JUPITER, Fla. — When the dust settled from the first trade-deadline teardown of his career and all that was left was the inevitable sinkhole in the standings, Cardinals executive John Mozeliak spent the next three months workshopping how to recover, posthaste, from the club’s worst season in three decades.

Building back into a contender had to start with the rotation, so the Cardinals president of baseball operations began sketching out possibilities. The free-agent pool was rich with choices; trade talks could be costly but compelling. He wrote names in, he scratched names out and he toggled between the expected performance and preferred investment.

Each time he ran the numbers, he got the same solution.

“This is not going to be fixed with one person,” Mozeliak said. “We need to do more. Look, you never want to go into a year when you’re having to go out to the market and fill three holes. That’s not ideal. We’re smart enough to realize what we did last year didn’t work. So we need to do something different.”

Different, that is, than the current trends.

The same as what teams used to do before.

At a time when less and less in being asked of starting pitchers, the Cardinals are counting on more and more from the starters in a retrofitted rotation to return them to relevance. Call it the throwback special — they’ve gathered an older group to reenact pitching deeper into games and betting, if they can avoid breakdowns, it will be an instant turnaround.

After the first losing season of his 16 years in charge of baseball operations, Mozeliak exacted this plan swiftly, signing free-agent starters Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn before the end of November. He bought in bulk. Since 2018, 24 pitchers have thrown more than 780 innings. Four will be in the Cardinals rotation in 2024. No other team has more than two. And for the first time in decades, the top five starters all joined the Cardinals as free agents. Other than Lynn’s homecoming, homegrown need not apply.

The envy of the industry a decade ago for their pitching development, the Cardinals’ actions are a stunning admission — that the organization could not lend a hand, three times over. Their grip loosened on modern pitching, the Cardinals aim to regain it by going back in time to when starts were quality and innings were eaten. It’s an obvious risk given what’s at stake: only everything.

“It’s natural to have an edge if there’s a lot of doubt out there,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “And because of it, there is an edge to prove something.”

Said chairman Bill DeWitt Jr.: “Obviously, we want to get back to where we were competitive every year and do what we have to do to have a shot of not only getting in the playoffs but going deep in the playoffs.”

Fault lines

The Cardinals open their 133rd season in the National League looking to avoid something they’ve built a brand around not being. They have not had back-to-back losing seasons with a full slate of games since 1958-59, when Stan Musial’s celestial career was setting and Vinegar Bend Mizell was inching toward 200 innings. The Cardinals lost 91 games for the 10th time in 125 years and finished last in the NL Central this past season, their first time in last place since 1990. They have not finished last in their league or division in back-to-back seasons since 1907-08.

“Take Me Out to the Ballgame” debuted that year. The Model T rolled onto the streets. Heck, the Cubs have a World Series title since then.

Thirteen years removed from their last World Series championship, the Cardinals reach the verge of this era with a roster embroidered by one-year contracts. Paul Goldschmidt, the 2022 NL Most Valuable Player, is in the final year of his deal. Two of the Cardinals’ new starters, Gibson and Lynn, signed one-year contracts. The group of Cardinals on one-year deals also included Marmol until his recent two-year extension. If this quick reboot doesn’t work, the Cardinals can pivot within the year. They will have an early read on its success within weeks.

The Cardinals guaranteed $100 million to free-agent pitchers and open their regular season against the Dodgers, who committed more than $1.1 billion to free agents this winter. The Cardinals will be the guests on Thursday when the tycoons of the National League debut $700 million man Shohei Ohtani as a Dodger at Dodger Stadium — and things don’t get much easier from there for the Cardinals. Of their first 25 games, 22 are against teams that had a winning record last season, 19 against playoff teams. After visits to LA and former Cardinals manager Mike Shildt’s San Diego club, the Cardinals return home to face former Cardinal Skip Schumaker’s Marlins, then come consecutive series against the past two NL pennant winners, Philadelphia and Arizona.

“We’re going to get tested up front,” closer Ryan Helsley said. “We’ll see what we have right away.”

When they traced the fault lines of last year’s 71-91 crater, the Cardinals identified a slow start, a ragged rotation and a jumble in the outfield. Deja vu. A rigorous schedule arrives with an opening day rewrite and Gray (hamstring) on the mend, center fielder Tommy Edman (wrist) out and left fielder Lars Nootbaar (ribs) uncertain. Before the trade deadline unplugged last summer, the Cardinals had a top 10 offense. Nolan Arenado and Goldschmidt return as its cornerstones, flanked by Brendan Donovan’s on-base knack and budding slugger Nolan Gorman. What undermined that offense and led to those other troubles was quicksand starting. It provided neither quality nor quantity of innings.

The rotation’s 5.08 ERA was the fifth-highest in the majors and the highest since 1900 for the Cardinals in a full season. Only the 5.51 ERA in strike-shortened 1994 was higher.

