The last time the St. Louis Cardinals made it to the postseason was 2022, and the last time the Cardinals made it to the NLCS was 2019. As a fan, it has been a tough outing to follow the St. Louis Cardinals.
Last season I wrote an article talking about the failed project of John Mozeliak and current Cardinal’s manager Oliver Marmol and their inability to raise talent. For years, the Cardinals have always been the team that brings up players from Triple-A and lets them play their golden years in St. Louis.
Cardinals Struggle to Identify and Retain Talent – 1821 Sports
In the last years of Pujols, Molina, and Wainwright, management tried to band-aid the underwhelming performances by breaking the Cardinal Way and signing players like Goldschmidt and Arenado. They also decided to hold on to players too long, like Matt Carpenter and Wainwright. As much as I loved Wainwright, I believe he retired three years too late.
As soon as Chaim Bloom took over GM responsibilities for the Cardinals, he made some hard decisions right off the bat, publicly stating it was a rebuild.
“Yes, this is a reset, and yes, we’re not going to be focusing on building the best roster we can [externally], but we’re also excited because we have a bunch of young players and we do have some emerging stars at the Minor League level.”
During the offseason he traded away:
- Nolan Arenado after being in trade limbo for the last couple years.
- Sonny Gray and Wilson Contreras to the Red Sox for pitching prospect, clear out the salary cap.
- Brendan Donovan, who was the only cardinal to make it to the all star game last year, for more prospects.
As I look at those moves, I see them as “growing pains” movements. Bloom is undoing dumb decisions made by his predecessor, Mozeliak — bad contracts of underperforming players, cleared to free up salary for him to use in the future. Giving up Donovan was tough. He was our only All-Star in the entire roster, and it felt like if everything was wrong with the team, Donovan was the one good thing that came out of last season.
As a Cardinals fan, a rebuild is not a fun process. It requires committing even when we know mediocrity is down the pipeline for a couple of years before an October run is in discussion. It is a necessary thing, though — like Mufasa told Simba “Remember who you are”
The beginning of this season unlocked my fan brain and got me dreaming about a playoff run. It has been awesome seeing JJ Wetherholt perform at an NL Rookie of the Year pace, Jordan Walker put together an amazing first half of baseball while seemingly fixing his swing issues, and Alec Burleson performing at a high level.
Pitching, the biggest problem the Cardinals had, was still not “fixed.” We still struggled with starting pitching and relievers. Walker’s bat would get starters out of trouble and win games. Pallante and Leahy would have great games and then slump as people started to figure out their stuff.
The reality check hit after the All-Star Game. Teams figured out our bats, creating a big slump to start the second half and reminding us of what Bloom said at the beginning of the year: we are in a rebuild year.
In true Chaim Bloom fashion, he traded away veterans with value to other teams to keep building up our farm system: Nootbaar, who has a record of being injury prone, and Romero, who hasn’t quite met expectations — once sought out as the future closer of the Cardinals, now a reliever.
When Bloom took over the job, the farm system was ranked between 15th and 20th. Now, after all the moves he has made in less than a year, the Cardinals sit 2nd in all of baseball.
The future is promising. Pitching pieces are currently developing in our farm system, and on the major league roster the Cardinals promoted Baez, who became the first player in MLB history to homer in each of his first three major league at-bats.
Fernando, when are we going to make it to the World Series? When are we going to go back to winning the NL Central every year? I think we have some time before we start that conversation. The key is patience. The Cardinals need to let their pieces develop and understand that is what brings rings to Busch Stadium.
1821 Sports 
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