St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak is fine not making the playoffs in 2025.

Is this the St. Louis Cardinals or the Pittsburgh Pirates? I don’t mean to insult our baseball-loving friends in the Steel City, but the Cardinals and Bucs tend to enter each season with vastly different expectations.

The Cardinals – with their best fans in baseball mantra – are expected to compete for a playoff spot, at the very least. The Pirates, well, are seemingly consistently building for next year. Though they do have a very nice ballpark! (you should go, if you haven’t. You’ll have the whole place to yourself by mid-August).

The offseason really starts at the GM meetings. Agents and team executives meet to discuss potential player fits, and trade buzz originates in San Antonio (at least this year). However, John Mozeliak and the Cardinals have other plans for the 2025 season. Rather than reaching on the free agent or trade markets to fix their problems, St. Louis is fine playing the long game.

“I do feel like the pressures of always thinking you have to get to October, play in October, is tough for some of the younger players,” Mozeliak said. “And I think now with the notion of expectations are a little lower, I think a lot of these younger guys are going to be able to breathe and play with a little more freedom.”

John Mozeliak and the Cardinals have already given up on 2025

That sounds like an executive who doesn’t expect St. Louis to succeed in 2025, and perhaps even beyond.

“We were always rushing to find the next better thing,” Mozeliak conceded. “And now we’re going to say: No, we’re going to give it a little time to see what we really have. We’re going to let them go play and find out if they can make those adjustments, and let’s see if they can do it for us instead of us giving up on them and they’re not doing it for someone else.”

I admire the patience from Mozeliak, I really do. But if that’s the case, then what exactly has St. Louis been doing the past two years? The Cardinals haven’t made the playoffs since 2022. They sold off expiring assets in back-to-back trade deadlines. And, despite some reasonable investments, haven’t added a top-tier free agent (no, I don’t count Sonny Gray) in quite some time.

Considering it’s Mozeliak’s final winter with this kind of power, I’m surprised he’s not willing to put a little more effort into next year’s team. If Cardinals ownership thought attendance numbers were bad in 2024, just wait until next spring.