Athletics are giving the Cardinals the blueprint for how to lock up young core

The St. Louis Cardinals have shed their books of all of the big salaries they had remaining this offseason, giving Chaim Bloom and his front office ultimate flexibility to build out the Major League roster moving forward.

Bloom wisely used financial muscle, with the backing of ownership, to "buy" prospects, specifically in the Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras trades, and moved Nolan Arenado to Arizona to free up playing time for their young core. $46 million of the Cardinals' 2026 payroll is being sent out to Boston and Arizona, so the Cardinals are only paying $58 million to players on their own 40-man roster this season.

That means St. Louis has a ton of room to spend moving forward, even with the uncertainty that this rebuild will bring financially, and their TV deal that has taken another hit. While the Cardinals should certainly be open to using some of that space to add talent to the roster in 2027 and beyond, they would be wise to invest some of their financial power into extending important members of their young core, much like the Athletics have done over the last year.

Yes, the Athletics are showing the Cardinals how to spend.

The Athletics flurry of extensions provides the Cardinals with a blueprint for their young core

Since last offseason, the Athletics have $281.5 million over the next seven seasons for SS Jacob Willson, OF Tyler Soderstrom, OF Lawrence Butler, and DH Brent Rooker. Each of those position players is an important part of the Athletics' future, and now the club has them locked in for at least a year beyond their free-agent eligibility years.

Wilson just finished second in AL Rookie of the Year voting after posting an .800 OPS in 125 games, and the Athletics extended him yesterday. Soderstrom was also extended this offseason with two years of service time, and had a breakout campaign in 2025 with an .820 OPS in his first full big league season. Lawrence Butler was extended last offseason after a similar breakout the year prior, and Brent Rooker was extended into his mid-30s after his third year of service time.

When I look at who the Athletics locked up, names like JJ Wetherholt, Ivan Herrera, Masyn Winn, and Alec Burleson all line up as names who could receive similar deals and provide the Cardinals with certainty surrounding their cores on more team-friendly numbers moving forward. Even someone like Brendan Donovan could be worthy of an extension.

Bill DeWitt Jr. and Bill DeWitt III have dismissed the idea that the Cardinals won't be spending like they used to under Chaim Bloom, so we are talking about approximately $120 million to $150 million in annual money that could be invested in their payroll in the coming years. Extending multiple members of this core, if they are the guys they want to take into the future, makes a ton of sense.

If the Cardinals are willing to do this, I'd encourage them to get creative with how they structure those deals. Long-term extensions to pre-arbitration or early arbitration eligible players help keep future annual values down in what would have been their free agent years, but if the Cardinals were willing to fork over even more money up front, they could get a really nice deal on the latter years of the contract.

I'd much rather have the Cardinals prioritize keeping money open later in the deal than keeping more flexibility now, especially with how much salary space they should be able to build into in future years. Being able to get their core on very team-friendly deals would allow them to still be aggressive in the next few years with adding outside talent or extending prospects who are coming in future seasons.

The Cardinals are wisely looking to build a strong foundation right now with young talent coming through their system. Cardinals' farm director, Larry Day, told us on the Dealin' the Cards podcast that he sees his role overseeing the Cardinals' farm system as "keeping the coffers full" for Bloom and the front office, so they constantly have young talent ready to contribute and others that they can trade away for other needs. I highly recommend checking out our interview with Day from last week, as he gave great perspective on how revamping the farm system will get the Cardinals back to success on the field.

If Bloom, Day, and the rest of the front office and on-field staff are able to yield the results they are hoping for, the Cardinals will have young, cost-controlled talent filling impact roles for them, allowing them to extend players they see as cornerstones and bring in outside talent to supplement that core because they have enough talent on cheap deals to splurge in other places.

They can't keep everyone, so hard decisions will have to be made, but I really don't see why they shouldn't extend at least a few of their current core members now to help build for the future.