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Its very confusing KCB. Mo is in a conflict of interest situation. Bloom is in a situation I am surprised he got himself into, seemingly unable to control his own fate. Bill, whatever his intentions, is doing what an owner positioning to sell out would be doing, minimizing current expense and long term obligations. Given that landscape, what happens if they stumble into a post-season opportunity is anyone’s guess.
Trying to get lucky is how we got where we are now.
No, we got here because the Cardinals don’t believe in continuous improvement. We got here because the Cardinals do not look for every competitive advantage. We got there because a team that claims their business model is draft and develop traded away their last two comeptitive balance picks and signed guys with qualifying offers attached to them, forfeiting 2nd round picks. We got there because the guy in charge of the drafts is not especially good at it. We got here because the Cardinals gutted their player development and analytics staffs to save a few dollars.
bling said:
Bloom is in a situation I am surprised he got himself into, seemingly unable to control his own fate.
When fired from your last job and out of work, coming to the Cardinals even with restrictions for a short period of time is going to look better than most situations in MLB. How many guys get a year to scope out the situation with no risk before deciding whether to commit long term? It was a pretty sweet deal for Bloom, IMO.
He CAN control his own fate WHEN he is the PBO and responsible for the entire organization. If he didn’t like the environment here, all he would have had to do is decline the five year contract and walk away after last year. But he didn’t.
Again, his 2025 job is to fix the farm system. That is a big enough effort in itself. I would argue that his fate over his next contract will be affected more if the farm system starts producing better than by any short-term deals Mozeliak does during 2025, good or bad. In the current financial environment, Mo isn’t able to do any big long-term changes, anyway.
You never know. Other teams can have bad luck too. If it so happens the Cardinals are right there in contention for the NL central as the trade deadline approaches, what will they do? What will Mo do? What will Bill allow Mo to do? What will Bloom agree to do?
On the Member Board jnevel took a survey of the chances of the Cardinals making the playoffs and winning the division. You put zero percent chance on both questions, which I agreed with.
Bills broke. Every decision made now and going forward has to face this reality first.
So he says. According to this chart he is the 7th wealthiest owner in MLB. He is down to his last $4 Billion.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125149/wealthiest-mlb-teams-owners/
I would put the chance of being in contention at the deadline at <5%, but not zero, due to the bad luck factor. I don’t think Bill will approve doing anything at the deadline to put us over the top, though, whilst other teams in contention will. But I am interested in what other thinks they would do.
Billy Jr. can’t afford to do anything at the deadline. Heck, he can’t even afford to maintain his team’s ballpark and is claiming he needs charitable donations from taxpayers to fund roughly $100M in stadium renovations that he terms are “not optionable.” It won’t be too long before poor Billy’s so broke that he can’t pay attention.
No, we got here because the Cardinals don’t believe in continuous improvement. We got here because the Cardinals do not look for every competitive advantage. We got there because a team that claims their business model is draft and develop traded away their last two comeptitive balance picks and signed guys with qualifying offers attached to them, forfeiting 2nd round picks. We got there because the guy in charge of the drafts is not especially good at it. We got here because the Cardinals gutted their player development and an
Well now that you mention it, all that too.
bling said:
Bloom is in a situation I am surprised he got himself into, seemingly unable to control his own fate.
I figured you would comment on the part about Bill.
It’s Bill’s broke story, not mine GS, and he IS playing that card. Decisions this offseason are already being based on it, and will be. It’s his reality.
My favorite so far is showcasing GG as our martyr at the trade deadline, to be able to afford any deadline add at all. That didn’t work so he sold Edman at 50% off. Poor Bill.
bling said:
I figured you would comment on the part about Bill.
I didn’t bother as it made no sense at all. You seem to have the time-tested “buy low and sell high” axiom reversed. Investing in player development at the expense of the MLB payroll is the last thing someone thinking of selling anytime soon would do.
It’s Bill’s broke story, not mine GS, and he IS playing that card. Decisions this offseason are already being based on it, and will be. It’s his reality.
Oh I agree. How Cardinal ownership claims to be in financial straits after years and years of profits is hard to take yet that is where we are.
