# Questions from John Mozeliak

- Link: https://www.nyrdcast.com/questions-from-john-mozeliak/
- Published: 2021-02-16T15:01:24-06:00
- Author: Eugene Tierney

Each winter, members of the [United Cardinal Bloggers](http://www.unitedcardinalbloggers.com/)
are invited to send questions to John Mozeliak and he’ll answer them. This year,
he answered about 2 per person; below are the questions he answered for me.

**Nyrdcast:** As someone who has dealt with Covid, I’ve felt how long it’s taken
to get back to “normal” as far as physical conditioning.  How much of an impact 
did that have on players like [Lane Thomas](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/t/thomala02.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-)
and [Carlos Martinez](https://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?pid=martica04,martica03,martica02,martin019car&search=Carlos+Martinez&utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-)?
Was that the reason we never saw [Edmundo Sosa](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/sosaed01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-)
with the big league club?

**John Mozeliak:** When people ask the question how COVID affected players, the 
easiest way to think about it is it’s not one size fits all.  When you look at the
individuals who tested positive for COVID and were quarantined and not part of the
team for a number of days or weeks, there was a spectrum of how players were affected.

For some people, if affected them very little.  They spent their 10-12 days in quarantine
and right when they got back, they were ready to go and contribute.  There were 
others though, where you can look at some of their performances last year and you
could say to yourself that they never got to where they needed to be, to a point
where their contribution was going to be more normalized.  So how can you determine
statistical information for last year based on that?  I still think it has value,
but we understand who was most affected versus who wasn’t, but overall, I think 
that data was important because something is better than nothing.

**Nyrdcast: **A few years back, Bill DeWitt III mentioned a pitching academy in 
Jupiter.  Is there any update on it?

**John Mozeliak: **Well it’s not an academy, but we do have a pitching and hitting
lab now available to us down in Jupiter.  We will have a lot of different technologies
installed in these tunnels that will allow us to study pitching from a different
perspective than we’ve had in the past and it will also allow us to do more with
our hitters.  Overall, it really increases our technology and puts it in a place
where we can secure it, analyze it and share it.  

We will obviously utilize it during spring training and for minor league camp and
with the restructure of our minor leagues, we’ll have our Low-A (Palm Beach Cardinals)
and Extended Spring Training (Gulf Coast League Cardinals) teams at the complex 
during the season.  So we’ll have players that will have exposure to this area that
are still very much in the development mind set.  It’s a great advantage for us 
because we have a lot of players who like to work out in Jupiter during the off-
season and now we’ll have more tools to take advantage of to help them in their 
development.

I also asked questions about the draft, spending plans after some big contracts 
come off the books, the hall of fame, and who would play third base (this was prior
to the trade for [Nolan Arenado](https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/arenano01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-)),
but those will have to be answered another time.

Questions from other sites:
[RetroSimba](https://retrosimba.com/2021/02/17/john-mozeliak-lou-brock-bob-gibson-shared-wisdom/)

_Don’t forget to check the [Cardinal Salary Matrix](https://www.nyrdcast.com/2020/10/the-2020-cardinals-off-season-salary-matrix/)
and the [Cardinal Prospect Tracker ](https://www.nyrdcast.com/2021/01/2021-st-louis-cardinals-prospect-tracker/)
for updates._

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## Comments

### By: John Lowe III

- Link: https://www.nyrdcast.com/questions-from-john-mozeliak/#comment-3721
- Published: 2021-02-17T13:41:51-06:00

Kolten Wong showed class, as a player and as he left town. I expect he will be shown
respect by fans when he returns, similar to that shown for David Freese.