Cards announce front-office promotions, hires

ST. LOUIS -- The shuffle in job titles and responsibilities that began with John Mozeliak's promotion to president of baseball operations over the summer has prompted another round of moves and new hires that the Cardinals announced on Thursday.
Highlighting those are the promotion of Luis Morales to director of international operations and administration, and Matt Slater being named a special assistant to general manager Michael Girsch. Slater's focus will remain in player procurement. Morales fills the director role vacated when Moises Rodriguez became an assistant general manager in September.
Others in the baseball operations group who received promotions include Matt Bayer (manager of scouting analytics), Tyler Hadzinsky (amateur scouting coordinator/analyst) and Emily Wiebe (baseball operations analyst).
Also announced were changes within the organization's scouting department, which is headed by second-year director Randy Flores. The Cardinals hired four new area scouts -- Stacey Pettis (Northern California), Jim Negrych (Northeast), Chris Rodriguez (Pacific Northwest) and Alix Martinez (Dominican Republic) -- in addition to promoting crosscheckers Sean Moran (national), Zach Mortimer (Northeast) and Joe Almaraz (international). Additionally, Damaso Espino will serve as the Latin American crosschecker.
The Cardinals have brought in Jose Leger to serve as the organization's Latin American field and academy development coordinator. Jose Gonzalez Maestre was named a scouting supervisor for Venezuela.