5 burning questions facing the St. Louis Cardinals as their rebuild gets underway

1. When will the Cardinals recapture the faith, support, and frankly, in-person attendance from their fanbase?

To me, far and away the number one question I have with the Cardinals moving forward revolves around what it's going to take to see fans return to Busch Stadium and display the kind of excitement for this team that they once had.

Yes, getting back to winning is going to be a large part of that, but even when the Cardinals were nine games above .500 earlier this summer, Busch Stadium was still as empty as it has been in decades.

Sure, John Mozeliak leaving the front office may spark interest, but is that really going to be substantial if Bloom is going to have to operate under a lower budget than Mozeliak had to work with in the early years, and they are in a rebuild, not true contention? We'll see.

The Cardinals seem to believe that at least part of the problem also revolves around some non-baseball-related issues. How do they make coming to the ballpark a safe experience for all fans, especially with concerns regarding safety in downtown St. Louis at an all-time high? How do they make Busch Stadium and Ballpark Village a true destination for casual fans or even non-baseball fans, like other MLB teams have been able to do with their ballparks?

All of these things, coupled with the lack of star power in St. Louis and general fan frustration that has been building for years, all play into the lack of fan attendance in some shape or form. Anyone who downplays any of those aspects isn't seeing the bigger picture. There are some Cardinals fans who couldn't care less about the non-baseball related stuff, and they just want to see the team return to their glory days. But it's also fair to say that the casual attendee doesn't care all that much about the inner workings of the team, and they just want to have a good time when they spend money and come out to Busch Stadium.

I'll be keeping my eye on how every factor impacts attendance. What do things look like when Wetherholt debuts? What about to start 2026, the official beginning of the post-Mozeliak era? What about when the team is winning again? How about when further changes are made to the ballpark?

How the DeWitt family handles this delicate time in Cardinals history, both with the messaging they send and the actions that speak far louder, will likely have the greatest impact of all. If fans sense that ownership isn't invested in turning this around in a way that honors their fans and acknowledges how they've let the product deteriorate for so long, then I'm not sure we are actually going to see fans show up in a meaningful way for quite some time.