This weekend I was again privileged to attend the St. Louis Cardinals annual Winter Warm Up event. This is a three day event in downtown St. Louis put on by the ballclub for their charity, Cardinals Care. You can buy a $40 pass to gain access to the event, and there you can mingle with the players, get autographs, buy memorabilia, attend sessions about the club, and get a little taste of baseball in the offseason. It’s a great event, one of the best in St. Louis, and the Cardinals do a fantastic job of putting it on. I was there last year, and gave a detailed analysis of all three days. This year, I’m just going to give a broad overview of my time there.
This year there was a little added intrigue, because Cardinals hitting coach Mark McGwire was in attendance on Sunday, which was his first public appearance since he went on the MLB Network to confess that he had used steroids as a player. So there were a lot of people in attendance for that, including members of the national media. It was pretty much a circus. But more on that in a minute.
Last year I was pretty excited to procure the autographs of some past, present, and future Cardinals players, like Jack Clark, John Tudor, Todd Worrell, Alan Benes, Andy Benes, and David Freese. I also stood in line like two hours to get Brett Wallace’s autograph, and then he got traded this year in the Matt Holliday deal. A large portion of the autographs offered at the Warm Up are free, as long as you are willing to wait in long lines to get them. And this year the Cardinals had actually lowered the prices on the autographs that you paid for…the only one unchanged was Albert Pujols, who had the most expensive autograph at $175. The way it works is that you purchase an autograph ticket ahead of time, and then you can get one item signed for every autograph ticket you have, up to three tickets. I got one ticket each for Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Kyle Lohse, Jason Motte, and former Cardinal Ray Lankford. I was going for mostly pitching this year. The only free autograph I got was from Mitchell Boggs, a younger player who is likely to be on the team in some capacity in April. They had a lot of minor league players from the Cardinals farm system there, too, which I thought was really cool.
Other than the autographs I paid for, though, I really didn’t care too much about getting signatures. The big things I was looking forward too were the Q & A with Cards GM John Mozeliak, the Q & A with manager Tony LaRussa, and the appearance by McGwire. We did go to a session on the Cardinals museum that was pretty cool. They talked about items they had procured in the last year, including a uniform worn by former Cardinal Jim Bottomley.
The Q & A with Mozeliak was excellent, with one exception. This year the venue was moved from the Millenium Hotel to the Hyatt. Last year, the Q & A with Mozeliak took place in the main auditorium, where plenty of seating was available. This year, though, they had some of the sessions in the presentation rooms, which were much smaller and had limited seating. Fortunately, my friend Ray and I got there early enough to get good seats, but there were plenty of people who had to stand. It was kind of neat because where we were seated was right next to where the sports writers were standing. We saw Derrick Gould and Joe Strauss, from the Post-Dispatch, among others. Anyway, Mozeliak, in addition to being what I feel is an excellent GM, is also a very forthright and honest person, and very funny. He talked for a minute about the Holliday signing, and then opened it up for questions.
I enjoyed what he shared on the Holliday deal. He talked about how Matt had made clear that money wasn’t the only factor in negotiations, that the length of contract that many fans had questions about came because he wanted to sign in a city he could call home and retire in. He wanted to be a part of the community, somewhere where he could put down some roots, which was a reason why Mozeliak said that his (Holliday’s) camp was pushing for a long term deal. He said Holliday really liked St. Louis and had expressed a desire to stay here, and felt like this was a city that he would like to be a part of. I thought that was cool.
Many of the other questions surrounded the Cardinals plans to build the remainder of the team for the 2010 season. A few people asked about when they were going to resign Pujols, and Mozeliak made it clear that while nothing is certain, the club is going to make every effort and already is working on crunching the numbers. The other thing I thought was interesting is that he said Jaime Garcia was our fifth starter, which hasn’t been made clear yet. Now, he also said they were looking at all options, so things could change between now and spring training, but he was pretty firm about Garcia being granted an opportunity to be in the rotation.
