Cardinals' player development strides over the last 18 months are profound

It's no secret that when Chaim Bloom was hired to be the St. Louis Cardinals' next president of baseball operations, his number one priority was revamping a player development system that had fallen behind the industry.

Bloom, who had established himself as one of the brightest minds in the game and had a unique track record of success in player development with the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox, spent the 2025 season behind the scenes, with his primary focus being directly on those player development woes. Gary LaRoque, who was the Cardinals' Director of Player Development from 2014 to 2024, retired from his role following the 2024 season, allowing Bloom to step into that department and get his fingerprints all over it.

His first order of business was the hiring of Rob Cerfolio, who would serve as an assistant general manager and provide oversight to player development and performance areas of the organization. Bloom and Cerfolio brought in a variety of new voices to their mix, such as Larry Day (Director of Player Development), Matt Pierpont (Director of Pitching), and Carl Kochan (Director of Performance), and they all immediately got to work revamping how the Cardinals develop talent at all levels of the organization.

Over a year into this new player development regime, it's already become so clear how held back the organization had been by their player development department, and just how impactful this new group has been so far.

The Cardinals new player development regime is showing that they had talent but were not developing it well.

Here's something I found fascinating about the Cardinals' success in player development this last year: If you look at the players who took the biggest steps forward in their development last year, they were mostly names that the Cardinals had brought in before Bloom really got his hands on the organization. Joshua Baez, Rainiel Rodriguez, Ixan Henderson, Braden Davis, Brycen Mautz, Nathan Church, and others had been around, but major steps forward were taken with this new regime in place.

Don't get me wrong, the Cardinals have definitely made shifts in the types of players they are now looking to acquire under Bloom's leadership as well. Liam Doyle and Tanner Franklin are very different arms than those they've drafted in the past. Brandon Clarke, Jurrangelo Cijntje, Yhoiker Fajardo, and other arms they've dealt for are as well. The kind of talent they are going to be targeting moving forward is a breath of fresh air, but it's not like they didn't have potential in the system before.

It makes you wonder how the trajectory of guys like Jordan Walker, Nolan Gorman, and Dylan Carlson may have been different if Bloom and his staff were here before. Look, in baseball, there will always be guys who don't pan out for a multitude of reasons, and Bloom's team will make mistakes along the way as well. And even the previous regime saw guys like Brendan Donovan, Tommy Edman, Lars Nootbaar, Ivan Herrera, Alec Burleson, and Masyn Winn blossom in recent years. But having this new group in town gives the Cardinals the chance to return to their machine-like nature when it comes to player development.

The most glaring example of where the Cardinals fell short in the last decade has been in pitching development. Since 2016, here are all of the Cardinals internally developed starters who debuted during that stretch, making at least 10 starts, and the production they posted for the club.

So over the course of 10 seasons from 2016 to 2025, the Cardinals produced just 12 starting pitchers who made 10 or more starts in their own uniform. One, Jack Flaherty, pitched like a front-of-the-rotation arm for a few seasons. The rest? Mostly pitched like back-of-the-rotation arms, or were not real options for a contending rotation. That's a major problem!

If you look at the Cardinals rotation right now, four of their five arms are internally developed arms, whether through the draft or by trade, and many more options are coming. Things are changing in St. Louis, and for the better.

Prior to the 2025 season, the Cardinals farm system was ranked 18th by Baseball America and 20th by MLB Pipeline. Prior to this season, Baseball America now had the Cardinals system ranked second best in the game, and MLB Pipeline had them all the way up at fourth overall, their highest ranking since they began tracking systems back in 2015.

This is just the first wave and stage of what Bloom and his team are looking to accomplish in St. Louis. At the end of the day, they will be judged by both internally and externally on how these strides end up resutling in winning baseball. If it does, they will be celebrated. If it doesn't, they'll hear about it. But as we stand today, it's hard not to be excited about the direction things are heading in.