The Cardinals held a press conference today featuring chairman Bill DeWitt Jr., club president Bill DeWitt III, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak and advisor Chaim Bloom. DeWitt Jr. announced at the press conference that Bloom would be taking over the Mozeliak’s POBO role after 2025 and has signed a five-year contract. Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat was among those to relay the details (X links). That contract starts in 2026, per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (X link). Mozeliak adds that he will make day-to-day decisions through 2025 but but long-term decisions will involve Bloom and ownership, per Jones (X link). Also, Michael Girsch is no longer the general manager, with his title now changed to vice president of special projects. Mozeliak says he expects player payroll to go down, per Goold (X link).
There had been a lot of smoke in recent days that significant changes were coming to the front office. A week ago, Jones reported that some notable developments would be announced at today’s press conference. Around that same time, Bob Nightengale of USA Today had reported that Bloom was likely ticketed for a larger role. A few days later, Katie Woo of The Athletic provided some more details, noting that Bloom would be overhauling the club’s player development. As part of that overhaul, the club planned to redirect resources away from the major league roster and towards improving their minor league pipeline. On the weekend, Nightengale reported further on the club, noting that the payroll reduction could lead to right-hander Sonny Gray winding up on the trading block. Meanwhile, a report from Goold aligned with Woo’s info, noting that the club planned to take a long-term focus on their player development. Woo herself added another report which noted that the club planned to move on from long-time first baseman Paul Goldschmidt.
Today’s announcements all line up with that reporting, though also take it a step further. Though no one is using words like “rebuild” or “retool” or anything along those lines, it seems there is a general understanding that the club will be placing less of a focus on results in the immediate present with more of an eye on long-term and/or sustainable roster construction.
For most of this century, the Cardinals have had a strong track record in terms of finding and developing young talent. That allowed them to generally post strong on-field results despite never being one of the top spenders in the league. From the year 2000 to the present, they have only missed the playoffs nine times and only finished with a losing record twice.
That cutting edge has seemingly gone a bit dull in most recent years, however. From 2000 to 2015, they only once missed the playoffs twice in a row, which was in 2007 and 2008. But that was sandwiched in between two World Series titles in 2006 and 2011. From 2016 to 2024, the club has missed the playoffs five times. Of their four postseason appearances from 2019 to 2022, three of them ended with losses in the Wild Card round. While the club rebounded somewhat from a losing season in 2023, getting over .500 in 2024, they did so with a good chunk of the roster consisting of pricey veterans in their mid-30s. That includes Goldschmidt, Gray, Nolan Arenado, Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson and Miles Mikolas.
Per the recent reporting leading up to today’s conference, it seems the decision makers have come to the conclusion that they have been hampered by redirecting their focus to the major league roster, which has hurt the club’s player development pipeline. Recent years have seen players like Randy Arozarena, Adolis García, Zac Gallen and others thriving after departing the organization. Meanwhile, some of the club’s young prospects like Dylan Carlson, Jordan Walker, Nolan Gorman and others have struggled to live up to expectations.
Every organization will have some of those misses, but it seems the club realizes that they need to change their hit rate in order to find success. As a mid-market club that doesn’t generally sign top free agents, good player development is fairly essential for running out winning ball clubs.
Bloom will be entrusted with making those changes, though he won’t be given carte blanche right away. As detailed by Mozeliak up top, it seems he will handle the basic running of the club for the next year as Bloom focuses on things under the hood. That presumably will involve tackling things away from the majors, from the minor league facilities, coaches, scouting departments and things of that nature. After a year of making changes in those capacities, he will eventually take over the baseball decisions in a more complete capacity.
During his tenure as the chief baseball officer for the Red Sox, Bloom had some hits and misses but the are good reasons why the Cardinals have picked him for this role. Bloom made some odds choices in Boston, such as selling at the 2022 deadline but staying narrowly above the competitive balance tax. The signings of Trevor Story and Masataka Yoshida haven’t really worked out so far.
But a lot of Boston’s future is made up of players acquired during Bloom’s time, either through the draft, international free agency or trades. Though the 2022 deadline was odd at the time, getting Enmanuel Valdéz and Wilyer Abreu for a few months of Christian Vázquez now looks like a big win. Plucking Garrett Whitlock from the Yankees in the in the 2020 Rule 5 draft was a nice pull. Kyle Teel, Marcelo Mayer, Roman Anthony, Miguel Bleis and Kristian Campbell are all on top 100 prospect lists and were acquired during Bloom’s time.
As he ramps up to take over, Mozeliak will be preparing to wind things down. Though the recent results have stirred up the anger of many fans in the St. Louis area, Mozeliak is connected to much of the clubs’ aforementioned success earlier this century. He joined the club’s scouting department in 1995, just a few years before they kicked off that strong run of success. He worked his way up to eventually take over the general manager role going into the 2008 season.
The club has largely been a mainstay of the postseason in that time, including winning the World Series in 2011. There has been an apparent tapering off of the club’s momentum in recent years, though even before that, it seemed like Mozeliak was leaning towards transitioning away from his current role. Back in February of 2023, before the club’s disappointing results in the two most recent campaigns, Mozeliak gave some hints that he was heading out the door eventually.
“I know there is going to be some change coming over the next few years,” he said at that time. “We certainly want to give individuals within the organization opportunities to grow and expand some of their roles, and over the course of the next year or so we’ll work through that.”