The LaRussa Q & A was also good, although he was an hour late for it. He wasn’t quite as concrete on our fifth starter, but he did mention Garcia as a top candidate. I like Tony. He’s also funny…he’s got a self-deprecating sense of humor that got quite a few chuckles out of the audience. He really didn’t have any earth shattering revelations. He also didn’t take any questions from the fans…he took all questions from the M.C. He did talk about McGwire’s work as a hitting coach, explaining that he had an unorthodox approach but one that Tony felt would be effective with the Cardinals.
The McGwire appearance was nuts. When LaRussa was done, there was still an hour or so before McGwire was scheduled to appear. We had good seats in the main auditorium, so I just stayed put. Ray had to go get Matt Holliday’s autograph, but I waited for McGwire. I heard later that by the time he arrived there were over 7,000 people on hand to hear him speak…I counted like 7 or 8 television cameras in the back of the room, and there were several national media people in attendance. All the seats were full, and people were lined around the room like 3 or 4 deep. When he came out everyone went nuts, giving him a standing ovation for a minute or so before he could even speak. Then, after everything he said people would cheer and applaud.
He really didn’t say much. He spoke briefly about the steroids controversy, stating that he had made a mistake and encouraging kids to stay away from steroids. Then he talked about what he hoped to do with the Cardinals hitters, and that was pretty much it. When he walked off the stage people flooded him for autographs, but he was ushered out of the room pretty quick to do a press conference with all the reporters.
Two other sessions we attended were Bill DeWitt Jr’s presentation on the state of the ball club, and Jeff Luhnow’s update on the Cardinals minor league system. Both were fantastic. DeWitt talked a bit about the Cardinals revenue, and how despite being 24th in terms of households in their market amongst major league ball clubs, the Cardinals were in the top 10 in revenue, and that came from the fans and their support of the Birds. He said that no other club in any of the four major sports has such a difference between where they stand amongst households in their market and their revenue. That allows the Cardinals to compete for free agents like Holliday. He also talked about the Cardinals from a business standpoint and how things look, and right now the future looks pretty bright. The Cardinals have a lot of their top tier players under contract for the next several seasons, they’ve got a strong minor league system, and they should be competitive for years to come.
Luhnow, the Director for Scouting and Player Development, brought in his staff to talk about the Cardinals work in the draft, their development of international players, and their minor league ball clubs. This was one of my favorite sessions, because first it opened up my eyes to how much the Cardinals minor league system not only has contributed, but how much it is set to contribute in the future. We have one of the youngest minor league systems in the major leagues, and a lot of bright young prospects coming up through our ranks. Shelby Miller, Lance Lynn, Tyler Norrick, Pete Kozma….the Cardinals have a lot of depth in their farm clubs.
Overall, I was extremely impressed with the Cardinals front office. Not only were Mozeliak, DeWitt, and Luhnow open and honest, and all willing to take multiple questions from fans, but the picture they laid out made me, as a Cardinals fan, pretty happy with the direction the club is going. Mo has done a fantastic job of putting the core pieces in place to make the Cardinals competitive every year, DeWitt and company have really done a good job of keeping a balanced budget, and prices reasonable, while committing to winning. And Luhnow has taken what was, several years ago, a very weak farm system and turned it into what is, in my opinion, one of the strongest farm systems in the major leagues. In spite of the fact the Cardinals rarely draft high, due to them always being competitive, it sounds like they still make smart picks and know how to properly develop players. The Cardinals were helped a lot last year by young players and those same players are set to make an impact this year. Colby Rasmus, Jason Motte, Mitchell Boggs, David Freese, Jaime Garcia, Brendan Ryan….all were drafted or developed in the Cardinals system, and all will be contributors this year to what is likely to be a playoff baseball team.
I really enjoy Winter Warm Up. It’s a great event for fans, and I applaud the Cardinals for the first class job they do putting it on. Now here’s to hoping next year’s event will be celebrating a World Series team.