Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak

The Opening Drive

Mo joins the show to talk about the immediate impact from Tommy Pham in the win on Tuesday night, why there’s multiple layers to the positive feelings from Tuesday’s win, the importance of bringing in someone he describes as “über-competitive”, why Tommy is the perfect deadline deal with the spark he brings to teams, what the days leading up to the deadline are like for him, how that differs when you’re buyers vs. sellers, why they had to work more as the middleman to facilitate the trade, how the Fedde+Pham trade took some pressure off right at the deadline, the adjustments they saw from Fedde that put him on their shortlist, MLB teams getting better at analyzing and grading success in Japan/Korea and how it translates, how a player just changing divisions can shift your expectations, why they think Armstrong can improve from his time in Tampa, relievers in Tampa not being role-dependent and that making them more attractive as options, Leahy establishing himself as a MLB arm but still needing to grab a righty reliever, admitting he was wrong about Carlson and that they rushed him back through his return, being able to preserve the farm system while still making these moves and the importance of the long-game even with his short-term future.

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