At that point, it seemed fair to conclude that he was talking about Girsch, who had been in the organization since 2006. He had been promoted to general manager in 2017, working as Mozeliak’s top lieutenant since then. Girsch had been signed to a multi-year extension in October 2022, just a few months prior to Mozeliak’s comments.
But Bloom was fired by the Red Sox in September of 2023 and then landed an advisory role with the Cards in January of 2024. It seems that Bloom has surpassed Girsch at some point, either based on his track record with Boston or something he has shown them since taking on that advisory role.
Girsch has now been given a new title, which is perhaps a favor to him in a sense. With Bloom now blocking his path to a promotion with the Cards, this sends a signal to other clubs. If any front office positions open up elsewhere and another team is interested in Girsch, he will now seem more available than he did a few weeks ago. Clubs generally allow their personnel to interview with other clubs if a promotion is involved, so the Cards could be open to Girsch pursuing a role somewhere else if the opportunity arises. Per Woo on X, the club doesn’t plan to hire another GM in the short term, likely waiting until Bloom takes over next year. Woo also relays in a column at The Athletic that Girsch is under contract for one more year.
As the weeks and months roll along, more specifics should emerge about the organization and their plans. But from the news today and in recent weeks, it’s clear that the main idea is change, a new direction that should have significant ramifications for years to come.
we all knew this was going to happen
This is huge. Mo was holding that franchise back for years.
This is good. Bloom was key to building the Rays player development system
Leading to zero championships. Cards fans are smart. They’ll be cursing his name by summer.
Cards fans were already cursing his name on here because of his name
As a Cards fan, I can assure you they are generally not smart lol. And I don’t think you can just judge success on champion ships alone. Executives should be judged on how well they positioned their team to win; playoffs are a crapshoot and the “best” team rarely wins them. Given the lack of resources at his disposal, Bloom did a hell of a job with Tampa Bay
No championships is on ownership. The Cards aren’t as budget constrained
I think the problem is the DeWitts are going to use this as an excuse to be budget constrained. I would expect very small budgets from the Cards for a while, and the end result being similar to Tampa – competitive team that sometimes makes the playoffs but rarely has much success there. Which, in his defense is probably better than spending mid-level money for the exact same results, which is what the Cards were doing for years after 2013.
Ask Red Sox fans how they feel about Bloom.
–Ask Red Sox fans how they feel about Bloom–
The ones who read hack sites and nothing else of course can’t stand him. A lot of fans thought the same way regarding Cherrington, same years ago towards Dan Duquette. i didn’t have a real issue with any of the, except for maybe some with Cherington who pretty much only hoarded prospects, who later on Dombrowski freely traded away towards players for the ’18 WS crown.
Whether true or not.. Bloom, for some reason didn’t take ANY pitchers rds 1-2 during his time in Boston in the rule4 draft and no decent upside pitchers at all during his time. He drafted NOTHING but middle infielders up hi, excepting Roman Anthony as hi bonus kids with primo picks, taking out of course ’21, when Fabian didn’t sign from rd2. It was a glut of SS/2b and nothing else. ST Looie might hope he learned his lesson to spread things out position wise.
I would prefer they draft the best player available regardless of position. I actually prefer athletic middle infielders who can potentially cover other positions over 1B only, or DH types.
Pitching is obviously very important, but smart teams develop pitchers. I want the Cardinals to return to being a smart team. Getting rid of Mo is a great first step. I’m fine with the way this is playing out. I knew Mo was going to be allowed to engineer his own departure. Letting him play the villain so that Bloom gets take over as the savior makes sense. It’s probably the only way Bloom would accept the job. He walked into a bad situation in Boston and ultimately paid the price for decisions that were made for him. I don’t blame him for not wanting to go through that again.
Always draft the best player available. Trades can be made in the future for specific needs.
The Red Sox have 5 top 100 prospects that Bloom acquired. I think he did fine and he did not completely neglect pitching. In Bloom’s drafts:
2020: 2 of 4 picks were pitchers and 12 of 16 undrafted players signed were pitchers
2021: 8 of 20 picks were pitchers and 1 of 2 undrafted players signed were pitchers
2022: 13 of 21 picks were pitchers and 0 of 2 undrafted players signed were pitchers
2023: 12 of 22 picks were pitchers and 1 of 2 undrafted players signed were pitchers
CardsFan57: ” Always draft the best player available. Trades can be made in the future for specific needs.”
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I think that’s what happened in Boston. Bloom’s 1st round picks:
2020: Yorke, RH infielder
2021: Mayer, LH infielder (top rated player in the draft)
2022: Romero, LH infielder (OF Roman Anthony got the most money at pick 79)
2023: Teel, LH catcher (7th rated prospect fell to them at pick 14)
Yorke was just traded for pitching. So, it looks like they drafted the most value available and traded excess value later to fill a need.
Cards have actually been a decent drafting team for several years now. That’s not their problem. The problem is player development. So based on what you’re saying his history was with the Red Sox, perhaps it will work. Flores maintains control of talent evaluation going into the draft, and Bloom helps develop them from there.
But you don’t get credit for picking guys in the top 10. That’s the easy part. Who on the Boston Red Sox roster that is key contributor is do to Bloom? Connor Wong, that’s it. The only player remaining from the Betts blunder
Charlie- coaching, as far as hitting goes and fielding in the RS minor leagues has been more than fine for years. No problems there. it’s been the RS pitching coach situation within the system which has left MUCH to be desired and I’m not going into it for the umpteenth time what had witnessed at FT Myers from a major pitching coordinator, but let’s say focusing on actually developing and teaching kids how/what to do should be priority, rather than sitting in the bleachers and chatting it up with spectators.
