During the St. Louis’ Cardinals end-of-year press conference earlier in the week, the organization announced an unprecedented shift in its operations.
For the first time in decades, winning at the major-league level will not be at the forefront of Cardinals’ priorities. Instead, the organization will pivot back toward its roots. The goal is to develop a thriving pool of homegrown players, something the Cardinals had admittedly fallen behind in.
“Our number one priority will be to lay the foundation for a sustained period of competitive excellence in the years ahead,” chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said Monday.
The 2025 season will serve as a transition period for the Cardinals. They have conceded full-fledged competitiveness for next year as they look to renovate a faltering player development system. The front office is also turning over. Long-time president of baseball operations John Mozeliak will step down after next season, and Chaim Bloom, the former top executive for the Boston Red Sox will take his place in 2026.
“We have always prided ourselves on drafting and developing our own players. It is clear that we need make significant changes to get back to this model. Our baseball decisions going forward will focus on developing our pipeline of players.”
— Bill DeWitt II #STLCards https://t.co/YN78ZyzJmC
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) September 30, 2024
The Cardinals believe this is the right course of action, that using the 2025 season as a reset will help the organization return as one of baseball’s most influential organizations. But neither ownership nor the front office has experienced a transition period to this degree.
Here’s what we know about the Cardinals’ early plans as they enter an unfamiliar offseason.
What will Chaim Bloom’s responsibilities be in 2025?
After spending this season canvassing all areas of the Cardinals’ player development system, including every level of the minor leagues and in Latin America, Bloom will now oversee what chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. described as “a reset” to the organization’s model.
“As part of his assessment last season, (Bloom) has developed a plan for improving our player development infrastructure and philosophy,” DeWitt Jr. said.
That plan includes investing significantly more in minor-league staffing and modern technology. After repeatedly fielding one of the smallest on-field coordinating staffs in baseball (St. Louis had just five full-time on-field coordinators in 2024), the Cardinals are looking to add multiple positions to their player development staff. They will also invest in modern technology many teams already use, along with people familiar with using that technology.
Realistically, the organization is looking at a multi-year modernization, one that Bloom will jumpstart.
On the to-do list: addressing the state of the club’s spring training complex in Jupiter, Fla. The Cardinals’ complex has had its planned renovations delayed for over a year, but DeWitt Jr. announced on Monday that upgrades would start in April 2025 after the team completes spring training. The team is also hiring a new director of player development — former farm director Gary LaRocque retired upon the conclusion of the season — and Bloom’s vetting process is already underway. The position will be Bloom’s to fill though Mozeliak acknowledged the hire would be at the assistant general manager level and assigned to oversee player development and production.
“We’re looking for someone who understands our history and our past, but also has a very progressive mindset on the modern game and how people are being developed and prepared,” Mozeliak said. “That’s the type of skill set we’d like to combine.”
Once the Cardinals appoint a new farm director, Bloom can implement changes throughout the system. That will range from administering new data models and upgrading equipment and technology to incorporating new teaching models and boosting performance, medical and on-field coaching.
It is important for the club to catch up, Bloom said, but the goal is to ensure the Cardinals return to being leaders in this area, much like they were in the early 2010s.
“It’s actually remarkable, even over the course of my career, just how much faster this arms race has gotten behind the scenes,” Bloom said, referring to baseball’s emphasis on player development. “Obviously catching up is important, but we want to be able to set the tone. We’re not just going to be looking at copying everybody else. We want to find our own way.”
What will John Mozeliak’s responsibilities be this offseason?
Not much is changing for Mozeliak in his final season. The biggest difference — outside of preparing to turn over the organization, of course — is the absorption of the general manager role. Mike Girsch’s reassignment to vice president of special projects means the Cardinals will operate without a GM next year. Assistant general managers Moisés Rodríguez and Randy Flores (who also serves as the director of scouting) remain on Mozeliak’s staff.
Girsch, who has been with the organization since 2006 and has held the general manager title since 2017, played a large role in the decision-making of some contract and free-agent signings. Mozeliak praised his handling of the 2022 trade that sent Harrison Bader to New York for Jordan Montgomery. Girsch was also an early proponent of using data and analytics to inform organization decisions and pushed to expand the analytics department. His early ideas of using advanced analytics to predict expected production in the majors is a concept now used regularly in the industry.
For now, it’s status quo for Mozeliak, but that doesn’t mean he’ll operate without consultation.
“The easiest way to think about this is from a day-to-day standpoint, I will be responsible,” Mozeliak said. “But anything that’s going to affect the organization in a long-term or meaningful way, I will definitely consult with ownership and (Bloom) to make sure they feel like it’s the right decision.”
