Chaim Bloom calls state of Cardinals "sobering," motivated to turn things around

I don't think any baseball executive dreams of being in a position where they are paying players to play for other teams in order to accelerate a rebuild, but that is the position that Chaim Bloom has found himself in as the St. Louis Cardinals' incoming president of baseball operations.

Cardinals fans have gotten used to being the team that makes the big swing for veteran players in the trade market. It was Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado in recent years, but in the DeWitt era, they've also pulled off moves for Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, Matt Holliday, Jason Heyward, and Marcell Ozuna along the way as well (and let's not forget that they had a deal for Giancarlo Stanton in place before Stanton vetoed the move).

Now, the Cardinals are the team sending productive veterans and piles of cash to opposing teams in order to build toward the future, and Bloom is well aware of what that says about the current state of the club.

Chaim Bloom calls the Cardinals' offseason moves "sobering," knows they have a ton of ground to make up in rebuild

When talking to reporters regarding the Arenado trade to the Arizona Diamondbacks, Bloom addressed the amount of money they've had to send out this offseason and offloading veteran players to rebuild this club, and he was very direct regarding how sobering of a spot that is to be in.

As Bloom said, the Cardinals don't want to continue to be the club that has to shed salary and talent from their roster on a consistent basis, but he is doing so in order to improve the future of the organization. With the blessing of ownership, Bloom has been able to send over $40 million in cash to opposing teams this offseason in order to better the prospect returns they have received for Arenado, Sonny Gray, and Willson Contreras, and that could be a big deal in the future if any of those prospects pop.

In the cases of Gray and Contreras, the Cardinals got a mixture of upside prospects and big league-ready pitching by moving money in those deals, and in the case of Arenado, eating that much money allowed them to part ways with the future Hall of Famer and clear space for the likes of JJ Wetherholt, Nolan Gorman, and Thomas Saggese to have consistent playing time.

Multiple things can be true at once. Yes, the fact that the Cardinals have fallen into this spot is a disaster and should not be acceptable moving forward. That is why you now see a new president of baseball operations and many new voices a part of the Cardinals' revamped front office. It's also fair to say that, even though the Cardinals are not an organization that prides itself in "rebuilding" and slashing payroll, those are the right moves for this team in this moment. And it is also true to say that if Bloom and, more specifically, ownership don't eventually start pumping money back into the big league roster in a few years and turn this into a contender built upon a strong foundation of homegrown players, then fans should be very, very upset.

The Cardinals allowed themselves to fall apart in the final years of the Mozeliak regime, and now Bloom has to lead the organization as it "takes its medicine." The hope is that doing so now will help them reap the rewards of contention in the future, and that's why we have seen Bloom and his staff attack this offseason with urgency as they try to overhaul this organization from where it has fallen behind.