I’ll give Breslow credit for firing much of the crew that was on hand during the Bloom regime and some beforehand.
ih8te- Can’t really look at it like that. Yes, it was a disaster of a trade. Betts said he wanted to move on, but they turned verdugo, the centerpiece into Richard Fitts, who “should” be a decent mid-back end SP and Craig Weissert, a solid middle reliever they’ve got for another 5y of control and 1 other kid.. Nicholas Judice who probably will be not much and was hurt most of the year, so it’s more than Wong.
Bloom had nothing to do with trading Verdugo out of Boston. His Betts return was Jeter Downs, Connor Wong and Alex Verdugo. Verdugo wasn’t very good in Boston and Downs never even made it. That is what Bloom gets credit for. Trading Verdugo was the next guy cleaning up Blooms mess
The main return to Boston in the Betts trade was $48M (half of David Price’s remaining contract). When a team takes on this much money, the player return is less.
That’s partially true, they had a much better deal in place that included Gratoral just a few days before the final deal, that fell through from medical. Still they got a guy coming off an MVP WS season who was only 26 when traded to the Dodger, even with the Price contract the return should have been better, Jeter Downs had the prospect ranking but every indictment even at that time was saying bust.
The $48M taken on by the Dodgers affected the player return. I don’t think there is any doubt about it.
Duran? Literally their best player?
Bloom is pretty good at drafting and developing talent. While the 2020 season was a mess, he got Mayer, Anthony, Teel, and Campbell from the next three drafts. Some interesting IFA as well, even if most of those are still in the low minors.
Also traded for Pivetta, Winckowski and Abreu, giving up little in the process.
He gets tagged with the awful trade of Betts, but that was forced by ownership. Wish he could have gotten a better return, but that is tough when ownership is publicly announcing that the guy WILL be traded.
He made some big mistakes as the GM, including a bad deal for Story and a huge overpay for Yoshida (turned out he couldn’t play defense worth beans), so I was happy to see him go. Breslow seems to have a clearer view of the large picture. But perhaps Bloom has learned?
@tff17,
I believe you’ve provided a perfect example of damning with faint praise.
Story’s deal turned sour because of health. In hindsight, obviously Bloom shouldn’t have; however, the team had money to spend now that Betts wasn’t earmarked, and not many good options. A number of the guys signed that offseason have been dreadful (only one with a decent contract was Seager’s 10 years). And a very similar situation happened with Yoshida as well (both free agent pool sucked, and his health has been souring his play).
I think Bloom loses points in my book for not positioning himself for the best free agents (Turner or Judge or Ohtani). That would be my biggest disappointment, and I am suspect the contract given to Devers will hold up in the long run.
As for Breslow, in his first year, he’s done very similarly to Bloom in action; however, he’s told us a definitively what large picture we wanted to hear. I find that insulting but it clearly calms down the fans who as johnsilver said “read the hack sites and nothing else”. The Sale trade was very bad, especially in respects to this season. Other deals like O’Neill wasn’t bad. Don’t love the Jansen deal. Every deal is very easy to see why, where Bloom’s deals were long-term multi-faceted and required squinting to understand the logic. Like the Hamilton-Binelas-Renfroe swap.
We knew Story had a bad arm when he was signed — that injury went back to the 2021 season — so it wasn’t that much of a surprise when it eventually required surgery. Agreed that the 2024 injury was a bit less predictable. Bloom may also have overestimated his offensive ability? By 2021 he was down to a .308 wOBA on the road.
I actually expected the first few years of the deal to look good, it was ages 32 to 34 that I thought would be a bad overpay. But it hasn’t worked out like that.
The problem with Yoshida is that he can’t play defense. Signing Yoshida *and* Turner *and* Duvall pretty much ensured that the Red Sox outfield defense would be a disaster in 2023. I understand that Nimmo would have been more expensive, but he would have been a much better fit defensively. Signing three guys to play DH was a little much.
As for Breslow, in the last year he has acquired Criswell, Fitts, Priester, and Sandlin, as well as drafting as many pitchers as Bloom took in the prior four years combined. I understand going after the best player on the board regardless of position with your top pick or two, but you can’t ignore pitching as completely as Bloom did. It has been an obvious organizational weakness for a while now.
I agree with you that Bloom did a decently good job of acquiring and stockpiling cost controlled position player talent.
My other major complaint about Bloom was his failure to duck under the luxury tax in 2022. It shouldn’t have been THAT hard to trade somebody at the deadline and get the reset. It felt like he struggled to execute a plan at the deadline. (In contrast, Breslow’s deadline trades followed a clear plan even if they didn’t amount to anything.)
I will attempt to explain the Renfroe swap for Hamilton, JBJ and his overpay contract, and Binelas. Binelas was one of the best bats in college–his draft stock fell after hamate surgery and he went in the 3rd round, I think. He did not recover for the Crew the following year, and Bloom took a chance that it would take another year (hamate surgery often saps power–in Binelas’s case, it affected the hit tool, too). It turned out that Binelas did not recover in time, and Bloom was forced to pay Devers big money to placate RSN and atone for the sins of letting Betts and Bogaerts go, and for not having a fully functional Binelas ready to assume 3B while letting Devers “explore” free agency. The failure of Binelas to thrive cost Bloom his job when ownership let Bloom roll over for the Devers extension with a big overpay, but just like in the case of DD and Sale, the remorse was swift and unforgiving, and the CBO lost his job. Perhaps this is a fanciful narrative, but gambling on a powerhouse Binelas is the only thing that makes sense to me in understanding why Bloom assumed the multimillion dollar end to JBJ’s contract.
