The Cardinals Way (24 page)

The Cardinals had a general manager, John Mozeliak. But they also had an executive who'd been with them for eight years, had experience running international, had run player development, was running an enormously successful scouting department.

If 2007 was too soon for Jeff Luhnow to ascend to general manager, by 2011 he was, if anything, overqualified.

“By '11, I felt like the work had resulted in something tangible, which is contribution to a championship,” Luhnow said. “The '06 was a great feeling, too, because Suppan and Weaver, I'd [advocated for] signing a few guys that had helped. This one was so much more meaningful because players that I saw as amateurs sitting in the stands were now playing.

“It was incredibly satisfying, and so when the opportunity came up, I had to just [try it],” Luhnow said. “It was easier, too, because we had a great group of people in St. Louis that were doing an incredible job for decades. So it felt good that that was a good time for me to start off new.”

Remember, Luhnow was a turnaround guy at heart. But not only had the Cardinals implemented so many of his ideas, of Sig Mejdal's innovations, then built on them with the next generation of analytic talent in Correa, Girsch, and others, they'd seen the results on the field as well.

Luhnow also believes the varied areas he'd immersed himself in while with the Cardinals—part of Mozeliak's strategy to have all of his specialists with significant knowledge of other areas as well—made a difference in both the perception and the reality of his baseball profile.

“Yeah, I think had I not gotten involved in the different areas of scouting and player development, international—had I just come in as the manager/consultant side—you know, numbers guy—and never expanded beyond, there would have been zero chance that we would be successful,” Luhnow said of his Cardinals tenure.

I asked him if he meant that in terms of actual strategies, or in his credibility within the Cardinals along with the rest of baseball.

“In terms of methods and in terms of acceptance,” Luhnow said. “Because by really, truly appreciating what happens in the field—where the scout goes, where the coach goes, what it's like to scout in Venezuela—like truly be able to do that firsthand and appreciate all of that, it made me change the way I thought about things. And it's also allowed for some street credibility. You're not going to be considered a baseball guy by the industry. You know, not like playing the game for their whole lives, or those who coached. But, I think people who were on the fence appreciated the fact that I was sitting there with a radar gun while getting on that plane, flying to Timbuktu, scouting a sixteen-year-old kid. I started making the rounds in a foreign system and going everywhere. It allowed them to consider you more than then. That's where it changed.”

Mozeliak said he didn't much doubt that Luhnow, eventually, wanted to be a general manager. DeWitt agreed, saying, “I thought he'd get a GM opportunity.” But to DeWitt, that it didn't happen until after 2011 was key in allowing the Cardinals to continue progressing as an organization.

“Well, you never like to lose someone who's doing a really good job,” DeWitt said. “But Jeff was scouting director, and he was given an opportunity to move up, and that's just the way it is. We were far enough along with the people and the understanding throughout the system. If he had left earlier because of the turmoil or something, that would have been a different story. Because we weren't far enough along. But by the time he'd left, we were deep with people who had the knowledge to continue what had been developed. Dan [Kantrovitz] had worked there. And Mike Girsch understood the whole model and had been part of it and knew what we were looking to do. He was all-in on it and helped a lot. Also Chris Correa, so we were pretty deep.”

That depth became a bit shallower, though, with Sig Mejdal leaving as well and joining Luhnow in Houston. The decision was not easy for Mejdal, who had a strong working relationship with Mozeliak, and, as Mejdal put it, “There's something scary when leaving the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals, who had arguably the strongest player development system with an owner that I had a wonderful relationship with. I was leaving about as much job security as you can have in baseball. And I was going to the team with the least major league skill and the least minor league skill. With an owner I didn't know. I had never met. With, certainly, a whole lot less security.”

Yet, to be part of an organization headed by Luhnow struck Mejdal as an opportunity to see his work more fully implemented than even in St. Louis.