Investing in player development at the expense of the MLB payroll is the last thing someone thinking of selling anytime soon would do.
The total investment in player development will be less than one rookie player’s salary.
The idea that Cardinals are scaling back payroll to invest in player development is laughable. It’s just the spin the Cardinals are putting on their payroll purge.
The idea that Cardinals are scaling back payroll to invest in player development is laughable. It’s just the spin the Cardinals are putting on their payroll purge.
Yes. And the financial landscape the Cardinals face is surely not unique with them having some novel and pronounced need to drastically reduce both current payroll and future obligations. Cardinals ownership has been raking it in for decades, the value of the franchise has gone through the roof on Bill’s watch, so the notion that they must drastically scale back because of a rough couple years is absurd. The notion that they are tidying up the books is not absurd.
No, we got here because the Cardinals don’t believe in continuous improvement.
I’ve said this a couple of times before….. IMO, we got here because Goldschmidt and Arenado stopped hitting and stopped playing up to their previous standards. If they were still hitting like they should be and playing like they should be playing, it might have made sense for the organization to lay out some big dollars for a pitcher or a hitter. This is still my opinion.
I’ve said this a couple of times before….. IMO, we got here because Goldschmidt and Arenado stopped hitting and stopped playing up to their previous standards. If they were still hitting like they should be and playing like they should be playing, it might have made sense for the organization to lay out some big dollars for a pitcher or a hitter. This is still my opinion.
We all have our opinions Mud. This is certainly a partof the decline.
Ignoring the fact that all players tend to decline in their 30’s, if Goldenado could play like they did in 2022 every year, they would produce 14.0 fWAR. In 2024, their total was 4.3 fWAR.
So, add 10 wins to the 2024 Cardinals and their record would have been 93-69, tied with the Brewers for first place. If any of those 10 extra wins had come from Milwaukee, St. Louis could have won the division outright.
LACF said:
The idea that Cardinals are scaling back payroll to invest in player development is laughable. It’s just the spin the Cardinals are putting on their payroll purge.
Fair point about the expense discrepancy, and yes, it is messaging. But my focus was to point out why bling’s latest theory that DeWitt is cutting expense as a precursor to selling the team makes no sense whatsoever.
The kind of people who buy professional sports teams in this day and age are not focused on clean balance sheets. They want to win championships. If DeWitt was getting out, he would build the best team possible and sell on a high note, not refocus on what looks to be a multi-year rebuild.
A prospective buyer would have had no problem with the level of the Cardinals 2024 payroll. DeWitt is cutting expense because he is staying on and wants to restore profitability. To him, that seems more important than winning the World Series. I guarantee you that Steve Cohen sees it very, very differently.
I’m still stuck on how someone is supposed to fix something (minor league system) they don’t control when the individual running the big league system can’t or won’t do his part to help. Those two things seem to be working in opposite directions. It’s a sad satire at this point. The best thing to do would have been a clean break from Mo to Bloom, but they couldn’t even get that trade right. What a mess.
Can someone point to how much they’ve spent so far on this player development thing they claim they are doing? We’ve heard this song and dance before. They already know the budget for drafted players. That’s locked in. Same for international signing bonus pool. They aren’t really spending that much more on support staff. So where’s this great investment they claim to be doing? It’s laughable anyone still buys their bs, but i guess they do.
TexasCard, I think the claim was that they’d spend something like 8-12% more on the development side. No idea how much they spent prior to this, but it’s probably fair to say that the increase is a few million bucks at most, or half a Gibson/Lynn year.
TC, we don’t even know who all they have hired, let alone what technologies they are investing in. Likely this spending detail will never be made public.
I have no doubt they are investing more in PD, but that is because they have been behind for so long. I also expect it will cost nowhere near what they are cutting in MLB payroll. The latter is their reaction to down revenues at the ballpark and TV contract.
As I have noted for several years now, it is a death spiral. Revenues are down so drop expense. Then, when the team performs even worse, revenues drop further, so cut expense more. It is very difficult to reverse that cycle.
The long-term answer is to develop low-cost players in house. They have to try to get back to that because even in the best of times, ownership is not going to keep up with the industry in MLB payroll spending.
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