Once "baseball's model organization", the Cardinals look to reverse systemic decline

On May 27th, 2013, an iconic Sports Illustrated issue debuted featuring the St. Louis Cardinals rotation, with that edition of the publication being titled "The Cardinal Way". The tagline?

"Injuries? Superstar free-agent losses? Nothing slows baseball's model organization...past, present and future."

Hey SI, I'm from the future, and yeah, they found a way to slow down the machine they once perfected.

It's an incredible piece by Ben Reiter within the magazine. The cover photo, inspired by the even more iconic 1968 cover featuring Roger Maris, Tim McCarver, Bob Gibson, Mike Shannon, and Lou Brock, featured Adam Wainwright, Shelby Miller, Jaime Garcia, Lance Lynn, and Jake Westbrook, putting a strong emphasis on how St. Louis had seemingly lapped the field in the area of pitching development.

Throughout the piece, compliments galore were thrown the Cardinals way, as at the time, they boasted the best record in baseball and the best farm system in baseball, on their way to a World Series appearance less than two years removed from losing Hall of Famer Albert Pujols in free agency, Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa to retirement, and former Cy Young winner Chris Carpenter to injuries and eventually retirement.

That didn't faze St. Louis, as they made four straight NLCS appearances from 2011-2014, falling short of a second World Series title in just three years at the hands of the Boston Red Sox.

From 2012-2015, the Cardinals received 378 starts, or on average, 95.4 of their 162 starts, from homegrown starting pitchers who had yet to qualify for free agency, and each posted ERAs at or south of 3.36 over that stretch. It was truly an incredible era of Cardinals' baseball, one that resulted from an organization firing on all cylinders.

On the position player side of things, while we were robbed of the next potential Cardinals' superstar with the tragic death of Oscar Taveras, rival front office groups still lauded the Cardinals' ability to churn out impact talent. Matt Carpenter, Allen Craig, Kolten Wong, Jon Jay, Matt Adams, and others represented key cogs on the Cardinals' lineup over the years, and while they've been able to produce quality bats in recent years, the totality of their MLB success still pales in comparison to the consistent, deep October runs their former prospect groups used to make.

We all know the story, though. Multiple key front office members left the Cardinals for expanded opportunities elsewhere. Their once cutting-edge model grew stale over time and fell behind the rest of the game, and before the Cardinals truly knew it, the damage was already done, and the organization was no longer lapping the field; the field was lapping them.

Now the Cardinals are placing their trust in Chaim Bloom to get them back to prominence, and while he does have some things to work with, the club is a long way from where they once were.

Can Chaim Bloom get the Cardinals back to being "baseball's model organization"?

It's a tall task being laid before Bloom, one that will take a long time to truly accomplish if he is going to, but one that he is uniquely equipped for.

Being equipped for the task doesn't mean he will succeed in doing so, but it's hard to think of anyone else whose resume fits the bill so seamlessly for St. Louis. Bloom, who began his baseball career as an intern with the San Diego Padres and Major League Baseball, started an internship with the Tampa Bay Rays back in 2005, and was on the ground floor during the earlier days of Tampa Bay becoming the "David" to the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox's "Goliath" in the American League East. The Rays reached their first World Series in 2008, Bloom's first year as the assistant director of Minor League Operations, and it was in that role that Bloom was credited with creating the famous "Rays Way" player development manual.

The "Rays Way" executed individualized development plans for the organization's prospects, and in the almost two decades since Bloom introduced Tampa Bay's groundbreaking player development philosophies, the organization has continued to punch well above its weight class.

A graduate of Yale, Bloom spoke about wanting to honor and continue doing the things that have made the Cardinals great in their rich history, while also modernizing and optimizing the organization in order to achieve things that they haven't since the early 2010s.

Bloom got his first crack at being in the head chair during his time with the Boston Red Sox, as he was hired by John Henry and the Boston ownership group following the 2019 season to succeed Dave Dombrowski. As their Chief Baseball Officer, Bloom was granted access to far more resources financially than he had in Tampa Bay, but unfortunately, it also came at the same time that Boston would be scaling back on their league-high payroll.

After winning the World Series in 2018, the Dombrowski-led Red Sox missed the playoffs in 2019 with an 84-78 record, while Bloom's Rays, with the lowest Opening Day payroll in baseball that year, made the playoffs with a 96-66 record.

During Bloom's first offseason, he was tasked with cutting back on payroll significantly, dropping their league-leading $229 million payroll in 2019 down to fourth place in 2020, sixth in 2021 ($187 million), and eventually all the way down the 13th in 2023 ($182 million). Ownership forced his hand to move future Hall of Famer Mookie Betts in the process, and even had to attach David Price's albatross contract (handed out by Dombrowski) to Betts in the deal to move his deal out of Boston.

Bloom had his fair share of success at the Major League level in Boston, guiding the club to the ALCS in 2021, but was fired by the Red Sox at the end of the 2023 season after failing to see the club hit the next level. Considering he was asked to rebuild their league-worst farm system, cut bad contracts from their league-high salary, and keep competing in the process, I'd say Bloom was in a really tough spot during his time with Boston.

In the years after Bloom left, the organization is now reaping the benefits of the work he did with their farm system and player development. Their farm system was easily the best in baseball heading into the year, headlined by Roman Anthony, who Bloom snagged with the 79th overall pick in the 2022 MLB Draft and looks like a superstar in the making, along with names like Wilyer Abreu, Marcelo Mayer, Kristian Campbell, Jhonstynxon Garcia, Franklin Arias, and many others who were acquired by Bloom during his tenure with the club.

