Cardinals' payroll decisions leave much to be desired

Am I the only one still left confused? Or better yet, still just as frustrated?

Or maybe the real question is: how did we ever get here?

After an end-of-season press conference that seems to have left fans with more questions than answers, I’m still left shaking my head at where the St. Louis Cardinals are as a franchise.

That press conference made clear that the team plans to take a step back from payroll over the next few years in order to dedicate resources toward revamping their player development program. That program, once the envy of the league, has now grown stale and old, with an immediate need of an influx of staffing and updated technology.

Let’s put aside the question of how a proud franchise could ever allow its player development system to fall so far behind.  Katie Woo’s story in The Athletic was as damning a piece I’ve read about the Cardinals since the Astros hack.

Let’s even put aside the question of why a team facing a reset would leave the same decision-makers who caused the damage in place to fix things.

My question instead focuses on a different takeaway from that press conference. It’s clear that the team will steal from the major league payroll to pay the piper in updating the minor league system.

But why not spend on both?

Look, I’m all for fixing the myriad issues clearly facing this team when it comes to developing players. Woo’s point about the minor league staffing numbers for the Cardinals compared to other teams was nothing short of embarrassing.

And if the intent next year is to more fully commit to younger players receiving the playing time necessary to work through struggles, I’ll enthusiastically support that. The yo-yoing of players like Jordan Walker between the minors and the majors (or the bench to the starting lineup) needs to end.

I also agree with any notion that an overreliance on free agency is not a sustainable model for success. Every team needs a homegrown core of both position players and pitchers, supplemented by outside additions if it wants to compete year in and out.

But I don’t understand why we as fans should just accept that revamping the minor leagues requires a shifting of resources from the major league roster. Yes, I understand the pandemic probably was a major financial hit to the team. Yes, I understand that there is media uncertainty surrounding the Cardinals’ TV rights deal with Bally’s. But the Cardinals are one of the most historic teams in all of baseball, the class of the National League with one of the most fervent fan bases in the country.

I know Chaim Bloom is set to take over in 2026 but when did this team decide to fully become the Tampa Bay Rays? St. Louis isn’t the biggest market around but when your lowest attendance numbers in nearly two decades still leaves you as a top-ten draw, when you have an entire Ballpark Village pumping money into the product, this proposed allocation of resources still makes no sense to me.

Scarier still is the potential implication for the future. The logic of the team is that resources need to move from the major league payroll to development in order to revamp. And the idea is that the homegrown core of Masyn Winn, Alec Burleson, Michael McGreevy, and others will grow together to form the future. But what happens when the homegrown stars need to be paid? Or when that core needs to add a star or two via free agency or trade? If the answer is that the resources will then reallocate back to the major league roster, won’t that once again decimate the player development system over time?

Hopefully, the answer is that the Cardinals will start to flex some financial might and realize a team is not prohibited from spending on both its major league roster and its minor league development system.

The clock is ticking to find out the answer.