“Some of the other analysts [working for other teams] would talk to me, and they would, frankly, be jealous of the amount of Jeff's willingness to use this,” Mejdal recalled. “And not only his willingness to use this, his willingness to share that he's using this with others. And that makes the job so much more rewarding when the work you actually do is implemented in a seemingly close to optimal way. And so, with Jeff gone, of course my concern was who was going to be the next scouting director and would they implement it anything like this. And so there was question of whether my current job would be as exciting. But then I imagined Jeff going to the Astros and creating it closer to what he created in the scouting department in St. Louis and imagining what an exciting organization that could be.”

Mejdal became the director of decision sciences for the Astros. That position didn't previous exist in Houston, or on any other team in baseball.

“When I heard that Jeff was hired by the Astros, I was hoping that I would be able to go with him as he is such a good manager. He was my biggest supporter, and there was an uncertainty in what things would be like in the Cardinals after he left. This industry has the somewhat strange rule that in order to talk to another team, your current employer has to give permission for that to take place. I had spoken with Jeff in general terms over the years of what we could do if he were ever GM, but since his hire, I had no contact with him. Was he going to bring me over? Had he asked and Mo said no? Finally, Mo called me into his office and said that Jeff had asked to speak to me and that he was going to grant that permission. Phew. At that point, I knew I was going to be an Astro. There was excitement but at the same time I felt terrible about leaving Bill and Mo. They both were always very supportive of me. Mo had spoken to me and gone to lunch with me at a time when just doing that could cause issues amongst others in the organization, and Bill DeWitt—I can't say enough about him—he took a chance on me and treated me so well for so long. I thanked Mo for all that he had done during that meeting, and I called Bill and did the same.”

So the Cardinals found themselves without two of their three-man shop. The third, Kantrovitz, was in Oakland.

“Mo and I put the full-court press on him to come back to the Cardinals because Jeff was looking to hire people, too, at that time,” DeWitt said. “And also, Billy Beane didn't want to lose Dan.”

Suddenly, the would-be baseball executive who couldn't get hired for more than a year less than a decade prior had three teams who wanted him, not because of his playing background, but because of his facility with the new paradigm. That's 10 percent of the industry, pretty significant validation for Kantrovitz's decision to go back to school.

“Dan was just somebody that I'd known a long time,” Mozeliak said. “Brought him into the game. Hell, drafted him. Released him. Hired him. There's a guy I just felt like would understand exactly what we're needing to do. And when you talk about succession plan, that just shows you I didn't have one for that position. Because I felt like we had to go outside and fill it, and he was the one guy who I felt would be ideal. And luckily, we did get him. And at that time, Jeff brought him in and offered him, I think, the farm director job.”

Mozeliak was right.

“I left, I thought of him, and so did Mo. And Mo beat me,” Luhnow said. “I brought him to the holiday dinner and Jim Crane, Franci Crane, and—he got the full-court press. You've got to remember, he's from St. Louis. They had home [field] advantage. And he got drafted by the Cardinals and he had a lot of relationships over there. The only relationship he had in Houston, really, was me. I think I made it tough on him and I probably earned him a few extra thousand dollars, but…”

Luhnow trailed off. Ultimately, Kantrovitz went home and took over as scouting director beginning in 2012. And even though it meant Luhnow couldn't have him in Houston, that wasn't entirely a bitter pill for Luhnow, either.

“I was so happy—getting Dan to work for the Astros was the goal,” Luhnow said. “But it was a great compromise that he was going to go work for the Cardinals and go do stuff that I had been doing there. 'Cause when you're a guy who puts so much into it in ten years, you want someone to take it to the next level. To build on it. To improve it and not just go backwards. And I had good confidence that he was the right guy for the job. So I was very happy that he was the one that was going to continue that tradition. Because he was there when all of that started. He watched it evolve and I knew he had the skills to not only continue it, but improve it. Which is what he's done.”

You could hear the struggle in his voice as Kantrovitz thought back to that time, choosing between three innovating employers.

