Market logjam delays Cardinals’ next move. What has to happen to break things loose?

It’s possible that Wednesday night’s blockbuster deal between the New York Yankees and San Diego Padres will shake loose enough of the industry-wide, Ohtani-induced logjam that other moves will follow in its wake, but it didn’t come quickly enough for the Cardinals to make substantial alterations to their roster during their week at the Gaylord Opryland resort.

They did their bulk shopping at the end of last month. Now, they figure, conditions are right to wait for prices to land in their preferred range.

“We don’t feel we’re at a point where we are ready to make a deal,” President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak said Wednesday evening. “We’re still trying to get a better feel for what might actually be out there, because I do think there’s some fluidity in this market, because teams may do something that may open up something else.

“And so even though we were hoping to do something this week, I don’t know if that’ll happen. As an organization, we reminded ourselves that there’s still plenty of time to work on this. So we’re not just going to rush to say we did something.”

On Tuesday, Mozeliak mused that he felt it more likely the team would find help in the bullpen from free agency than from trades, nodding to the options available on the international market. Wednesday he was less definitive when asked if he still felt that was the preferred path.

“It’s hard to guess,” he said. “If we felt like we could do something in either one of those markets right now, we probably would. Or if we felt like we got something that we were excited about. But we’re just not there yet.”

Getting clarity about the state of the trade market, Mozeliak said, was a team-wide goal, and one he felt they accomplished. With Tyler O’Neill dangled as forcefully as the team can muster, the search for bullpen help labors on.

Scott Boras, the industry-defining agent who represents O’Neill, had a pointed, acidic response to the team’s shopping of his client after pointing out the heights of his career achievements while, necessarily, neglecting to mention his struggles to stay on the field in recent seasons.

“[In] the talent evaluation of the Cardinals,” Boras said, “it’s nice to know that they have players that reach higher levels than that, I guess. I don’t know.”

Reaching for a higher shelf of talent would leave the Cardinals in quiet pursuit of headline names at the top of the market. Mozeliak demurred when asked if the team would be comfortable in a pursuit for a player with only one year of team control at a high salary.

“Depends on who it is,” he said. “I can’t answer that.”

He then acknowledged he wouldn’t answer questions about a specific player either, such as Tampa’s Tyler Glasnow, and so the questions remain.

Perhaps the biggest prize still on the free agent market is Japanese starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who The Athletic reported would embark next week on a tour of seven team facilities as he narrows his preferred destinations. That trip, according to Will Sammon, will include stops with both New York teams, Toronto, San Francisco, and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

That leaves two destinations unknown. A Cardinals team official did not respond to an inquiry regarding whether they are one of the two.

Despite their initial interest, it would seem to be a longshot that St. Louis is conducting an extended cloak-and-dagger pursuit of a pitcher whose total cost may exceed $300 million, especially given Mozeliak’s hard declaration that the team would not go past the first competitive balance tax threshold.

The creative structuring seemingly necessary to complete such a deal – the Cardinals are approximately $30 million below the number and will leave room for in-season additions – would seemingly not be competitive with the zeal for spending demonstrated by the Mets’ Steve Cohen or perhaps even Canada’s largest telecom company, Rogers, which owns the Blue Jays.

Instead, in the short term, the Cardinals will work to improve their pitching by supplementing their coaching staff. In conversations throughout the week, Mozeliak acknowledged that there are internal candidates for a role which would resemble that held by Dusty Blake before his promotion to pitching coach, and conceded that Major League experience would be helpful in that role.

Asked about Cardinals Hall of Famer Jason Isringhausen, Mozeliak said, “I think having Izzy bounce around the big leagues every now and then will be something that we welcome, but his role with the minor leagues is pretty defined right now.”

By process of elimination, then, it would seem to leave assistant minor league pitching coordinator Dean Kiekhefer and Low-A Palm Beach pitching coach Giovanni Carrera as the two candidates with significant big league experience who would check the necessary boxes.

Kiekhefer, like Isringhausen, served on the team’s big league staff in September and has been viewed as a rising figure in the organization with work that has covered pitchers at multiple levels. Mozeliak declined to comment on whether he specifically was a candidate for the position.

Late Wednesday night, the team’s social media channels shared an unusual teaser video highlighting a promised “big announcement” for Thursday morning. Well timed for one of baseball’s most historically frantic transaction periods, that video was also shared by many other teams and the accounts for their respective ballparks, as well as by the band Def Leppard, set to announce a stadium concert tour.

Despite the short term hysteria, it seemed once again that the post was only foolin’.

After a slow week in Nashville, it seemed to land heavily on weary fans who’d spent the last several days bringin’ on the heartbreak. That is, after all, in many ways the definition of passionate fandom: it’s when love and hate collide.