Can the Cardinals fire John Mozeliak next?

John Mozelik, again showing a semi-genius, semi-mystic look
that seems to be an attempt to hide real puzzlement.

Now that St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations and former general manager John Mozeliak has fired Mike Matheny as manager, discussed further here, can owner Bill DeWitt show Mo the door next?

Update, Aug 2: Three-quarters of voters in my Twitter poll want to give Mo the boot.

He's got many GM crimes of his own, and not just with players. For starters, I wanted Mozeliak to hire Terry Francona instead of Matheny to fill the Tony La Russa retirement in the first place.

Now, the players.

Mo got smart in holding a firm line on Albert Pujols. He got lucky the Orioles went higher on Chris Davis, who may be even with Albert Pujols on worst FA contract ever when all is said and done. (Confession: I wanted him at the time.) He got lucky the Cubs and Bosox, respectively, went higher on Jason Heyward and David Price. (Cards fans who lament their passage? Heyward is better than last year, but still batting at replacement level and his defense is starting to decline. Plus the Cubs had intended to make him a center fielder. Price had injury problems last year and is pitching at replacement level this year.)

That said, Mo has had his own flops in both free agency and trades.

Dexter Fowler, the second bad free agent signing by Mozeliak after Mike Leake — who is sucking more for Seattle this year than the Cards last year, if that's consolation to some fans who saw his post-trade 2017 peak with the Mariners — may be permanent dead weight as far as his contract after Mo threw him under the bus. If he really is some sort of clubhouse problem, that's also in part on Mo for not catching signs of it, if they were there, before signing him.

I was opposed to that, strongly, for three reasons. Two were connected, namely giving Fowler both the fifth year and the full no-trade clause. The other was not front-loading the contract, unlike with Jhonny Peralta, which would have made Fowler easier to move now.

It's not just free agency, though. Marcell Ozuna was a bad trade instead of the team waiting out the Marlins (if Derrick Goold is passing on true dope on that) and signing Christian Yelich instead. And, yes, I would have waited out the Marlins. If they absolutely wouldn't trade Yelich first, they would at least drop their price on Ozuna. And, that trade was made, let's remember, with Mo knowing about Ozuna's shoulder problems.

Let's get back to Matheny, though. From comments Francona made recently, it's clear that Mozeliak wanted a new-school manager who would accept a big picture vision of how to manage a team coming from the front office.

It's also clear that Matheny didn't have that, and has never grown into that. His bullpen management has been horrible. His lineups aren't set by sabermetric principles. Hell, he can't even do good double switches. Meanwhile, Francona, through, certainly understands the concept of leverage for his pen, by the way he has used Andrew Miller in high-leverage situations, rather than being a ninth-inning button pusher.

Now, Matheny didn't have to have previous MLB managerial experience to do this. MILB experience probably would have sufficed. Or modern baseball acuity from the broadcast booth, per the Yankees' hiring of Aaron Boone to replace Joe Girardi. That said, Gabe Kapler still looks "interesting" for the Phillies.

But Matheny had none of that, either.

And, so, John Mozeliak's desire to be a GM button-pusher has ultimately backfired. If Matheny wasn't going to learn after the Allen Craig trade, he wasn't going to learn.

And, thus, with all of this, Mo needs to be shown the door. He's arguably forfeited the trust to pick the team's next field manager.

As for free agency? I think the team needs to look for low-hanging fruit in mid-level free agents and sign them to low-base contracts with hefty incentive clauses. Mo's non-use of incentives is another head-scratcher.