John Mozeliak seems to be trying to reprise the old strategies of his former boss, Walt Jocketty. Walt’s best skill was buying distressed valuable assets at bargain prices. In other words, he would find an all-star player on a team at an impasse, usually impending free agency with no ability to resign, and trade for that player with diminished assets. He did this with Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Larry Walker, Woody Williams, Will Clark, and a few others. He also took a lot of flyers on retreads, some of which struck gold—Chris Carpenter and Ryan Franklin come to mind—and others of which failed miserably (Ryan Theriot, Brett Tomko, Kip Wells). A lot of this was done out of necessity, as the Cardinals drafting and player development was really pretty bad at that time.
Mozeliak has proven himself to be especially good at handing out expensive contracts to overpriced, crappy mid tier agents. Hopefully he is done with those follies, guys like Dexter Fowler, Mike Leake, Luke Gregorson, Johnny Peralta, etc