The Walls Are Falling
The new hires for the Cardinals prove a new day is dawning.
When you have been writing for 17 plus years, occasionally a post sticks with you. In August of 2021, I wrote a post examining how the Cardinals had gotten insular, how they weren’t considering any orthodoxy outside of The Cardinal Way. Any time that word popped up in discourse around the team—and it became more and more popular as the years went on—I’d think about that post (and probably link to it).
Last year, the Cardinals started to recognize the problem, bringing in Chaim Bloom to give an outside perspective on an organization that desperately needed some fresh eyes. This off-season, the walls that kept the organization in and others out are falling like it’s Berlin 1989.
First, we got the after-season press conference when we found out that Bloom was taking over player development for 2025 before moving into the president of baseball operations slot in 2026 after John Mozeliak’s contract expires. That in and of itself is enough to be the most outsidery happening in probably a decade. We all know Bloom’s resume with Tampa Bay and Boston and the fact that he comes into such a key role with little Cardinal indoctrination, for lack of a better term, is a big deal.
That wasn’t the extent of the changes, though. The press conference didn’t have many more in this vein—Michael Girsch was moving out of the GM role to special projects and there was a focus on development instead of the major league team, but that’s not really tied to the topic we’re on here—but the fact that Bloom was given the authority to make his own hires meant that this week, we got the next crack in the facade, as it were.
Bloom hired Rob Cerfolio, late of the Cleveland Guardians organization, to become assistant GM in charge of player development. (Dayn Perry has a good recap here and if you aren’t subscribed to Birdy Work, you are doing this wrong—a great price for some wonderful writing). We know that Cleveland has been developing players successfully for quite some time, mainly out of necessity for a smaller market. Cleveland’s market size barely outpaces St. Louis’s, so Cerfolio’s not going to be overwhelmed shifting from one organization to another.
Between Bloom and Cerfolio, there’s three different American League organizations that the Cardinals can learn from. That’s huge for a team that has been pretty much content with doing things their way for a long period of time. To have new voices not just in the organization but with real authority and weight could be the shot in the arm the club needs. It’s not like the Cards didn’t know what they were doing, of course. They weren’t a completely clueless organization. They just got a little stagnant, a little behind the times. We could all use a little change, as the song goes. As we said last time, you change or you might not be around.
Cerfolio is going to get to hire the farm director as well as a director of performance. I’m going to be really interested to see how he fills those spots. It’s not like we’re going to know who these people are—none of us knew Cerfolio himself before Wednesday—but will he pull again from Cleveland or will he be able to get people from other organizations? Both are great, of course, but I’d love to see even more ideas from different places start filtering into Clark Street. No matter where they come from, they’ll have some new thoughts about how things should go and hopefully all these additions will blend in with the tradition of the old guard to bring about something outstanding.
The Cardinals also added to the on-field staff, selecting Brant Brown to replace Turner Ward and Jon Jay to replace Willie McGee.
OK, nobody can replace Willie McGee, we know that, but McGee was hesitant to get into full-time coaching when he joined the staff in 2017. He’d been a special assistant to John Mozeliak, basically a roving outfielders coach for the minor leagues, and I was surprised that he didn’t return to that role when Mike Matheny was fired or when Mike Shildt was fired after 2021. McGee’s quite the coach, it seems, and I know this will be a great thing for the development of outfielders. Just another step toward strengthening the minor leagues.
We talk about the Cards becoming less insular and yet they bring back a former player in Jay like they’ve done many other times. However, if you are going to bring back people, the coaching staff is probably the best place for them. Jay’s had a lot of experience in other organizations, most notably Miami, but he’s also not going to be a person involved in charting the future path of the organization. Besides, given his proclivity for being plunked, he’ll probably have the team leading the league in OBP the hard way.
It must be hard for Brown because the first thing I thought of (and I believe many of my age probably did) was this heartbreaking error. Well, heartbreaking for him, less so for people wanting to see the Cubs lose a key game. Anyway, he’s never going to shake that but he’s started to put together a coaching career that has a lot of people interested in him, even if he’s not really been anywhere long enough to have great results. He did do some coaching in the Dodgers organization and you are never going to turn down anything that comes out of that brain trust, right?
Brown was termed by Mozeliak as a blend between Jeff Albert and Ward. I thought the idea in promoting Ward was that he believed in Albert’s approach but could translate it to player-speak because of his playing experience. It feels like that’s kinda what they expect out of Brown as well. Whether it’ll work, we’ll see. However, it had to be hard to hire a hitting coach when they know that after next season a new POBO takes over and might want to clean house. Hopefully Brown does well enough that they’ll want him to stay.
I’m excited about these changes and what they may mean for the club in the future. I do not believe that the next couple of years are going to be terrible. Some in the media seem to be equating this with the teardowns that Chicago and Houston did, losing 100 games for multiple seasons. Even if the Cards traded all their high priced players (and I don’t believe they’d do that), the young core of this team is already in the bigs. Would they win the Central? Probably not. Would they be significantly worse than .500? I don’t think that’s the case either. If they bounce around between 75 and 83 wins for a couple of years while the system gets stronger, that’s a solid approach.
