By Rob Rains
As he walked out of the conference room at Busch Stadium following his last trading deadline running the Cardinals, John Mozeliak had just one over-riding feeling.
It’s the same one he has had every year going through the final days and hours before the deadline expired – exhaustion.
“All trading deadlines when you are done it’s just a feeling of exhaustion; just relief, ‘it’s over,’” Mozeliak said Thursday during a zoom call with St. Louis media. “This one was no different … It’s hard to put into words what I was thinking and feeling at the moment. It was definitely a surreal feeling walking out of that room.”
What Mozeliak noticed, however, was that it isn’t nearly as much fun going through the last-minute trades when your team is selling players instead of adding them.
“I feel like I wish we were on the other side where we were looking to add versus break up, but ultimately we had to do what was best for the organization. That part’s tough,” Mozeliak said.
The Cardinals made three trades in the final two days before the deadline, dealing all three of their free-agent to be relievers. They sent Ryan Helsley to the Mets and Steven Matz to the Red Sox on Wednesday, then completed a deal sending Phil Maton to the Rangers a couple of minutes before the deadline.
The exchange for the three veterans was six minor leaguers, four of them pitchers, most of whom are still in A ball. From the Red Sox, the Cardinals obtained first baseman Blaze Jordan, who will join Memphis.
The two pitchers obtained from the Rangers for Maton were a 22-year-old left-handed starter, Mason Molina, and a 3-year-old right-handed reliever, Skylar Hales, who was in Triple A. The Rangers also sent the Cardinals $250,000 in international bonus pool money.
The highest-ranked player the Cardinals received in the three deals was from the Mets, 20-year-old shortstop Jesus Baez, who had been ranked as the eighth best prospect in their system by MLB.com. He will join Peoria.
Mozeliak said he was focused on dealing Helsley first, simply because of the market for the closers who were available.
“My concern was that there were four big name closers out there and obviously two of them had multiple years of control and one had one extra year of control and in our case Helsley had two months,” Mozeliak said. “I was cognizant of how far we thought we had leverage. What I didn’t want to have happen was to take this into the final day and not be in a position to try to do the best deal possible.
“A lot of times with people in this business everybody thinks the longer you wait the better the deal. I was scared that the longer we waited the music might stop and we might still be standing.”
While the team’s focus was on moving their three expiring contracts, Mozeliak said the Cardinals did receive “a lot” of calls about their left-handed hitters – Lars Nootbaar, Brendan Donovan, Nolan Gorman and Alec Burleson.
“We got hit a lot on our left-handed hitters,” Mozeliak said. “None of those types of offers we were getting for those types of players were compelling for us to do it … We were not motivated to move players that we had under control unless we were blown away and we just weren’t.”
The Cardinals also held on to left-handed reliever JoJo Romero, who has one year of arbitration remaining, and third baseman Nolan Arenado, who has two years left on his contract.
Decisions on the futures of those players, Mozeliak said, will be made down the road – perhaps by incoming president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, who is scheduled to take over running the Cardinals after this season.
“Overall I felt like we were able to accomplish our goal,” Mozeliak said. “We wanted as much prospect value in the deals as we could get. Hopefully our fan base will see the returns of these deals in a couple of years.”
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