ST. LOUIS — Two months ago the only fanbases who likely knew who Randy Arozarena was were St. Louis and Tampa Bay. Well, quite a bit has happened since then.
Arozarena's historic postseason break out for the Rays where he set all-time playoff records for home runs (10), hits (29) and total bases (64) has become quite a sore subject among Cardinals fans, who's team couldn't used any kind of offensive jolt in 2020.
The Cardinals sent Arozarena to Tampa Bay in the offseason in return for one of the top lefthanded starting pitching prospects in baseball, Matthew Liberatore.
Arozarena got just 20 at-bats in St. Louis in 2019.
Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak met with members of the local media over Zoom on Wednesday to discuss a number of things, including Arozarena.
"Randy Arozarena... I'm sure none of you were going to ask me about this," Mozeliak kidded as he opened his press conference.
Mozeliak talked about understanding the frustration with the trade, what the team was looking for at the time and then how the organization may take a look at their own evaluation tools to make sure a player like Arozarena isn't traded away again.
"Obviously in a 50-game season our offense was not consistent in its performance. And clearly when you look at what Randy did this year, and specifically what he did in the postseason, it was incredible. Needless to say he took advantage of this opportunity, he took advantage of his playing time and what does that mean for us? I see this as an opportunity for us to revisit our own internal evaluation methods," Mozeliak said. "Clearly when I look back at when we made that deal, obviously we were making this trade for our future, we were looking at trading for somebody who would eventually be in our rotation and be a contributing member. But when you look at our offensive struggles, it's a fair question to ask, 'why him' and not somebody else? And so, I will own that. That's on me. I certainly have always said that you always need to know your own players better than those outside your organization because if you get that wrong you have a problem. That's why we will take the opportunity to revisit how we rank our own players and make sure we don't have something like this happen again."
Watching Arozarena set records this October had Cardinals fans wishing it were a different outfielder sent to Tampa in the trade. Without naming names, Mozeliak said there were discussions involving different players making up that trade when negotiating with the Rays was taking place.
"I never actually reopened my notes on that trade, but I do believe there were other names being tossed about," Mozeliak said.
Arozarena isn't the only "near-miss" or former Cardinal to have an impressive 2020. There's Luke Voit, Marcell Ozuna and Fernando Tatis Jr. to name a few. Tatis Jr. was scouted multiple times by the Cardinals, but the team and player could never come to a contract.
Mozeliak said that while it can be a dangerous line of thinking to go back on every time the franchise had perceived to have "missed" on a player, but that the processes they use in determining value may need to be looked at closer.
"Hindsight's always 20/20, right? I think when you go back and start to drill down on everything that might be perceived as a 'miss' instead of 'hitting', I think that can be a little dangerous," Mozeliak said. "I think understanding you're processes and why is a little bit more interesting to me."