What I’m more excited about is the likelihood that in-market streaming is coming next season. Derrick Goold wrote about this a few days ago that the club was looking at their streaming options and I continue to believe that, around Winter Warm-Up, they’ll announce something of that nature, either a standalone app or some way for folks to stream the games. I haven’t been able to watch for a couple of years and I look forward to having that option again.
I did get a couple of questions for the mailbag so I want to go ahead and touch on those even though they might be a little dated by now.
First off, LightLAB asked:
“What are the biggest takeaways from this year? In particular, what are the biggest positives from this year? It wasn’t the season we wanted but as someone was pointing out recently, for most 90-loss teams a .500 season and second or third in the division would be considered a huge success. Second question: considering this, is there any reason (other than the fact that it’s the Cardinals) that this season feels like a failure? Can this be a step towards something even better next year or is this the peak for the next few years?”
I think the biggest positives start with Masyn Winn, who not only showed that he could play MLB but he could excel at it. To win the Fielding Bible Award at shortstop his first year and perhaps the Gold Glove as well is remarkable. He never got too off-kilter and quickly became the upcoming face of the franchise. There’s a strong argument to be made that he should get a long-term extension this winter, even though they probably won’t after just one season.
Other positives: Alec Burleson finally showed some on-field results from the metrics that he’d been under-performing, though that last stretch is a little worrisome. Andre Pallante looks to be a solid mid-rotation starter. Ryan Helsley was elite. Sonny Gray was, for the most part, exactly what they paid for, which is not something that always goes with the Cardinals and free agent pitching.
Why does it feel like a failure? I think the biggest reason is what you identify, the expectations that Cardinals fans have for a franchise that has, more often than not, delivered on those expectations. The other part of it is probably that they had such a dynamic run from mid-May to about the All-Star break that, when it petered out and they missed the playoffs, there were some dashed hopes. This is definitely a building block season—again, see the young guys that took steps—and if they’ve learned what they need to do with Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman through their struggles, so much the better.
Ross asked a question about the Arizona Fall League, which given those teams have been identified and are deep into the season, I’ll have to blame my sloth and pass on that. He had some other questions, though, which I hope will make up for it.
“Rule 5 protection will need to be made by the middle of November with several names that will need to be protected. Not all will be, but could at least be put on the AAA roster to protect them from the minor league portion of the draft. Who gets protected and who gets left off?
Which if any players on the 40-man roster will be non-tendered this fall?
Which players are most likely to be traded? (I know, it takes two to tango!)”
I did a lot of work on the 40-man roster last year because I expected so much turnover on it. I haven’t dug too far into it this year, but let’s see what we can do.
To make things easier, I’m looking at this thread from Brian Walton’s excellent TheCardinalNation.com. I trust those commenters to know who has to be protected. The thread is from August, so Thomas Saggese has already been added, but there are some other interesting names.
A couple of names seem slam dunks. Tink Hence is going to get added, no doubt. Tekoah Roby didn’t have the best 2024 but he was still the prize of the 2023 trade deadline and I think they’ll add him as well. After that, it’s hard to know. I wouldn’t be surprised if those two are the only ones, but probably Andre Granillo gets in there as well. They aren’t likely to overload things and most of these guys won’t be taken anyway.
I thought that they might had Ian Bedell last year and they did not, gambling on his health history scaring teams away. It did and Bedell pitched at Springfield and Memphis this past year. The ERAs weren’t great but some of the other underlying numbers were all right. This may be a case of the new development staff getting their say—if they think they can tinker with him, he could get added. I bet they gamble again, though, and leave him off.
As for who will be non-tendered, there’s going to be a lot of space cleared with free agents and possibly trades and not a lot of expectations of signing people. They may not need to do a whole lot of cutting from the 40-man. I could see Riley O’Brien going given how last year worked out but he’s still somewhat intriguing. Jose Fermin maybe with the emergency of Saggese. The club never did much with Ryan Loutos so if they needed a spot, I could see him going.
Finally, trades. We’ve talked about this on some of the podcasts, most notably this episode of Meet Me at Musial, but I think Helsley is a lock to get moved because of many reasons—he’s at the peak of his value, only one more year, likely to get more back for him than anyone else. I think there’s a decent case for Steven Matz being traded as a bullpen help. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the big money folks came back but given the catching situation, if Willson Contreras was open to it I could see him going. Would hate that, but it makes some sense.
Thanks to everyone who reached out and expressed their condolences about my long-time church closing. We have two more Sundays in that building, but the good thing is that we are making significant progress toward putting together a new congregation under the Global Methodist umbrella. We have a time, a place, and working on people bringing the message. Endings are hard, but they get tempered a bit when there’s a new beginning.
I continue to be surprised with just how little promotion Star Wars is doing about Skeleton Crew, which starts six weeks from Tuesday. I would guess that they’ll be firing that up soon, but there’s been enough weird stuff around this show that I’m a little worried about it. It sounds great, looks like an interesting premise, but it should have been out around this time last year and there weren’t any significant reasons for delays. The first trailer was shown at Celebration in 2023 and didn’t make it out to the public until earlier this year. Perhaps there’s some front office issues in this franchise as well. Still, it’ll be nice to have Star Wars return. Feels like it’s been forever since The Acolyte finished up.
New Musial went up yesterday, new Gateway records tonight.
And yes, outside Christmas decorating kicks off November 15. I’ll put up pictures when it is done.