Yeah, he clearly hoped for more from Binelas. Trading for prospects is never a sure thing, and Binelas could have been a nice pickup.
Devers was extended a year before reaching free agency. I’m not convinced it is a bad deal, though of course there are many ways it might not work out well. Most big contracts are like that.
Horace: Great post about the JBJ trade. Bloom also likely had input about Binelas and Hamilton from Mike Groopman who was hired by Bloom after being Brewers VP of International Scouting and Player Personnel.
That’s a very good point about Groopman. I hadn’t followed that aspect at all.
tff17 as All stated above it’s not true that Bloom ignored pitching in the draft and especially in the international signings. All gave a good history of pitchers that Bloom drafted and he really ramped up pitching in the 2022 and 2023 draft. We will be seeing his draft and international pitching signings for years to come. The point is he may not of drafted any pitchers in the first three rounds he did draft a lot of pitchers and he signed a ton of international pitchers,like Monegro, Paez, and Valera. My suspicion is we will see a lot of pitchers continue to show for the next half decade.
He’s screwed. The Cards love to publicly announce they want to get rid of guys, thereby killing their trade value.
Sox fan here.
Glad he’s not ruining the Sox anymore. He did do well at developing the position player side of the farm, but that should be expected when you invest nearly all of your high draft picks in that side of the house.
All of his big FA signings have been huge failures, and they were not necessary. Why sign Story instead of extending Xander?
Be prepared for 0 trades to be completed which improve the big league team at the deadline.
I’m aware. But 3 seasons isn’t nearly enough time to implement a plan, and ownership forced him to gut the team. His only real glaring mistake in Boston was the Trevor Story deal
As a lifelong Red Sox fan, you guys can have him.
But Boston tenure wasn’t near as successful
@Jabronie I keep hearing this repeated that Bloom was a miracle worker in Tampa blah blah but I also know there seemed to be a lot of cooks in the kitchen at Tampa Bay and there were many coveted members of that front office who ended up in PBO/GM positions elsewhere like Bloom. Thinking of Friedman, Bendix, etc. So just wondering if it’s even possible to give kudos to any one individual in that situation.
Bloom wrote the handbook. Bloom was the backbone.
The St. Louis Cardinal’s perpetual “reunion tour” has now reached it’s final stop.
Nostalgia is fine for pregame ceremonies, but there’s no real world payoff when you use your roster for it, and that’s part of the reason Mozeliak is a short timer. If everyone knows Mo is gone after 2025, why not cut him loose now?
Because they still owe Mo money and it would cost more if they hired another manager for the 2025 season.
Manager? And they already have his replacement.
It’s not about money. They’ve wasted way more on worse It’s respect. It’s transition. It’s about buying time to get these changes implemented.
my bad i read the comment wrong i got Mo mixed up with Oli oops
I’m guessing it’s a respect move for the last 17 years. Not how really the way an other org would do it but the Cards have maintained continuity for a long time. Either that or they didn’t want to pay Mo for nothing since he was signed.
There are a lot of responsibilities of Mo’s job that are strictly business side too that Bloom won’t have to deal with this year because Mo is staying. That allows Bloom to just focus on the player side and get it sorted before taking over the whole job.
because he is effectively going to act as Bloom’s assistant for 2025, and they probably gave him the choice of staying for that or leaving now. If he had chosen to leave, they would have hired someone else to do what Mozeliak will be doing,
solaris – I would bet anything that Bloom is happy Mo is sticking around for one more year. Having him around will greatly help with the transition.
If Bloom had been with the Cards for 3-4 years then it would be different, but having been with the team for only one season it would be foolish to not want someone around with the internal knowledge that Mo has.
Vice President of Special Projects?
aka ‘dont leave for more money elsewhere!’ him and bloom probably got close this year
AKA…thanks for being a stand-in for what a GM would do, Girsch…you’ve been a loyal “yes man” and the GM job we said you were going to get is now being given to your replacement…thank you for your service…here’s another token job for you, buddy.
He actually was the GM. He just got little attention because they had a PBO calling the shots (i.e. Mozeliak).
Yes, GM-in-name-only is the point…and now he’s not even that. Doesn’t sound like great way to be leaders of men. Maybe that’s why Schildt got axed; speaking truth to power and mis-applied power isn’t a recipe for success.
Bringing Bloom coffee and bagels.
Vice President of work from home and read stuff. It’s what Theo Epstein did to Jason McLeod with the Cubs after McLeod screwed up minor league development.
Common in the corporate world, when a senior executive is being pushed out, sometimes he is given a title like that until both sides agree on the severance.
Except nobody knows what exactly Girsch did before anyway.
According to multiple sources Girsch negotiated the entire Arenado trade.
I wonder who the President Of Special Projects is?
Yadi
Fredbird
Fire sale in St. Louis. Short timer is going to burn it down.
Mo and Oli have spent the last few years burning it down already.
Get your offers in for Wilson Contreras now…
Nobody wanted him for just money 2 years ago. Why would anybody trade something for that awful contract now? Gimme a break.