Mozeliak likened the season to solving a Rubik’s cube. The Cardinals would get one facet in line only to watch others scramble. Twist, and another mess. They also ran an innings deficit, chasing the next start to stop a freefall. Mozeliak has used this phrase several times this winter: “Losing is humbling.”

What then is losing again?

“Everything had a negative effect on each other,” Mozeliak said. “(They were) putting the weight of the world on themselves in every area, including starting pitching, who I don’t feel had a lot of confidence on their given day. I think the bullpen was just overused, overexposed because of the starting pitching. In that environment, how do you feel as a hitter when you’re already down three? You could look at it in all aspects, and it just didn’t work.”

Catcher Willson Contreras had a more poetic way to put that.

“Last year kicked our (expletive),” he said. “Because it’s true.”

The correction begins at the start.

Endangered species

Shortly before an exhibition game against the Cardinals at Boston’s Fenway Park-replica spring stadium, the Red Sox coaching staff did the math. Manager Alex Cora explained how if they can get 25 innings, on average, every turn of the five-man rotation they should be “fine” and dodge paying “the price because you’re going to the bullpen a lot.”

The Post-Dispatch asked what if they get 30 innings every turn, just five innings more, an average of one more inning per starter?

“Oh, if you get 30 innings — oof — you’re gold,” Cora said. “I think if you get five starters who can go over 160 is great, and it doesn’t have to be perfect, right? … Those six innings are huge. Sometimes it’s six runs, six innings, but most of the time it’s six innings, three runs. If your average (is) you go six, three runs, that’s good enough.”

Those five extra innings could mean two fewer relievers used in that game, two more relievers available to hold a lead or chase a team the next day.

“It’s a residual effect, it really is,” Arenado said.

Like the 300-game winner and soon the 200-game winner, the 200-inning starter is vanishing from the ecosystem. In 2005, when Chris Carpenter won the NL Cy Young Award, 50 pitchers threw more than 200 innings. This past season, five did. Blake Snell won the NL Cy Young with 180 innings, giving him more Cy Young awards (two) than he has complete games in his career (zero). Snell, who signed this past week with San Francisco, has 191 starts in the majors and has yet to throw a pitch in the ninth. In 2017, 22.6% of the starts were shorter than five innings. This past season, 30% were, and nearly half were five innings or less. “Five and dive” is no longer a pejorative. It’s strategy.

In the past seven years, the amount of innings covered by starters has shriveled in baseball. From 1990 through 2017, there was minimal fluctuation in the percentage of innings thrown by starters and percentage of batters faced by starters. Not even expansion shifted it much from close to six innings. Starters faced 66.8% of the batters in 1997 and 67.7% after Arizona and Tampa Bay joined MLB in 1998. The drop accelerated around 2017 to 62%, and don’t miss the signal through all that noise in Houston. That was the season MLB introduced the 10-day injury list for pitchers and creativity blossomed. (It’s since been, um, canned.) By 2021, fresh off the pandemic-shortened season, starters faced 56.96% of the batters.

It tiptoed up to 57.75% this past season.

Starters averaged 5.1 innings per start.

Statistics show hitters do more damage when facing a starter for a third time, so teams pulled them, no questions. That couples with velocity-infused bullpens, aggressive roster churn and the “max effort” trend in pitching. While 100 pitches has long been a benchmark, pitchers are less efficient chasing velocity and strikeouts, so they reach that benchmark earlier in games. Not the Cardinals’ newcomers. They’re bringing quality back.

“I think you’re looking at a group barring any (further) unforeseen health issues that are known for taking the ball,” Lynn said. “I think the No. 1 thing I’ve seen over my career is when you have five guys who you can count on for 25 to 30 starts, your bullpen gets better, the offense gets better, the defense gets better. You find a rhythm, things just flow and the wins just pile up. In my time here in St. Louis, we had those guys, and it was never a sexy rotation. It was just good.”

There isn’t much sexy about a quality start, but it has become substantive.

Coined by longtime Detroit baseball writer John Lowe, who grew up in St. Louis reading the Post-Dispatch and was recently honored with the Baseball Writer’s Association of America Career Excellence Award in at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, the “quality start” is at least six innings and no more than three earned runs. That’s a resolutely uninspiring 4.50 ERA. But it can be the mark of a contender. First, most quality starts are better than a 4.50 ERA. Second, the wins.

According to Baseball Prospectus, there were 1,683 quality starts in 2023, and only 10.5% of them hit that 4.50 ERA floor. The frequency of quality starts is plummeting. The value of them has arguably never been higher. A team that receives a quality start from its starter won 69% of those games in 2023 — the second-highest ever since 1998, per BP.

Like a stereogram, the Cardinals’ plan comes into focus.

From 2018 through 2023, 33 pitchers have at least 65 quality starts. Four are set for the Cardinals rotation: Gibson (82), Lynn (77), opening day starter Miles Mikolas (74) and Gray (65). Quantity of innings isn’t everything, but it’s a start.

