Chaim Bloom’s do-over on Cardinals timeline question deserves fans’ attention

Chaim Bloom has done an excellent job guiding the St. Louis Cardinals into their next era of baseball thus far, and yet, everyone can acknowledge that nailing the early days of the rebuild does not guarantee future success, and that future success is ultimately what Bloom will be judged by.

Now, we can't actually grade him or the front office on that today, but what we can do is hold them to the standard they are setting, which is lofty, follow their progress along the way, and hold them accountable for making the shift from a "rebuilding club" to one that is looking to compete for the World Series.

That's exactly what Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tried to do at the Cardinals' end-of-season press conference at the end of September, and it was one of the few times I've been dissapointed with how Bloom handled a topic presented to him.

Goold asked Bloom for specific ways fans can measure their success as they move toward contention, and when they can turn their expectations away from rebuilding to winning. Bloom didn't really answer the question, and while we know he can't be definitive with that kind of question, I did think he would have a better response for Goold there, and I talked about it right after in our reaction on the Dealin' the Cards podcast.

Bloom was just on The Morning After on 101 ESPN this week, and this time, he took the question head-on.

Chaim Bloom deserves major props for circling back on Cardinals timeline question

The full conversation can be found here, but I wanted to hone in specifically on Bloom taking a second stab at the timeline question.

Bloom was asked what a reasonable timeline to be a serious competitor again would be, and Bloom actually started his response by acknowledging that exchange he had with Goold at the end of the season press conference, expressing that it was the one question he was not happy with how he answered, and joking about how he didn't believe Goold was happy with how he answered it either.

First, major props to Bloom for circling back on that and expressing his desire to address that topic in a different way. He didn't have to do that, but he did. And that should grow respect for him when you know he both hears feedback from fans and the media, and he also tries to be as transparent as he can be to the point of what is appropriate for a baseball executive.

Bloom then answered the question a different way this time, and while there weren't any "aha moments" from his response, it did speak to what fans who believe the best in this front office's goals have come to believe.

"The reality of this is I hate putting timelines on things in the sense that, actually, I think Oli [Marmol] said it well when he was like, 'You know it when you're there,'. Like you'll know it when you're there, but when you start trying to yoke yourself to some timeline, A, you might hold yourself back from, quote, 'getting ahead of it', or B, you might do silly things to catch up and stay on something arbitrary as opposed to keeping your head down and just doing the right thing again and again and getting there."

That makes a lot of sense. Bloom continued by connecting that logic to the statements he's made since day one of taking over baseball operations.

"Look, when I sat, I think it was the first day I was in this job, I sat there last year, and I was very clear: this is a multi-year project, right? Certainly, I think we need to keep that focus right now. A lot of good things happened this year, but 77 wins - we're not where we need to be yet. We've got to keep our head down. If you had tried to pin me down then [at the end of the season press conference], I would have said, 'Look, we're probably talking two, three years till we can really make some noise.'"

So, why didn't Bloom just say that then? Well, he continued on about why he thinks that could harm the club's mentality.

But I don't like to say those things, because what I don't want to have happen is people think like, 'Okay, we're giving up on it until then,' which is not the case," Bloom said emphatically. "There's not a moment where we're gonna concede a thing. We're gonna try and win every single day we walk in that building. And I also don't want people, especially in the building, to say, 'Well, it's not our time yet, so we don't have to be on point today. We don't have to be great today.' That's not the attitude that gets you there. It doesn't matter what's on your plate today. It doesn't matter if you have a long-term strategy. Whatever's on your plate that day, you've got to dominate it. And you have to hold that high standard from day one if you ever want to get there. So, I don't like timelines for that reason. I just think they probably lead you to do things that you probably shouldn't do, and you're better off just focusing on the work, and just staying after the work, and doing everything you can every day to get a little bit closer to that goal."

Personally, I really appreciated this type of response. It didn't guarantee anything about 2027, 2028, or even 2029, but it sure did reinforce that they do believe they can get to winning in that window, and frankly, they'd love for that to be the case, but they aren't going to rush things for the sake of "meeting a self-imposed timeline" and blow up the work they've been doing. Now, some will say that's how other executives make sure they don't get fired, which is fair, and we'll have to hold the Cardinals to that in a few years if it feels like they keep pushing things down the line to keep employment. But this doesn't sound like that at all.

And frankly, we should take them at their work so far. The industry couldn't be more impressed with what the Cardinals have done under Bloom so far, and so I'm choosing to believe they have a plan until we see otherwise.

Good on Bloom for how he approached this. It definitely builds even more trust and respect.

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