He had a 136 OPS+ this year, has been over 115 each of the last three years, and had 2.9 bWAR. Somebody will take him off the Cardinals’ hands if he is offered to both catch and DH. Justin Turner got paid $13M at the age of 83 to DH and play a little 1B. Contreras at $18M isn’t that much of an impediment especially if the Cardinals are motivated to pay down a little of the 2026 and 2027 costs.
Exactly. Contreras, even with the injuries, was a top 5 catcher last year and his contract isn’t bad. He’s tradeable if he will waive his NTC.
MoTie basking in the failed lame duck season. Poor guy can’t even read the room and take the “spend more time with his family” exit ramp. What needs to be done eventually, must be done now. DeWitt must be tighter than a snare drum, pay the price and cut all the deadwood now.
Someone suggested letting Mo make the big cuts so Bloom doesn’t come in looking like the hatchet man. Seems reasonable.
Sounds like that’s exactly what’s happening.
[insert “What would you say you do here?” gif with Girsch on the other side of the table]
Can’t wait for the farewell John Mozeliak refrigerator magnet give-away night… this organization is unreal
It’s good to know Bloom is taking it over in 2026. Mo should’ve walked away today, but no that huge Fing ego won’t allow it.
Unless they’re going to go out and sign Soto, which we all know they won’t do, they basically have to drop payroll next year even if they’re trying to stay competitive.
Replace Lynn with McGreevy. That’s an $11m drop in payroll and probably makes the team better. Even moreso if they find a way to dump Mikolas and Matz.
Let Goldy walk and even if you account for the fact that some of his salary is being allocated to Gray you’re saving another $15m or something. You can stick Burleson at 1B and improve on the 98 OPS+.
I don’t see any point in taking that $25m and trying to sign another 30 year old to a longterm deal with it.
Signing Soto alone won’t move the needle much and they won’t like you’ve noted.
Yeah but he’s the only big-ticket FA that would be worth going after. He’s 26. Are there really Cardinals fans out there who want to give Corbin Burnes a 7 year $210 million contract?
At this point, absolutely not. We aren’t an ace away from competitive. But we might (and that’s a huge uncertainty) be a few “rebuild” years away from that grabbing an ace and being in the hunt.
Oh, yeah. There are plenty of fans here in St. Louis who want to keep spending stupid money. They’re losing their minds over this “rebuild.”
Personally, I’m up for trading all the veterans. They need to find out which arb and pre-arb guys are worth keeping without all these mediocre veterans in the way.
There are really Cardinals fans out there that think the Cardinals can spend $400=500M a year in salary so the answer is probably.
Why would you keep Mo on for another year? At the very least they should swap roles.
Dewit jr has lost his fastball and DIII never had one. Pathetic .
It was interesting to see how Mo and others differed to Dewitt III on budget questions during the press conference. I hope he just gives the baseball people a number and stays out of the way. I’m not eager for his era to start.
Why did they decide to do it later and not now? Now moz could be reckless with whatever he does
Mo is never reckless. Negligent, unimaginative, thin-skinned, overly-conservative, egotistical? Definitely. But never reckless.
Mozeliak has always been conservative and extremely risk averse, sometimes to the detriment of the team. I can’t imagine him being reckless now.
You are fired… one year from now. This franchise has lost its way.
At least the blues seem to be going about the retool the right way.
The Blues also have a new GM lined up to take over in the future.
The Blues might be as far from a Cup as any team in the NHL.
They are doing just enough to replace the Wild as THE mushy middle franchise.
A fire sale and bottom out would have been the better path.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
Will literally finish 6th or 7th in the Central for the next half decade AND THEN bottom out.
Avs, Stars, Preds, Jets not going anywhere. Utah getting better. The Wild…as always…in the mushy middle.
Thomas and Kyrou are OK but then what…a bunch of OK but not great vets. D is old and mediocre.
Binnington not a spring chicken.
Sure bro. The Preds have a 5 year window with their roster of 35 year olds. and the Jets are a perennial 110 point team.
Stick to baseball.
You have Ryan Suter. You want to talk old Preds.
Watch and wait. 5 years of treading water before the bottom falls out.
But, hey you got a few mediocre Oilers by overpaying for them….so, you’ve got that going for you, at least.
Exactly. It isn’t too hard to squint and see the Cardinals contending next year if all the young talent sticks. They’re likely two years away but the talent in their farm system is very good. They just need the framework in place to help them transition to the majors.
So Bloom is already the POBO but he just can’t have the title for a year?
Weird but gives Bloom cover for this year if/when they take another step back at the ML level.
Bloom get a year with the current POBO to smooth the transition, even though he’s held the position before, as opposed to Posey instantly being on his own, while having no experience. What a surprise that neither fan base is happy.
Letting Mo be the fall guy for the big cuts coming.
He’s the one who added all the bad contracts so why WOULDN’T he take the fall?
Which bad contracts? They have nothing long term on the books and even the vet contracts they do have are market value or below.
Slash the payroll and embrace the rebuild. Go all in or don’t do it.
I originally said they will go full rebuild but I think I’m going to step back off that comment now for a couple reasons. But first, I want to be objective and acknowledge the facts.
The good production from the team this year came mostly from the younger core already. I think one major mistake made was not letting Jordan Walker play through his slump. It was a major missed opportunity to let him learn. The second mistake, and a common one they’ve made in recent years, is not giving their young pitchers the opportunity to play.