Mozeliak will converse with manager Oli Marmol on any potential changes to the major-league coaching staff. Roster construction will again also be his responsibility. One decision on the horizon is whether to exercise club options on Lance Lynn (due $11 million next year), Kyle Gibson (due $13 million next year) and Keynan Middleton (due $6 million next year) The Cardinals have three impending free agents: Paul Goldschmidt, Andrew Kittredge and Matt Carpenter, though the club privately informed Goldschmidt at the end of the year that it would not be bringing him back.
The Cardinals also have six players due for arbitration, including three first-time players in Lars Nootbaar, Brendan Donovan and Andre Pallante. MLB Trade Rumors recently published its annual projected arbitration salaries; the projected total for all six players, including Ryan Helsley, John King and JoJo Romero, comes in at roughly $18.7 million. The Cardinals must decide whether or not to tender contracts to these six players before the middle of November.
The bigger decisions, such as potential free-agent signings or trades, will likely be made closer to MLB’s annual general manager meetings, scheduled for Nov. 4-6 in San Antonio.
“I’m not anticipating any big contracts going yet,” Mozeliak said in a scrum with local reporters after the Cardinals’ televised press conference Monday. “We need to get a little guidance on what our revenues are going to look like. When you think about the trading market in general, that starts as we enter post-World Series. There are some players that I think still have some value here from a leadership standpoint and also from a competitive standpoint.”
The most pivotal thing Mozeliak will be responsible for however will be leaving a succession plan for Bloom, something that played into Mozeliak’s desire to finish out the final year of his last contract.
“Creating a succession plan is helpful,” Mozeliak said. “A lot of times in these jobs, someone gets fired and then someone new comes in, usually from the outside, not from the inside. The learning curve of an organization can take anywhere from six to 12 months, whereas this won’t happen next year. When that transition happens, it’s going to be seamless. In the meantime, I can continue to do my job as best we can.”
What about payroll?
Major-league payroll is going down next year, Mozeliak said. Just how much is not known and depends on several factors. The Cardinals’ pivot toward a player development revamp will result in an 8 to 12 percent increase of funds in their farm system, per Mozeliak, though he cautioned putting a specific dollar amount on any area of baseball operations until there is more clarity on revenue. The money redirected to player development will, presumably, be taken out of the big-league payroll next year.
On Monday, president Bill DeWitt III addressed that revenue uncertainty. Attendance was a concern. The Cardinals budgeted in accordance with their projections, though their 2.85 million attendance this season was slightly lower than expected. The bigger issue was television revenue. During a bankruptcy hearing on Wednesday, Diamond, the parent company of the Cardinals regional sports network Bally Sports Midwest, declared its intention to drop the networks of two of the 12 teams it currently partners with, the Tampa Bay Rays and Detroit Tigers. The company also implied that the 2025 contracts of nine more teams, including the Cardinals, were in danger.
The Cardinals knew this could be a scenario next year and have been working on direct-to-consumer alternatives if they gain their rights back. St. Louis is a “joint-venture” team and is not a formal part of the bankruptcy proceeding, but Diamond has refused to pay joint-venture teams before (the San Diego Padres are a recent example of this, MLB now produces and distributes Padres games).
“I think the real challenge for us is revenue-wise on the local media situation,” DeWitt III said. “There’s a whole trend where there’s a lot of cutting the cord of the cable bundle, and we’ve had our distribution challenges. The good news is, it appears as though under almost every scenario we’re looking at, that fans will hopefully have a direct-to-consumer product to get our games, basically an app where they can stream games for free.”
“We’ve got a long offseason to work through a bunch of things relative to budgeting for our revenues,” he added. “We know that payroll ends up being a function of revenues, not directly, but loosely.”
What does that mean for next year’s roster?
It’s hard to say what the Cardinals will look like in 2025 as they are still navigating next year’s payroll. Regardless of that number, the team is preparing to field a young team in hopes of building up its core for future seasons.
“This is a reset, yes,” Mozeliak said. “This is going to be where we’re not necessarily building the best possible roster we can.”
“But we’re also excited about the roster,” he added. “We do have a bunch of young players. We also have some emerging stars at the minor-league level. How we potentially could augment that over the course of the next few months, time will tell.”
If the priority next year is developing over winning, it makes sense to question the futures of Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras, who signed with St. Louis under the premise that they would be on a continuously contending team. Same for Arenado, who came to the Cardinals via trade but declined an opt-out after the 2022 season for the same reason. All three players have full no-trade clauses, which complicates the matter. But the scenario of the team’s competitive window has changed, and players minds could follow suit.
“In terms of what we may have to trade or do, I think that’s a little premature,” Mozeliak said. He later acknowledged he’d approach future conversations with players under contract and would welcome a “two-way street.”
The Cardinals are transitioning in virtually every department of their operations, but changes in the on-field product will be the most apparent. Expect next year’s roster to be significantly younger and less experienced than most Cardinals rosters over the last decade. The focus will be on the emerging core, one that the Cardinals feel has the potential to be strong in a couple of years.
(Photo of Chaim Bloom from 2023: Charles Krupa / Associated Press)
