The St. Louis Cardinals are selling at the trade deadline, that much is certain. Yet, John Mozeliak refuses to blame Oli Marmol at all.
Finally, John Mozeliak is done preaching patience. With St. Louis 11 games out of their easiest postseason path, and 14 games under .500 at the All-Star Break, the Cards front office understands that it must sell off some assets at the trade deadline.
What those assets will be is yet to be determined, but the Cardinals have several players who would qualify as 'rentals', and should be dealt for assets prior to reaching free agency.
"Right now, I can tell you, we're going to trade people, you just don't know if it's going to be household names or guys who are more likely to not be here next year," Mozeliak told Martin Kilcoyne of Fox-2 in St. Louis. "It's easy to talk about what we may or may not do at the moment, but we're not going to just give away players. We want to get some value in return. We want to get some value that helps us in 2024. And that's really going to be our focus as we enter the trading period."
John Mozeliak: Cardinals won't make huge coaching staff changes, Oli Marmol safe
There you have it — Mozeliak and the Cards will start preparing for the 2024 season, when nearly everyone in the front office should be on the hot seat. Yet, don't expect major changes to the coaching staff. Somehow, Mozeliak has convinced himself that this is not their fault.
"I don't think the coaches have any fault in this," Mozeliak said. "They are handed the players. Unfortunately, it didn't work. But I think Oli and his group do a really good job. They work really hard. And, you know, they continue to do that. But their level of frustration is probably as real as the fan base."
Cardinals fans don't doubt the level of frustration in the clubhouse. However, running it back with Marmol and his assistants doesn't seem like a winning philosophy.
