Cardinals young roster is unmistakingly Bloom’s. And it’s built for the future
For all the words written about Chaim Bloom’s takeover of the St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball operations department, Bloom himself has been careful to note that he was able to hit the ground running because he’s not truly new.
The 2026 season may be his first in his current role, but it’s his third on the payroll. He is well aware of the ingredients in the sausage and how it is mixed.
It is also, undeniably, his roster. The pretense can be stripped away and scattered to the wind with the departed All-Stars. These are the new Cardinals. Prepare to adjust to unfamiliar faces and surprisingly recent birthdates.
Monday’s trade of Brendan Donovan capped an intentionally demolishing winter in which the Cardinals shed veteran stars at a rate of one per month. Sonny Gray went in November, Willson Contreras in December, Nolan Arenado in January, and finally Donovan, who was sent to Seattle in exchange for a robust package of five assets—none of whom is likely to make meaningful contributions in the immediate term.
“When I was first introduced in this role a few months ago, we talked about the need to focus on our long-term goals and prioritize them over the short term, and to be willing to do that and make decisions that will do that even when they’re hard,” Bloom said.
“Nothing’s ever guaranteed with prospects or draft picks, to be sure, but for what it could mean for what we’re trying to do, and where we’re trying to go, and how it furthers our chances of long term success, we felt it certainly does that, and that’s why we made the deal, and we’re excited.”
Switch-pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje headlines the latest deal: a top-100 prospect who’s much stronger from the right side than the left but whose unique skill set will make him an intriguing showcase for a revamped pitching and performance department.
Tai Peete, a toolsy outfielder with swing-and-miss issues, could follow the same path as Joshua Baez, who spent 2025 jumping from potential draft bust to knocking on the door of the big leagues. Colton Ledbetter, Cijntje’s college teammate at Mississippi State, profiles as organizational depth—but good organizations need good depth.
Nothing about Monday’s move was surprising, but it certainly laid bare the length of the path the Cardinals plan to tread.
Each of Bloom’s previous three winter trades involved aging, high-paid veterans with limited contract terms and a loudly ticking clock behind their championship aspirations. Donovan, not yet 30, has two more years of team control, the versatility to play around the diamond, and an impeccable record of clubhouse leadership.
He is the kind of player the Cardinals of years past would have gone out of their way to extend, rather than seeking to maximize his value on the trade market. The assets they received in return can fairly be expected to make solid contributions perhaps by the 2028 season, the third on Bloom’s five-year deal.
There is long-term security in some parts of the organization, if not quite in the dugout.
“In trying to build for the long haul, we’ve gone a lot younger,” he said. “We have a lot of players who we’re hoping that they will accomplish a lot more than they have accomplished, and that there’s very good reason to think that they’ll do so…We really believe in the combined talent of the group to be able to give us a head start on doing that, and it’ll be on us then to supplement over time.”
The times are measurably changing.
With the trade of Donovan, set to make a modest-for-baseball $5.8 million next season, the Cardinals’ payroll dipped below $100 million. If they open the season at that level, it will be the first time they’ve done so since 2010—and nearly 40% of that figure is taken up by cash payments sent to Arizona and Boston to pay down the salaries of the three non-Donovan veterans traded this winter.
That dovetails with the collapse of the team’s television broadcast partner and an organized scramble to find a home for games with MLB’s production studio. That agreement, according to a source, contains no direct rights fees but instead provides a cut of the direct-to-consumer subscription revenue generated, some payments from eventual cable and satellite partners, and control over the broadcast advertising inventory, which the Cardinals have brought in house.
In all, the expected revenue from the television broadcast deal is in the neighborhood of $20 million for 2026, down from the $60 million originally negotiated with Main Street Sports. Whether or not ownership can absorb that cut without compensating elsewhere—and they can—it’s not unreasonable to expect them to protect their financial interests.
The challenge will be doing so while putting a team on the field that might struggle to hold the interest of the fan base.
Young players are exciting, but they make mistakes. A roster of opportunity cannot become a roster without accountability, but players can read the tea leaves and timeline as well as anyone else.
Everyone knows. Bloom’s team just unmistakably said it out loud.