Outside of Sonny Gray, McGreevy and Pallante looked better than anyone they started. In hindsight it looked bad not giving them the chance from spring. This is a perfect example of the lapse in player procurement they mean. They should have known these guys were ready before they did the panic spending on Gibson and Lynn.
They had to have this meeting for one, to announce the worst kept secret in the organization with prompting Bloom and two, preparing the fan base for a departure from big salary players like Goldscmidt. It’s highly likely that Arenado, Gray, and Contreras are to follow.
As angry as the fan base has been, I have to admit it is the right thing to do. They need to commit to the young core of players on the roster and the players coming up in the future. They’ve been far too stubborn in the past and it hurt them dearly not giving chances to names like Alcantara, Gallen, Arozerena, Garcia, Lane Thomas, and several others. I’m ready for the youth to earn their strips.
I think that’s what people who aren’t Cards fans don’t seem to understand. The team can cut payroll without going into a full rebuild. The team has been paying old guys and blocking prospects in the process for years. Simply stop doing that and let the young guys play the team will probably be better and cheaper too.
Y’all have some good or at least promising young position players in Winn, Siani, Donovan, Burleson, and Jordan Walker if they haven’t ruined him. Let Walker DH and Burleson play 1B, find a good LF in free agency, and let the young starting pitchers spend 2025 getting experience.
Absolutely. The lineup was driven by young players who were hampered by two aging guys in the middle of the lineup who took up $60m and had OPS+ of 98 (Goldschmidt) and 101 (Arenado). You’re saying replacing those guys with younger/cheaper options would make the team worse?
The rotation is something of a different story but aside from Gray and Fedde you could replace the rest of the rotation with internal options and be just as good or better. The only concern with doing that is if you don’t get 20+ starts from 5 guys again like you did this last year the bullpen could be hurt. But you can replace any or all of Matz, Mikolas, Lynn and (maybe to a lesser extent) Gibson with the next man up.
Even with the rotation there is a lot of talent at AAA. Graceffo, Kloffenstein and Robberse will certainly be ready at some point next year. Matthews is a near lock to show up in July. There is young talent but the team has to let it play. Signing Carpenter and blocking Baker this year is exactly the kind of stupid move the team needs to get away from. Yes it worked with Pujols in 2022 but you can’t keep doing that stuff if you do your young talent never gets a shot.
Agree. But those young pitchers aren’t going to be able to go 180 innings. I’d like to see them retain Gibson and use the young guys to fill out the last two rotation spots, the pen, take spot starts, fill in injuries, etc.
I would like to see a team that can compete for the playoffs next year, and I think they can even while they’re shedding payroll, as long as they have some stability in the rotation.
Eating innings is valuable if you don’t have depth. The Cardinals have a lot of depth. Gibson wasn’t good in 2024. Letting him and Lynn go is important to move forward and get younger. I still think they can compete. Trading Gray or Helsley I would see as not competing. Even Arenado and Contreras could be dealt and the team could figure it out.
Agree completely regarding Gray, Helsely, Arenado and Contreras.
Gibson gave us 170 innings of 4.24 ERA (4.42 FIP, 99 ERA+). Lynn was a bit better but only in 120 innings. I think keeping one of them for some stability instead of asking probably 4-5 rookies to piece together 600 rotation innings would help them be more competitive next year (whereas retaining Goldschmidt would not).
If you can get 150 innings out of a Lynn or Gibson then you’re only looking for about 450 innings out of probably 4 young guys. None of them are going to be able to give you a full season yet. At least one of them is probably going to tear a UCL.
I agree in premise. But the reality is Mikolas and Matz are under contract and presumably healthy. They are both going to take spots in the rotation to start the season. It may work out that they eat some innings until a point comes when both are released and younger guys are allowed to fill their spots, but that won’t happen before June unless one of them (Matz) gets injured. It isn’t what’s best from a W-L standpoint, but that’s what’s going to happen. Neither one is tradable and they won’t cut bait and sign someone else to replace them. They will both be given every chance to earn their money.
Most likely. But if they could move either and eat anything less than 100% they should
I see no reason why they wouldn’t keep Gibson. He’s the perfect veteran for a team in this situation. Eats innings effectively, keeps the team in games, and is constantly coaching and mentoring the young guys. I’d say Gray, Fedde, Gibson, and (unfortunately) Mikolas (only because no one else would take him) are back. Let Lynn walk, and compete the 5th spot. That’s actually a serviceable roatation. That said, if a team like the Dodgers wants to trade prospects for Gray and take on his salary, then I’d say, thank you for your service, and good luck to you in LA.
He has an ERA and FIP over 4. That’s not worth 12 million dollars.
Goldy and Burleson blocked Baker, not Carpenter. Did you really want Baker getting 150 PAs this year sitting at the end of the bench?
Look around the league and at the free agent environment the last few years. $12M is 5th starter money these days.
No it’s not. Smart teams have young guys making league minimum as 5th starters not old vets making 12 million..
Nothing wrong with the cardinals that 8 or 9 good players can’t fix.
So he’s fired, but they are going to keep him on for a year rather than pay his salary for nothing? Interesting
What’s the point of waiting another year.
Change for change sake is rarely good idea. Every knows upper management is evolving, and for the good, but the Cards still have an awesome corp. Rarely, does a team have so worthy players on a team, that misses the play-offs. The list: Donovan first! I wouldn’t trade him for Soto straight up. Why, because he is more valuable. More to come…
No he isn’t. Donovan will win more games than Soto.