For the last two seasons, Bloom has been behind the scenes with the Cardinals, serving as an advisor to John Mozeliak and officially being named his heir apparent back in September 2024. While this kind of transition of power is rare in professional sports, it has afforded Bloom to audit the regressing organization throughout the 2023 season, present his findings to ownership toward the end of the season, and spend this "transition" year hiring his own player development gurus and implementing changes across the organization before he takes over the whole operation here soon.

Only time will tell if this plan will prove to be a wise one, but if you're taking the "glass half full" approach, Bloom being able to work in the shadows for two years prior to taking on the lead job may give him the dream headstart on his organizational rebuild. Most ownership groups don't have that kind of patience, for better or for worse. If this were any other organization, like say Boston, Bloom would have taken over for Mozeliak immediately, had to try and assess the state of the organization on Day 1, and implement as many changes as he could immediately, all while trying to compete with some of the best teams in the game in a loud media market.

Had Bloom been in charge of the club during the 2024 and 2025 seasons, I wonder what the fan perception of him would be today? Would there still be an excitement around his fresh voice and the potential of what he could bring to St. Louis? Or would he already be cast off as a failure by fans who want results immediately?

I'm sure he would have handled some situations we've watched Mozeliak botch over the last few years in ways we may prefer, but my guess is that we'd still be looking at multiple more years of rebuilding and refining at all levels of the organization, and I'm not sure fans would have had the patience for that.

Instead, Bloom has been able to get an insider look at the job he is inheriting for close to two years prior to running the show, rather than an outside look over a few weeks' process before taking a job and immediately having to lead the organization. It could prove to be one of the biggest blessings that the outgoing regime and the DeWitt family could provide for their new president of baseball operations.

During the same press conference where Bloom was announced as the Cardinals' future POBO, he was given a bit of space to provide a vision of the future for Cardinals fans, and these words still ring loud as to why Bloom was hired as Mozeliak's successor:

"More than anything, the remarkable success this organization has enjoyed for much of the two-plus decades was fueled by its homegrown talent pipeline," Bloom shared at the Cardinals' end-of-season press conference. "This year, I saw some of the reasons why. I saw the pride in what's been accomplished here over the years, the passion for teaching the game, the care for the organization, for what it stands for, and especially for our players.

And I saw in many of our staff a hunger to learn, to grow, to get better, to change. That's a good thing, because that's what we need, that's what this game demands. The competition in this area of our industry has been absolutely relentless over the past decade. It takes boldness and humility to get on top and to stay there. And if you stand still and you rest on your laurels for even just a moment, you get beat."

The history that Bloom referred to is rich. The Cardinal Way, credited to the late George Kissel and Dave Ricketts, bled through the organization for decades, and greats like Red Schoendienst, White Herzog, Tony La Russa, Jeff Lunhow, Walt Jocketty, and even Mozeliak himself, and so many more names embodied this as well. I could name so many Cardinal greats and baseball Hall of Famers who benefited from the Cardinal Way and led to so many years of greatness.

Bloom wants to honor the past and bring the best parts "Cardinal Way" into this new era of baseball, while learning from and adopting new ways of thinking and preparing to take the organization to the next level.

While Bloom has been kept behind closed doors by the Cardinals this year, we've heard that vision coming to life from Bloom's most prominent offseason hire, assistant general manager of player development and performance, Rob Cerfolio.

Cerfolio, along with names like Matt Pierpont (director of pitching), Larry Day (director of player development), Carl Kochan (director of performance), and others, has brought the Cardinals a well of experience and knowledge from top-tier organizations like the Cleveland Guardians, Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle Mariners, and San Francisco Giants. Bloom hasn't been "resting on his laurels"; he's been seeking out the top baseball minds in the game to breathe new life into St. Louis.

I don't think it is a coincidence that the Cardinals' farm system seems to have taken an important step forward this year. JJ Wetherholt looks like a beast, and names like Rainiel Rodriguez and Joshua Baez have made dramatic jumps in the eyes of many talent evaluators. Not only that, but even in a year where most of their top pitching prospects have had significant injuries, names like Ixan Henderson, Braden Davis, and Brycen Mautz have raised their ceilings with great years on the mound. Kiley McDaniel of ESPN moved the Cardinals' farm system up from 19th prior to the season, all the way to ninth this past week.

Mozeliak indicated after the trade deadline that Bloom would begin to do some strategic planning and preparation for 2026 and beyond, like Mozeliak would do every year, and Bloom has already begun to inform some staff that their contracts would not be renewed as he begins to implement further changes to the organization. While Bloom's hires were mostly on the player development side last offseason, he'll have free range now to make changes to all departments.

When Bloom steps into the number one seat, he'll have real questions to answer regarding how things will be different in St. Louis as compared to his time in Tampa Bay. Bloom has often been criticized for his lack of decisiveness in Boston, a common critique of John Mozeliak's front office over the years. Bloom, like all people in their careers, will get to prove whether or not he has learned from his mistakes in Boston, and if he has, that means the Cardinals are getting an even better version of Bloom than what we have seen before.

We are oh so close to seeing the end of an almost two-decade-long run with Mozeliak at the helm of St. Louis baseball, meaning we are likely in for significant changes across the board compared to what we have seen as of late. While ownership remains, they seem committed to allowing Bloom to spark a new vision in the Cardinals organization, and time will tell whether or not that leads to another iconic era of Cardinals' baseball, or more of the same results with a different cast of characters.