For the Cardinals, is a change in clubhouse culture more important than roster changes?

Last October 1, in the midst of fond reminiscences about Adam Wainwright and a career that was, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals sat in his office and delivered a pointed criticism of his club that would come to define the offseason.

“I want a clubhouse full of guys that has one thing on their minds, and it’s not themselves. It’s winning a championship,” Oliver Marmol said. “So, you start out by weeding those out.”

It would be simple enough to look at winter of exits following a season of discontent and speculate on the intended targets of that harpoon, but its echoes were extraordinarily voluble throughout Winter Warm-Up. New bench coach and former infielder Daniel Descalso was perhaps the most concise of all when describing the ways he prefers for a team to be built.

“Something that we value here,” Descalso said, “is that if we can have 26 guys with that [united] attitude, all pulling in the same direction, and the only thing that matters is winning that night, I think we’re going to set ourselves up for a lot of success this year.”

There’s a way to understand that declaration as coach speak, empty calories, fit perfectly for January but less impactful once the season gets going. For the Cardinals, though, a winter spent analyzing where a year went wrong revealed a team that came apart at the seams. As they pulled, they pulled apart, and once the losing picked up steam, its momentum was too strong to stop.

Above all else, that cannot be allowed to happen again, or an innings deficit will be the least of their worries.

“What’s really important right here is that everybody owns his responsibilities,” catcher Willson Contreras said, “because we’re men. We’re grown men. We know what to do, and we know when we’re doing bad things or good things.

“That’s going to be the key this year. Have an ownership of what you do, your actions, your game plan, whatever. You take it, and go from there.”

Contreras knows better than most the failings the Cardinals suffered in that area in 2024, finding himself on the receiving end of a bizarre demotion borne largely of a discontented pitching staff trying to find its way through the post-Yadier Molina wilderness. The fault lies not with Contreras in his desire to fill that gap as best he could, but rather with the broader team pitching structure which at first did not see the need to meet him anywhere close to where he was.

It was jarring, at the time, to hear Marmol express near bewilderment at the suggestion that the team meet Contreras where he was rather than forcibly pulling him to them.

It works much better when they all pull together.

“That’s the way you’ve got to win championships,” said Lance Lynn, a member of the last Cardinals world champion in 2011 and a returning member of the starting rotation in 2024. “You have a different group, a different culture of a way to do things.

“It’s figuring out how to make sure everybody is accountable, but also make sure everybody’s comfortable and they’re doing what they need to do, and you can help them along the way.”

Much of the weekend’s meetings with players centered on discussions about motivation and what players are saying to each other as they try to put the past fully behind them. The quiet confidence of Brendan Donovan, for one, stood out as evidence of a young player willing and eager to make a leap into the next stage of his career.

A self-declared leader, though, is unlikely to be a successful one. And regardless of who feels a desire to speak up, even the loudest voice will struggle to rise above the din of multiple, simultaneous, disparate shouts.

“There’s a lot of time invested in making sure that we get this right,” Marmol said Monday. “The bottom line is this: can you create a culture where we truly trust each other in that clubhouse? You do that and you’ll be fine. And these guys have invested a decent amount of time to make sure that happens.”

Marmol was eager to add Descalso to his staff, he said, because he wanted to hire a bench coach that he believes could take over his job.

“If you’re insecure, then the seat’s not for you,” he explained.

Neither he nor his bosses are under any delusions about the status of his contract or his place in the organization.

The expectation is that things will work out. What goes unsaid is the consequence of what happens if things again turn sour. If the team isn’t pulling all one direction, they’re not pulling in Marmol’s direction, and Mozeliak will be presiding over his third managerial change in six years. The questions for the manager, for now, are simple.

“It’s not so much a leadership role as guys being invested and having skin in the game and caring,” Marmol said. “It’s getting that amount of buy-in from everybody. Do you really care about the St. Louis Cardinals and this team, or do you care about yourself?”