Soto: 8.1 WAR
Donovan: 3.2 WAR
Soto is a much more valuable player than Donovan. It’s not even close.
Am I missing some sarcasm?
Bloom should be no higher than director of player development – he’s got the skills for same. However, he appeared completely overwhelmed beyond that role in Boston. Bad move, Cards.
I actually agree with that. He’s the perfect guy to fix development issues at the lower levels. He has been tried elsewhere to mediocre results. There’s probably a reason about seven teams passed him over for GM. That’s not his strength.
I’ll admit that I only read the headline, but why keep Mo around when you’ve already hired & assigned someone else to clean up his mess?
Is this just more proof that the Cards are the cheapest org in the sport? Can’t upgrade their development system AND compete at the MLB level at the same time? Can’t give a dude who has already been replaced his two checks? Bet ticket prices go up anyway…
Cards saw what he did in Boston and were thinking they want that? Whatever works for you
The Cards want to win. His last organization no longer did.
#1 farm system and prospect in baseball? Top young talent like Jaren Duran and Wilyer Abreu? Can’t imagine why they’d want things like that.
Duran was drafted in the 7th round of the 2018 draft, two years before Bloom took over. Kavadas, Yorke, and Guerrero were the first of Bloom’s draft picks to make the majors.
Bloom did draft Anthony, Mayer, Teel, and Campbell though.
The decline of the Cardinals coincides with the rise of the Brewers in the NL Central. The key statistic in Katie Woo’s expose was that the Cardinals employ five full-time player development staffers while the Brewers have 17. Milwaukee has adopted the Tampa Bay model with Matt Arnold bringing nine years of experience with the Rays to his job as head of Brewers baseball operations.
Yep. That is what the Cards need to fix, but Cards fans need to realize that also means we are done with anything near a top 10 payroll. The DeWitt’s aren’t going to spend on both. It’s one or the other. So we’re likely looking at a Rays like team that competes, makes some playoffs, doesn’t win a lot in the playoffs, but does so much more cheaply than the Cards have been doing the same (prior to the last two years).
The Cardinals generate a lot more revenue than the Rays. They can afford to build the player development side and still spend $140-150M a year on salary pretty easily, even with the lost Bally money. They may not run top 10 payrolls like this year but they’ll still be solidly in the top 15, unlike the Rays who spend more time in the bottom 5.
Tell me a country that works well with two leaders. The Cardinals who were once a proud vibrant franchise will now reek of Suckocity because of this decision
Is the O strong in suckocity?
The Cardinals probably should have started the rebuild last offseason but at least they have a few interesting pieces to move in order to expedite it now. Sonny Gray should intrigue a lot of teams, especially if the Cards are willing to eat some of the money. Ryan Helsely should be able to fetch a nice haul as well
Gray will dictate where he goes. The Cardinals have good young talent, but no depth. They got very little out of the players making the big money, aside from Contreras when healthy and Gray in spots. So cutting payroll may not be as bad as it sounds to some.
I would imagine they’ll talk with Arenado and Contreras to see if they’d rather be traded.
Hopefully, Mikolas and Matz are just sent packing.
The Cardinals should have started the rebuild at the 2023 deadline when Arenado and Goldschmidt still had good trade value. Not doing so was a huge mistake with predictable results.
This is a good move for Bloom. Boston wasn’t willing to tolerate his learning curve. He is a more mature exec now than he was in 2019. I suspect he’ll thrive in St. Louis.
So the Cardinals are giving Mo one more season to totally F things up on his way out the door? That is not the smartest of moves IMHO.
I think Mo will be the fall guy for any, and most likely, unpopular roster moves. Mo gets all the bad press and Bloom can dodge the bullets.
It sounds like Mo will mostly be focused on the business side this year. All personnel decisions will involve Bloom.
Finally!! Now shitcan Marmol and bring in either Yadi or Skip Schumaker!
Wouldn’t mind them dumping Arenado on the Dodgers.
Nolan isn’t elite on either side anymore, but the Dodgers wouldn’t need him to be. Just be good.
Too bad they need pitching more though.
I think they may be able to dangle Gray and Arenado in a package deal to the Dodgers. I think that’s honestly their best bet to offload salary while getting a reasonable return.
The Braves will be looking at Gray. They stand to lose Fried and Morton and Gray I would assume would waive his no trade. Atlanta is close to home.
There’s no article yet. But Eduardo Perez just confirmed on espn that Pete Rose has passed away.
“Meanwhile, some of the club’s young prospects like Dylan Carlson, Jordan Walker, Nolan Gorman and others have struggled to live up to expectations.”
All of the above mentioned players were mishandled at the major league level either by Marmol Or Mozeliak whoever was calling the shots. Add Tyler O’Neil to that list too.
It seems moronic to me having so many different front office positions and all behind held by people of differing beliefs. Mo leans more towards vets and Bloom towards young guys. Just keep it simple, let 1-2 guys run the team.
The Cards saw that the RS have some of the best young talent in BB (present + future) and decided that they wanted some of that. The more important question, imo, is whether they have a large-scale rebuild or try to hedge their bets.
I don’t think pretending to be a contender with a .500 is going to work. Cards fan should pick a lane and live with the results.