“It was a pretty complicated decision. Because number one, we loved Oakland. I loved working for Billy and David [Forst]. Those guys were amazing and Farhan [Zaidi]. I mean, they're as smart as it gets. So, it wasn't a foregone conclusion that I was going to leave there. But, just the opportunity, you know? I worked under Jeff. He was the scouting director. Deep down, that's kind of what I wanted to do all along. And when he was doing it, he was great at it. But once he moved on to bigger and better things, that was kind of my dream job.”

And so began a pair of great evolutions.

In Houston, Luhnow and Mejdal began to build out an organization that didn't need to conform to any vast, long-held traditions. If the Astros weren't an expansion team, they were about as close as an established team could be, with an imminent move from the National League Central to the American League West, and an owner ready to let Luhnow tear down completely and remake the club as he saw fit.

And Kantrovitz had an opportunity to take the Cardinals in directions he'd imagined as well. Both he and Luhnow made it clear that despite mutual respect, their draft boards would not look quite the same.

“But what I wanted to do—working under Jeff for so long, and he had such success,” Kantrovitz said. “But there were some things that I thought I would do a little differently. And would hope to do even, maybe, better from a fairly different perspective.”

As if Kantrovitz wasn't under enough pressure already, replacing Luhnow in a role where he'd had so much success developing talent that brought a World Series championship to St. Louis, Kantrovitz also had to justify, in many minds, replacing a legend.

Albert Pujols, promoted to the Cardinals in 2001, posted an OPS+ of 157 as a twenty-one-year-old; .329/.403/.610, with 37 home runs. Then he did that again, more or less, for the next ten years. The Cardinals had previously employed one hitter, ever, who had enjoyed that much success: Stan Musial. Pujols, through age thirty-one, posted an OPS+ of 170. Musial, through age thirty-one, checked in just above him, at 172.

Musial is the iconic Cardinal. But Pujols looked as if he would equal Musial, with a second world championship in 2011 (including that 3-home-run Game 3). That is, if he stayed in St. Louis. I flew into town just after the World Series, and I asked my shuttle driver from the airport how she was doing.

“Okay,” she answered. “Just worrying about Albert staying.”

Pujols didn't stay. The Angels offered him $254 million over ten years. The Cardinals thought that was too much to pay for anybody's age thirty-two-to-forty-one seasons, even the great Albert Pujols.

Fun fact: Musial, over those ten seasons, posted a 147 OPS+, averaging 138 games per season. Pujols, through August 2015, has put up an OPS+ of 129 over nearly four seasons in Anaheim while averaging 142 games per season. So far, it looks as if Musial's record of achievement is safe.

And the same is true of the Cardinals, who were not safe in the world of public opinion at the time for letting Pujols go. All they received in return were a pair of compensatory picks—a first-rounder from the Angels and a sandwich pick, which comes between the first and second rounds. It would be up to Kantrovitz, a few months after getting hired, to make those picks.

“It would be insincere to say I didn't feel a ton of pressure in that first draft, or really any of the 3 drafts, for that matter,” Kantrovitz recalled in a January 2015 e-mail. “Obviously a lot of attention was being paid to the extra picks we had in the 2012 draft. And, unlike previous years, there was the new wrinkle of being subject to a ‘cap.' And while extra picks were a huge bonus, it also added a new layer of complexity that had not been part of the calculus previously. But, any way you spin it, it was no doubt a huge opportunity for the organization and one everybody was excited to tackle.”

What followed is basically unprecedented in baseball history: the payoff of letting Albert Pujols leave became clear in record time. Normally, in such a situation, here's your best-case scenario: A prime player leaves for a long-term, new contract. The very performance that got him that new contract seldom disappears overnight. And the compensatory draft picks, even when they turn out well, take years to make the climb through a team's minor league system.

“In terms of realizing the gravity of the Pujols decision, I knew that history was not on our side when looking at the odds of cashing in on a comp pick,” Kantrovitz recalled. “And I certainly didn't expect we would get as quick a return as we did.”