It wasn’t for a lack of trying according to John Mozeliak, but the fact remains the Cardinals let Monday pass without any outside roster transactions.

This no doubt ruffled some fans’ feathers and sent others straight to the liquor cabinets, but the club’s president of baseball operations says the right move just wasn’t out there and he didn’t want to make a move just for the sake of it.

Mo expanded on the team’s inactivity in a lengthy Tuesday chat with Bernie Miklasz, where he also addressed the fans’ anger toward management’s lack of moves.

“I think the greatest reason to work for the Cardinals is because we just have an awesome fanbase that actually cares and they want to see us be successful,” Mozeliak said. “But I certainly don’t want to get in the business of just trying to do something to say I did it.

“There just wasn’t anything that we thought was compelling and it’s not because we’re conservative, and it’s not because we were trying to be prudent or overly fiscally responsible. It just wasn’t there.”

Mozeliak acknowledged this is a hard sell to the fanbase and added he and his colleagues aren’t thrilled with things now either; and alluded to potential large changes coming this winter.

This is not how we drew it up and it certainly isn’t what we hoped to see,” Mozeliak said. “We have eight weeks to have a very, very intense evaluation of where we are and hopefully by November-December we can hit the ground running and it may be an offseason where it’s not just a piece here or there. It may be much more dramatic changes.”

Below are Mozeliak’s additional trade deadline comments along with the full audio from his recent chat with Bernie.

On which Cardinals other teams did show interest in:

“There was really sort of two ways you could approach this…There were a few players that were drawing interest. Lance Lynn, Seung-Hwan Oh, Trevor Rosenthal; and then there was a lot of interest in some of our minor league talent like most recently acquired (Tyler) O’Neill, (Luke) Weaver, (Jack) Flaherty, (Harrison) Bader and (Carson) Kelly to name a few.

“Obviously a couple of those guys are on the big league roster now. So as we were looking at this, we felt that we were compelled to, or at least be willing to really just about anything in the right deal. Unfortunately, we just never got to a point where we thought it made sense.”

On where talks went regarding Lance Lynn:

“The hits we were getting on Lance Lynn didn’t seem to make sense because of where our system is right now and we just didn’t want to settle for an average or even slightly below average prospect. We weren’t trying to a volume move. We really were looking for an elite type player or potentially elite type player in those types of deals.

“It just never got there. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. It wasn’t that we were stubborn and didn’t want to do anything. We were candidly very open to try to do something, but just couldn’t find that right partner.

“I think part of it too is there’s a handful of clubs that are so out in front this year in their division(s); they can be pretty picky on what they want to do and it also eliminates a lot of other teams from wanting to engage. It really felt like where we had options to potentially do something was somewhat limited.”

On a solid mid-order batter not being available:

“There just wasn’t really one of those types of players who got moved…When look potentially at what we could’ve done, it would’ve been adding more starting pitching which we feel like we have and we have it coming.

“And the second point, it was relief help. And, again, we were engaged in a handful of different reliever discussions. My focus was on having someone that would’ve been controllable for a year or two after this season and (we) just weren’t able to come to grips with one.”

On dealing with the club’s depth in regards to the future:

“You have an abundance of outfielders. You have an abundance of left-hand relief. What we need to do is decide who we want to bet on and then, ultimately, the ones that we don’t we’re going to have to find another place to play.

“You look at just our outfield for example with Grichuk, Piscotty and Fowler and then of course what Pham’s done; four guys for three spots…That’s probably what’s going to walk us through the next eight weeks, but at some point we have to decide where we want to create opportunities for someone like a Bader or even a Tyler O’Neill who we acquired.

“And of course we all got to see Sierra for a few times this summer. So the depth is there; the question will be how can we really optimize these assets.”