten years later, here’s a rather sour one. 2024 marks a decade since the Cardinals won an NLCS game. Getting through the division series has proven hard enough since that fateful defeat at the hands of San Francisco, a cement mark in the changing of the guard.

Their task at hand is to avoid the bad contracts of Mozella’s past and try to reconstruct a rotation that can support a solid offense and young manager. It’s a tall task due to the waiting and waiting for this team to authentically replace Chris Carpenter and Wainwright to an extent. Their Flaherty, Carlos Martinez, and Alex Reyes experiments crashed and burned out of town. What now?

Patience isn’t a sports fan’s strong suit, especially in Cardinal Nation. The fact is the team has boxed themselves into a corner with their lack of pitching, and they MUST go charging into the breach this winter to find a few durable arms. The idea of failing follows every GM and sports executive around their days, but that’s the job. When the players stop swinging and throwing, the suits take the field to retool and seal up the leaks.

The Cards can’t worry about past losses; they need a big catch or a big offseason all together. They need to do something to prove to the fans that 2023 was an aberration and not the beginning of the end. That’s hard to do scared, so my advice would be to shed the skin of misfortunate old news and make some invigorating fresh news.

Will the real Mo please stand up? If not, just get out.