Can Bloom restore Cardinals’ winning standard without big spending on payroll?
In the waning years of John Mozeliak’s tenure as president of baseball operations for the St. Louis Cardinals, it was both fun and easy to imagine a bingo card filled with his common sayings for drawn-out news conferences. “Net net” and “arbitrage” could easily serve as free spaces.
Chaim Bloom has officially been on the job for less than a week — at least in practice, though the team’s official website still lists Mozeliak at the top of the hierarchy and likely will until his contract expires on Halloween night. Bloom does not yet have the same predictable patterns. In a broad sense, one goal of his incoming administration should be to avoid falling into them, though other tendencies are already beginning to emerge.
“We’re not going to concede anything,” Bloom told a small group of reporters Tuesday, repeating a phrase he had used earlier in the day. “We should never come in with any goal other than to win, but we’re going to be making moves that are more aligned with that long term. We’re not going to do that at the expense of that bigger goal that we have.”
The word “rebuild” never crossed his lips Tuesday, and the only time it was uttered by ownership was when chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. quoted a reporter’s question back to him. Whether that’s reflective of reality or part of a consistent public relations strategy, there was a clear effort to frame the Cardinals’ moves this winter in the context of returning to their historical standard.
Still, the material realities in the short term are impossible to ignore.
Both Bloom and DeWitt habitually referred to St. Louis as a middle-market team, drawing contrasts with coastal franchises regarding the Cardinals’ role in the free agent market. St. Louis has historically avoided the upper echelons of free agency, and that appears unlikely to change.
Regardless of the economic realities, the environment of operating the Cardinals is unlikely to remain static for the next year and a half. The current Major League Baseball collective bargaining agreement expires after the 2026 season, and industry sentiment holds that the league and its players are preparing for a significant labor battle, potentially threatening the schedule for the first time since the 1994-95 strike.
“In this game, you’re always dealing with uncertainty,” Bloom said when asked about the looming CBA expiration. “It’s part of what makes it fun. Obviously, any time you have a CBA that’s getting to expiration, you know there could be changes ... It just speaks to ... the importance in our situation, frankly most situations, of just being able to be nimble and flexible so you can take advantage of whatever opportunities exist.”
Later, when asked about the challenge of selling St. Louis as an attractive destination to top-tier free agents, he pushed back on the notion that the city was an undesirable stop.
“I’m still pretty new here,” he said. “I haven’t seen what [Busch Stadium] looks like when it’s full and rocking. But this is one of those places that people know around baseball is on the short list, and has been for a long time, of ‘If you get a chance to play here, you should.’ And I know a lot of players think about it that way.”
At the very least, that is an optimistic message aimed at modernizing the franchise’s historic appeal. In casting the Cardinals as a laboratory for innovation, Bloom referenced legendary executive Branch Rickey, who invented the modern farm system while running the franchise. He cited projects led by Mozeliak, Walt Jocketty, Jeff Luhnow and others in the early 2000s that gathered data on draft prospects, calling them the “gold standard” of current industry practices.
All of this establishes his administration as heirs to a proud tradition — the same way Cardinal fans have viewed themselves and their team — being defined more by setting the standard than chasing it. Never mind that Bloom said he had not yet discussed next season’s payroll with ownership or considered whether to extend manager Oli Marmol, who enters the final year of his contract.
Indeed, Bloom barely mentioned individual players, except when directly asked. It was clear Tuesday’s meeting was meant to reset the tone and clear the board, introducing a fresh approach without outlining detailed plans — both by strategic necessity and because some specifics are likely to prompt tough questions about how long it will be until fans can expect a return to winning baseball at Busch Stadium.
That is the long-term goal, and short-term successes will not be allowed to conflict with it. The Cardinals, as Bloom reminded everyone, have been and will remain a draft-and-develop organization. That process does not happen overnight, or even in a single offseason. Bloom’s five-year contract begins next season. He is in this for the long haul. It will be a long haul.
“The mindset should always be to win,” Bloom said. “I think if you let that standard slip, it’s not a light switch that you can just flip. That, to me, is more cultural, that we should always aspire to do that. But our strategy in terms of how we go about our roster building, we don’t want to get distracted from our bigger goal.”
If that sounds like acceptance of short-term losses in hopes of permanent flags, bingo.
