Cardinals fans can't afford to cling to Chaim Bloom's pitching prototype

St. Louis Cardinals supporters are falling head over heels for Dustin May. On June 15, the orange-haired hurler blanked the San Diego Padres, allowing just one hit and one walk while striking out nine batters en route to a 101-pitch masterpiece. That outing was the latest in a splendid line of starts for May, and calls are growing louder for him to remain in St. Louis for 2026 and beyond. But if the words of President of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom are anything to go by, this torrid love affair appears destined to end in heartbreak.

According to Bloom in an appearance on Tom Ackerman's "Sports on a Sunday Morning," the Cardinals remain intent on "staying the course" to create a franchise that can contend for titles annually. He added that anything that pushes the Cardinals toward that goal is something they want to consider and that he always wanted to see the team experience success in the here and now, but it couldn't get in the way of the long-term goal for the organization.

All of that seems to say that the Cardinals are licking their chops to sell high on May and see what they can acquire for him at the trade deadline. He holds a mutual option, so May and the Cardinals could theoretically agree to run it back for another season, but the risk of injury or ineffectiveness to the right-hander could be too much for the Cardinals to bear.

May is currently in the best pitching stretch of his career, so the Cardinals need to capitalize on that and trade him to a bona fide contender. And although that could leave Cardinals fans feeling jilted at the altar, It's possible that the May acquisition is just the prologue to Bloom's magnum opus in St. Louis.

The Cardinals have a chance to unearth more treasure after striking gold with May

There's no doubt that May's departure would sting, but Bloom's cutting-edge approach and the Cardinals' revamped staff mean the team should be in prime position to find more success stories similar to May's down the road. If the Cardinals draft well, trade optimally and plunge into free agency shrewdly in the coming seasons, they will be in prime position to contend, and they'll complement that by finding more castaways to pluck off the scrap heap.

If May's acquisition proved nothing else, it was that Bloom is willing to take fliers on pitchers whom John Mozeliak wouldn't have touched with a 10-foot pole. May held a lengthy injury history but had flashed special stuff in spurts with the Los Angeles Dodgers, so Bloom banked on the Cardinals' ability to coax more out of his stuff, which the team has executed with aplomb.

Contrast that with the pitchers whom the Cardinals took on in the latter portion of Mozeliak's time at the helm. Mozeliak preferred veterans who pitched to contact and were nearing retirement. Think Jon Lester, J.A. Happ, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn. Much of that is likely due to the team's lack of confidence at the end that it could squeeze the most out of the pitchers it acquired, so the front office took on contracts from players who had been there and done that several times over.

Don't think of May as a piece to contend with. Think of him as a player who is representative of what the new-look Cardinals are now capable of doing. May was an experiment that has succeeded beyond fans' wildest fantasies. Now that Bloom has a blueprint of what his staff can do in regards to extracting more talent out of players, he can get to work in obtaining similar players with confidence that they too will be in good hands.

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