Chaim Bloom has to overcome his Achilles' heel as he takes over the Cardinals

The St. Louis Cardinals are a few short months away from the Chaim Bloom era officially beginning, and while that should be exciting for fans, there are some questions that Bloom will need to answer in order to show he's learned from his mistakes in his last gig.

ESPN's Buster Olney was on 101 ESPN's BK and Ferrario this past week, and he spent some time discussing Bloom in various ways, but I did find his response about some of the criticisms made about Bloom to be very interesting.

When asked about the perception of Bloom around the industry, Olney was quick to point out how baseball executives believe he is capable of turning around the organization and is gifted at rebuilding farm systems and player development due to his eye for talent.

"I am going to be really curious, as he goes forward, what he learned from his experience in Boston because, and I know this is not a surprise to Chaim if I were to tell him this, there was some criticism of him in Boston that he wasn't inclusive, that he didn't bring people in the front office and draw them in. Here's the thing. General managers, like all of us in this industry, you have a chance to get better. You have a chance to learn and go forward day to day, and I'm curious to see how that part of Chaim evolves.

"And we saw it the most at the trade deadline. You know, there's some general managers who clearly are not afraid to make a deal, and to potentially be wrong. Dave Dombrowski is one of those, Jerry Dipoto is one of those, A.J. Preller of the Padres is one of those. The perception of Chaim in other front offices when he was with the Red Sox is that he would agonize over these trades and he would sometimes get paralyzed by that. I'm going to be really curious to see how he evolves as he takes over the Cardinals."

The criticisms of Chaim Bloom from baseball executives feel like familiar issues for Cardinals fans

Oh boy. That sounds a lot like the problems the Cardinals have run into over the last number of years.

If Bloom is able to overhaul the Cardinals' player development and farm system in such a way that they are producing great talent at a rate that they haven't done in quite some time, that will be a huge win. That alone would put the Cardinals in a much better position than in recent years.

But if Bloom continues to be gun-shy in his decision-making regarding trades and how he manages big league rosters, there's a chance he repeats some of the frustrating mistakes that John Mozeliak made in recent years running the club. And ultimately, that may hold them back from reaching the heights that they could with a more aggressive style of management.

I'm not even talking about Bloom needing to become uber aggressive like Preller is, but if he's so conservative in his decision-making that other executives find him hard to work with, that'll be a problem.

A couple of things I think are worth noting. First, this is not the first time we have heard that Bloom may be too cautious with his decision-making. It's not just the opinion of an insider like Olney; it's a league-wide perception of Bloom.

But with that, I also think it's worth noting that Bloom stepped into a very complicated and messy situation in Boston. Upon being hired to succeed Dombrowski, Bloom was tasked with...

1. Trading Mookie Betts (and attaching David Price's contract to the deal to shed as much money as possible).
2. Cutting payroll.
3. Rebuilding a league-worst farm system.
4. Oh, and continuing to compete with the rest of the American League East while doing so.

On top of those things, Bloom didn't really get to bring in his own guys to overhaul the front office the way he would have wanted to, and there's been talk in the industry that Bloom had to deal with a bit of "Game of Thrones"-esque power struggles within the Boston front office as the parts of the regime he did not get to select sought power.

Again, Bloom can't go back and change any of that, and ultimately, his time in Boston will be viewed differently depending on whom you ask. But Olney hit the nail on the head when he said that Bloom now has the opportunity to prove he's learned from his mistakes. Sure, that may just be who he is, and he will never change, but how many of us have grown and evolved as people through failures in our own lives and careers? Bloom may very well have learned from those mistakes in Boston, and his time in St. Louis will be all the better for it.