Appreciating John Mozeliak

My recent round table discussion has gotten me thinking about our GM, John Mozeliak.

Mo has been around for a while now, but I think he tends to get overshadowed by the more well known names in the game like Theo Epstein, Andrew Freidman, and of course, Billy Beane. His teams, however, have made the NLCS four stratght years, so he must be doing something right.

He hasn’t had to do a total rebuild, like Jeff Luhnow (a former Cardinal executive), Epstein, or even what Beane did last year. He’s kept the Cards on the top without doing so, which in itself is a big accomplishment.

Mo makes trades of course, even big ones, like the Heyward trade. Those trades, however are often to fill a hole or to complement what we already have. He keeps churning out prospects (the upper levels may seem low, but the lower levels are loaded with the next batch.)

Plus we’ve got several relatively young players on offense at the moment, highlighted by Matt Adams, Kolten Wong and Jason Heyward (if he re-signs) among others, who can take over when our veterans move on.

Despite trading off Joe Kelly and Shelby Miller, he still has young pitchers who can start at the big league level. He has an ace in training in Lance Lynn (some may argue he’s already a co-ace with Adam Wainwright.)

In short, he’s rebuilt by not having to rebuild. He’s seemingly begun transferring from old to young without missing a beat. Not many GM’s can pull that off as successfully as he has. Plus, before he was a GM, he oversaw the drafting of guys like Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina, cornerstones for our pair of championships. So’s been successful at multiple levels.

So, as I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve joined a pair of online leagues for Out Of The Park 15 (OOTP15).

It’s no secret that I’ve dreamed of being a GM, and that OOTP 15 is a great game for a guy like me.

But I don’t think, even if I became a grand master GM in a computer game, which is much easier than real life GM-ing would be, I’ll ever come near come near to what Mo has done. I tend to think people forget that he’s that good.

As always, thanks for reading.

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