Chaim Bloom quietly made a drastic change to a longtime Cardinals staple

The St. Louis Cardinals' new president of baseball operations has wasted no time flipping the organization on its head. Chaim Bloom has just carried out his first major action as John Mozeliak's successor, and it's already a marked deviation from how the Cardinals have traditionally acted.

Bloom has changed the way the Cardinals are approaching the Arizona Fall League.

The Cardinals released the list of players whom they will be sending to the Arizona Fall League in 2025. Traditionally, St. Louis has been aggressive in deploying many of its best prospects to the Arizona Fall League. In 2024, that list consisted of Thomas Saggese, Matt Svanson, Leonardo Bernal, Nathan Church, Trent Baker, Ixan Henderson, Brycen Mautz and Alex Cornwall. Of that list, Saggese, Bernal and Mautz were listed on the MLB Pipeline's top 30 Cardinals prospects list last season, and Henderson and Church have made it onto their 2025 list amid breakout years.

Under Bloom, the Cardinals appear to be taking a much more conservative approach with the players they're sending to the desert. The list includes Chen-Wei Lin, Randal Clemente, Travis Honeyman, Darlin Saladin, Tyler Bradt, D.J. Carpenter, Miguel Ugueto and Graysen Tarlow. Lin is the only top 30 Cardinals prospect on MLB Pipeline who will make the trek, and the other pitchers appear to be pure relief arms.

Teams approach the Arizona Fall League in different ways, and with Bloom at the helm, the Cardinals may be transitioning from a team that sends some of its most prized prospects to the league to one that views it more as a place for players who are on the organizational roster bubble to earn more reps and see if they are worth keeping around.

Bloom may have a different perspective on the Arizona Fall League and its importance for players than Mozeliak did, or he could see some untapped potential in those he's sending there. The results won't be clear for a few years on whether any of the players he chose will amount to anything in the major leagues.

The Bloom era is in its infancy, and with the Cardinals in desperate need of a reset on how to approach their organizational philosophies, this may be the first sign of an extreme shake-up to the Cardinals' methods.