The team won 83 games with Walker and Gorman producing poor results and Goldschmidt and Arenado performing nowhere near their potential. I think they will basically do what the Red Sox have been doing competing but not quite with the top teams. The team has good young talent it needs to utilize it better and it sounds like they will.
Red Sox also not that far off. Keep Sale and don’t sign Giolito and they make the playoffs.
My guess is that Grissom will still be good, but it hard to believe that Sale won more games in 2024 than he did in the previous 5 years combined.
Didn’t Cardinals fans already have it bad enough? Now this?
I’m a Cardinal fan, but I would never ask anyone to feel bad for us.
This team is screwed up right now, and they’ve been on a funky run for several years, but we’ve had it really good for a considerable stretch. Lots of fans of lots of teams don’t get to say that.
There’s certainly a chance that this team can continue to be mediocre/bad, but I kind of doubt it. This organization tends to do things pretty well and self-correct.
Doesn’t feel good right now, but I believe in the legacy of the organization. That said, lots of great organizations have turned to garbage. It can happen, but I truly think the Cards can right the ship.
The 1978 season was a disaster, it seemed so hopeless. By 1981, the Cardinals had the best winning percentage of any team in their division, and by 1982 they had another World Championship.
Good move. He’s experienced and he’s now with an organization that wants to win.
Definitely a better showing this year, but what really really cost them a post season run was their avg with risp. I think they were 26th, 28th, something like that.
But really when you reflect on this season, they won 12 more games than last year. Improvement? Yes, but not even close to making a run in the playoffs.
Sadly, they’ll keep their hitting coach who no doubt is a major part of the problem, because they like his philosophy.
This aged well. Ward is out the door.
Their greatly negative run differential reflects this. To single out one player, Ryan Helsley with his franchise record 49 saves is greatly responsible for the team finishing above .500.
Just shows how screwed up this organization is now. Retain a lame duck Mo for another season verses a fresh vision.
All the people who said Yoshida is untradeable are eating crow today. There’s this one guy who thinks really highly of him …
He will work out fine in the long run. Will they keep him around long enough and give him the payroll necessary?
He won’t get the payroll. That’s the whole point of this. The DeWitt’s will only spend a certain amount, and they are changing the way they spend it. It will now be spent on player development rather than the big league roster. This will likely be a Rays scenario, where people say, wow, they do really well for a low-payroll team.
The Cardinals’ average annual $110M gap in revenue over the Rays is more than the Rays entire payroll many years. The Cards aren’t going to start running sub 100M payrolls anytime soon. They’ll stay solidly in the top 15 salaries year in and out. If they don’t sign a single FA this offseason they’re still 13th in salary with estimated arb amounts.
Why wait a year ? This team isn’t that far away
Before we get too excited about Bloom running the show, realize the Rays had very little success once he was promoted to the front office. He really specializes in lower level player development. His success has been limited in higher level Baseball Operations positions. Rays’ orders of finish once he was promoted in 2011 – 2nd, 3rd, 2nd, 4th, 4th, 5th, 3rd, 3rd, with zero post season series victories (although they did win one single wild card game). They were also below .500 four of those years.
They also operated on a budget roughly one fourth to one fifth of what New York and Boston were operating with.
Problem is, with this approach, the Cards major league payroll will take a significant hit. While the NL Central doesn’t have the spenders the NL East has, we won’t be paying for free agents to any extent moving forward. There is also no direct correlation between spending and winning, so that’s still a knock on the team’s operations, as low budget teams often win and high budget teams often lose. With that in mind, maybe it won’t matter that the Cards won’t spend anymore, but it will matter if he can’t find more success than he did in TB.
Bloom is not without his judgment and evaluation skills. His biggest flaw in Boston was the inability to do anything useful at the trade deadline.
I think this goes along with many people’s thoughts that he’s better at player development systems than overall MLB operations.
Bloom hire = budget constraints
It’s really a redirecting of the budget to player development in the minors, but yes, that means significant major league payroll constraints.
In the end fans will hate Bloom more than Mozaliak. His is a hired fall guy. He’ll come in and slash payroll to the bare minimum and leave after 3 years of POBO. His time in Boston was terrible. You don’t get to hang your head on first round picks if they work out. They are supposed to. You do get the blame if the fail though like John Mozaliak. In Tampa Bloom was basically in the Girsh role to Matthew Silverman the President of Baseball Operations in Tampa when Bloom was the VP. When he got out on his own in Boston he failed in the public eye. But he was brought in to do exactly what he is being brought in to do in STL. He’s a penny pinching guy brought in to put the organization in the position so there is no where to go but up and then he’ll leave and the next guy will come in to be the hero
Surprisingly few first round picks are successful. In 2014, for example, Michael Kopech (+5.9 career WAR on B-R) is the 9th most successful of the 41 first round picks. Michael Chavis (+0.2 WAR) is the median first round pick.
That use to be true but there were also a lot more high school players drafted in the first rounds than there are today. Today it’s college players who are basically MLB ready coming out of their 3-4 years in college. Plus sign ability issues with the high schoolers.
True, there has been a shift in that direction, but even in 2018 or 2019 we see only half the first round draft picks with a positive WAR. I chose 2014 to give us time to see what they picks become, I don’t believe the success rate has changed dramatically.
Sell the team. Ownership is cheap as hell.
Good luck with Bloom, suckers! He was a major waste of time & money for Boston.
Be Vigilant Cardinals Fans because Bloom will go cheap mode and destroy your team.