ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - A big talking point for an otherwise complete snooze fest of an offseason for the St. Louis Cardinals has been the attempted efforts by the Cardinals to trade third baseman Nolan Arenado.
While obviously, a deal has not happened yet, Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak, however, thought he had a deal in place to trade Arenado earlier in the offseason.
Mozeliak joined Matt Pauley and Mike Claiborne on 'Countdown to Opening Day' and admits that he was on the verge of trading Arenado when he proclaimed during the Winter Meetings of his intentions to try and trade Arenado.
"At the time, I thought, pretty confidently, we had a deal in place and we were likely going to move him," said Mozeliak. "Here we are a month later and obviously that didn't happened."
"Maybe had I known what I know today, I might not have spoken as I had that night. But what I said was what I said and we have to live with that."
While Mozeliak did not name which team he had a deal with, he admits there were 'lessons learned' of 'nothing is ever for sure until it's for sure'. Mozeliak, however, still seems somewhat confident a deal will get done.
"Still talking with some teams about that and hopefully once that gets wrapped up, we can pivot and do a couple of other things." said Mozeliak.
On another note, Mozeliak also tells Pauley and Claiborne that they still plan to make some additions to the roster, with the most notable need being reliever and a right-handed bat.
"I had a staff meeting earlier this morning and I said 'Guys we have five to six weeks left before we get to camp where there's still some things we want to accomplish'," said Mozeliak. "'Let's not lose focus, I know we just got out of the holidays, but there's a lot of time left in the offseason so let's still embrace that and hopefully we can some things that we laid out done.'"
Mozeliak also discussed his new work-life balance now, with Mozeliak set to leave his longtime role as president of baseball operations at the end of the 2025 season, and handing over the keys to the kingdom to Chaim Bloom.
"Over the years, we been very successful at retaining the talent (i.e. employees) we invested in," said Mozeliak. "But as Bill DeWitt Jr. and I were speaking, we knew this day was going to come at some point and so rather have the day come and go and the DeWitt's' have to go out post the position, then go interview for it, then decide who was best for it, I thought trying to build a bench that would give the DeWitt an option internally would make sense for them."
"Chaim is going to basically have two under his belt with the Cardinals. When he takes over, he not going to have that learning curve of trying to get to know people, understand what people are trying to do. He'll be able to hit the ground running. I think from a process standpoint, it is much more efficient, effective and hopefully, you waste a lot less time by doing it this way."
Click the player above to listen to the full conversation Mozeliak had with Pauley and Claiborne on 'Countdown to Opening Day'