JUPITER, Fla. — When he decided to make the most significant and dramatic change to the Cardinals’ organization during his time as chairman, Bill DeWitt Jr. became convinced that time had run out on the way they were building teams and if a shift did not happen — soon — they’d fall behind in maintaining their brand.

DeWitt turned to the same executive then, in 2007, that he sat beside Tuesday morning to reaffirm again as the industry changes and the Cardinals acknowledge a “test to their model” that the stability and longevity of John Mozeliak’s leadership will guide them.

Cardinals ownership announced a new three-year contract for their president of baseball operations that will extend his current contract two more years, through 2025.

That will be Mozeliak’s 30th season with the club and his 18th leading its baseball operations, giving him one of the longest tenures atop the front office in Cardinals’ history. He first bridged fissures and guided the Cardinals toward the paradigm shift DeWitt wanted — a cutting-edge use of analytics and more data-driven decisions despite a recent title. What followed has been 15 consecutive winning seasons, a stronger player development machine, and now a new challenge. Still the division favorite, the Cardinals have not kept their reservations in the National League Championship Series and their rivals’ spending on coaches, staff, infrastructure and players has surged past the Cardinals’ practices.

“I was convinced that despite a run of success (going into 2007) — and I was there for the whole thing — I knew how it was built and that was a tough model to continue,” DeWitt said. “I felt that we needed someone who could take us in a different direction and be all-in from an analytics standpoint, player evaluation standpoint, financial standpoint.

“Over that long period of time, 15 years, still now he’s really done a terrific job of building a culture attracting people, taking risk, and we’re in a risk business,” DeWitt continued. “We just are. Sign a long-term contract and the player gets hurt, and you’re stuck. Or doesn’t perform. You have to weigh all of that. It’s not an easy job. He really hit the ground running and still there was a big learning curve, and the game changed, too. He really adapted to that. Went full bore. And we are where we are — which is a great run of success. And extremely well-positioned for the future.

“I’ve said that a lot of years, and it’s played out.”

Under the rising heat of the Florida sun Tuesday and surrounded by the earliest official workouts of spring training, DeWitt and Mozeliak announced an agreement struck within the past week. It was a product of seven months of discussions that did include times when Mozeliak, 54, considered the chance to explore a career path outside of baseball or related but not leading a team.

He decided there was more to do in the role he had.

“I love my job,” he said. “I love what I do.”

He always was drawn to what he called “incomplete projects.” Those include the forthcoming $108 million makeover of the Florida headquarters the Cardinals share with the Marlins and the long-desired wish for a state-of-the-art training complex. That list could also include the team’s upcoming reckoning with its rotation and the fact only one current starter is under contract for 2024 at a time of increasing pitching costs. Mozeliak has also wanted to expand and evolve the roles of his front office, saying Tuesday he intends to cede some of his day-to-day responsibilities during the course of this extension and create an increased influence for some on his staff who, like general manager Michael Girsch, have drawn attention from other clubs looking for baseball operations leaders.

“Short-term, you’ll still get me for a little bit,” Mozeliak said, “but as we get deeper into this contract there will be changes.”

And then there is the riddle of contending in the current landscape.

The National League Central is good foil for a mid-market team that garners the support to outspend its size. But elsewhere in the league, wallets are fat and owners are willing to use them. Some of the edges the Cardinals once had in the draft have been matched, some of the innovations they’ve made have been copied or improved. They have acknowledged lost steps — and regained some. They are in an industry where investments on support staff, tech, research and infrastructure ballooned. The Los Angeles Dodgers, for example, can fund an armada of experiments to advance, and if they fail, just launch another. And then there are free agents like the ones San Diego and the Mets are collecting. Better “get creative,” said one official.

The Cardinals, who aim to be more targeted in their pursuits, can be outpaced on spending on two tracks, and either have to upshift or innovate, and these days it’s likely both.

“For me the biggest short-term challenge is managing this arms race right, right?” Mozeliak said. “When you think about what’s happening in baseball there is so much being invested in infrastructure of how you think about from drafting, from development to training, to performance — and everybody has to be a little careful. But everyone has to do what they think’s best for them or their organization. So, that’s one of the things that I want to understand and work through with our team.

“There are a lot of things that people are chasing right now, and they’re chasing for that edge,” Mozeliak continued. “For that advantage — and I think one of those things that we’ve always been good at — is we walk before we run. And we have an understanding of what that looks like. Over the last year or so, we may have gotten off a little track on that. I want to get back on that and just make sure that we have a very laser focus on what’s next.”

In Mozeliak’s first 15 years leading baseball operations — first as general manager then later as president — the Cardinals have won six division titles and two pennants. Their 79 playoff games are second in the NL to the Dodgers’ 116, though the Cardinals have not won a pennant since 2013 or a playoff series since 2019. He steered the team through a federal investigation that saw one member of his leadership group fired, banned from baseball, and put in jail for illegally accessing Houston’s internal database. In 2020, just as Mozeliak started integrating other executives into press conferences and public comments, a pandemic halted the season. When games resumed, the Cardinals had an outbreak of COVID-19 that placed them in quarantine, and Mozeliak deputized himself as the director to see the team through it, back on the field, and into the playoffs through a rigorous, condensed schedule.

In the years that bookended that challenge, Mozeliak pulled off trades for pillars Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, who finished first and third in the 2022 NL MVP voting, respectively.

Through moves like those, DeWitt does see an honor on the horizon for Mozeliak.

It involves a tailor and a red jacket.

“I’m not going to announce it in advance,” DeWitt said when asked of the sport coat given to Cardinals Hall of Famers, players or executives. “He certainly has the credentials to be among that group. For one thing he acquired a bunch of those players that we’re now honoring.”

DeWitt agreed that from the beginning, his “controversial” decision in 2007, at pivotal stretches in this Cardinals’ era it has been Mozeliak with the “steady hand” at the wheel.

And here comes another pivotal time.

“I think it’s a compliment whenever you can keep things rolling,” Mozeliak said. “In the last 15 years, we really haven’t had to take that time out or step backward. We’ve been able to keep progressing. That’s the hope of this organization and that’s the vision we have for the future.”