“There’s value to taking the ball, and there’s value to performing, too,” Gray said. “You can’t have five guys who just take the ball. You can have a couple of guys who take the ball and eat innings and do that. But you can’t have five guys who go and take the ball. You also have to have a couple of guys who go out there and dominate as well.”

Recent developments

Steven Matz, the lone lefty in the Cardinals’ planned five-man rotation, cannot remember why, but this winter, he found himself studying Mark Buehrle’s career. The Francis Howell North grad and White Sox great had 14 consecutive seasons with at least 200 innings. In that 15th year, he came four outs shy of 200.

And then he retired.

“It’s like nobody values that anymore because it’s so much stuff, stuff, stuff,” said Matz, whose career high is 160 innings. “I feel like the pendulum might swing the other way. This could be the starting point for us.”

Matz was at least close to the vanguard of today’s trend. A young pitcher arriving in the majors after Washington’s restrictor-plate approach with Stephen Strasburg, Matz was part of the Mets’ Gen-K 2.0 — fireballers who were always protected, weren’t always efficient. Matz said he did not throw 100 pitches in a start until his big league debut. He threw more than 100 in his first two starts, won both and then missed months with a muscle tear. Veteran pitchers point over and over to the role development plays in putting a governor on what’s expected from a starter.

The Cardinals are in the process of an internal audit on their pitching development. Top prospect Tink Hence has yet to complete a start longer than five innings as a pro. Gordon Graceffo has reached six innings four times, same as Tekoah Roby did in Texas’ system before the trade. Michael McGreevy, a former first-round pick, had four seven-inning starts, and 13 of his 27 starts went at least six. With big league pitchers Zack Thompson and Matthew Liberatore, this group is the next crest of Cardinals pitching prospects.

After years of counting on the farm system to provide a starter, the Cardinals hit a dry spell and moved on this winter. Adam Wainwright retired, and there was no young pitcher to seize the lead as he once did from Carpenter, as Carpenter once did from Matt Morris, as Morris did from Darryl Kile. Jack Flaherty, Dakota Hudson and Jake Woodford all signed elsewhere, the final say on their prospect class. The Cardinals are concerned about how talent evaporated into a pitching desert, and they believe some of that may be related to losing picks in 2017 due to the hacking scandal. But not all.

They sought to “re-create a draft” at the deadline by acquiring pitching talent.

“In essence, we got a draft back,” Mozeliak said. “We are taking an internal look at how we think about our draft model. I’m not saying it’s going to change dramatically on how we pick. Clearly, when you look at some of the college arms that we have had recently, they haven’t taken that next big step. Trying to find that sweet spot again would be helpful.”

But for now, experience before youth.

The throwbacks

In early November, Mozeliak and his staff started mapping the market. They saw potential superstar Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s bidding skyrocket toward the $300 million he received from LA. They had a conversation with Aaron Nola, according to sources, before he, as expected, re-signed with the Phillies. It was about that time Mozeliak started writing names on another side of the ledger.

He’d later call them “realistic shots.”

Mozeliak did not want the music to stop on the market and be stuck without a chair when he needed three. He prioritized “stability, consistency, experience,” and because experience means age, he adjusted because age can mean shorter contracts. The Cardinals had 41-year-old Wainwright retire from the rotation, and its average age still went up from 32.8 to 34.6. Matz went from the third-oldest member to the youngest, at 32.

“We wanted to take a lower risk in the sense of performance uncertainty and be able to plug and play,” Mozeliak said. “You have to do names and faces and understand: What do they bring to the table? If you’re strictly doing this as a mathematical equation, you might not end up where you ended up. The dominos were falling pretty quick back then. It became about: Can we do X? Can we do Y? And then, ultimately, now we can go chase someone like Sonny.”

Gray, the runner-up for the American League Cy Young Award, was the Cardinals’ target entering the offseason and then immediately after signing Lynn and Gibson. Mozeliak called Gray a “throwback” with an ear and feel for the modern game. Exactly what they sought — and more.

Gray told “Foul Territory” he’s a “little dog, big bite,” always with that edge. Gibson has never started in the playoffs, only appeared in relief. Matz had another season abbreviated by injury. Mikolas and Lynn struggled throughout their seasons, the latter allowing 44 homers on his way to a 5.73 ERA. In their new rotation, the Cardinals see themselves. Some 2023 welts. Doubted. Something to prove. Overlooked as a new season begins.

“I hear when people say you’ve signed a bunch of older players,” Marmol said. “What they’re missing is the value that brings from just a winning attitude. You have guys who have experience getting punched in the face and seeing the other side of it, who know how to repeat success but also know how to get through failure.”

The manager was asked if proving people wrong is a powerful motivator and if that’s a little bit of what the new pitchers share with their new team.

He held his thumb and index finger up, separated by a skosh.

“A little bit is an understatement,” Marmol said. “We’ll see.”

Turns out, even with three new starters, there is one solution after all to fix everything.

Good old-fashioned winning.