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Let’s think about this in concrete terms for a minute.
Suppose Wetherholt is a star, every year, beginning now. I’m not talking about a Pujolsian superstar, mind you. Just a perennial 4-WAR guy, and always healthy. Call him a Hall-Of-Very-Good kinda guy. How much dough would he get if the Birds went year-to-year?
For the first three years he’d make just a couple million bucks in total, of course, since the MLB compensation system is slanted against pre-arbitration talent. Then for his first year in arbitration, he’d get roughly 40% of his free agent market value — and in his 2nd arby season, 60%, and for his third and final arbitration season, approximately 80% of full value. This 40-60-80 estimate of arbitration payouts is pretty well time-tested, I believe.
Now, I’d say a 4-WAR guy would be worth perhaps $25MM on the open market. But let’s be generous (and allow something for inflation) and go with $30MM.
So based on this formula, JJ would receive 40% of $30MM in his first arby season ($12MM), then $18MM, then $24MM. In other words, if he’s a star — beginning right now, which is expecting a heckuvalot for any rookie — every season and never gets hurt, he’ll make 12 + 18 + 24 + a couple million pre-arb, for a grand total of just under 60 million for his 6 pre-free agency seasons. I would say that this extreme immediate production combined with six years of extreme good health, is a *highly* unlikely outcome. Probably 95th-99th percentile.
So. So if I’m offering Wetherholt a long-term contract, it’d be something like six years for $40MM guaranteed, with 2 or 3 club options after that, at $20MM each.
“Well the attendance problem is on the owner in my opinion.”
Agreed, absolutely. The fans will support the club in *almost* any circumstance. For instance, even though the Birds finished dead last in 2023, and the owners retained the failed manager, the fans still bought tickets for 2024. Very nearly 3,000,000 tickets, in fact.
But now the owners are not even trying to win. Not now, not next year, and not the year after that. (Unless they replace Marmol before the end of his contract, of course.) Ownership has betrayed a public trust with their fans, gutting not just player payroll, but player talent also. The team motto should be “Choose to lose!”
Apparently all those online Cardinal fans at VEB (and a handful here) who’ve been demanding a “rebuild” since about 2017, well, those folks won’t actually support the rebuild by going out and buying tickets. And maybe they shouldn’t. I know the DeWitts will never get another dollar from me, full stop.
What a debut for McGreevy!
As for the StL manager….well, here’s a side-by-side comparison:
JoJo Romero 2025 2.07 ERA in 61 innings. Stanek 5.30 in 56 innings.
In 2024 it was Romero 3.36 across 59 IP versus Stanek 4.88 in 55 innings.The last time the 34-year-old Stanek was good enough to be a major league closer was four years ago. Which, coincidentally is the last time Romero was NOT good enough for that particular responsibility. The manager was apparently bewitched by Stanek’s five good innings in Spring Training.
“Forced to choose, the DeWitts would rather not lose money on a team that does not appear to be capable of winning. What they are most trying to do is reload from within to become competitive again. So they are winning fewer games now and losing less money now while reinvesting to try to win more later.” (Emphases mine)
Per CNBC, the Cards in 2024 had revenues of $398MM, which ranked 12th in the sport. Then in 2025, the team CB Tax 40-man player payroll was just under $154MM. Seems like an awful lot of potential profit space, between revenues and player payroll, doesn’t it?
In 2025, the Birds made another $376MM in revenue. And we all know what’s happened to player payroll this offseason. So it’s very, very hard to imagine that the Cardinal owners have lost any money, at any point. There is a profound philosophical difference between owners trying to avoid *losing* money, and owners trying to maximize already robust profits. I say the above figures assert persuasively that the DeWitts are currently doing the latter — but I’m open to arguments to the contrary.
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“I don’t doubt Bill ‘wants to win’, but it will be on his terms before he ‘re-invests’ in the player budget.”
“I think they take ’26 and ’27 to figure out all the internal options they have + really get the farm producing again and then in ’28 they will look at what they have and will be willing to add to their core roster via trades / free agents to put a team on the field that has an actual shot to get to the WS.”
These statements touch upon the critical question: When if ever will player payroll become commensurate with revenues again under this ownership group? I don’t have a Post-Dispatch subscription so I may have missed it, but has Chaim Bloom or a DeWitt or anyone else at any point given so much as a strong hint, re a gameplan/timeline/payroll forecast going forward?
Refresher: From 1996 to 2022, the Cards’ revenues were typically around 10th in the sport, and player payroll fluctuated between 8th and 14th. For that 27-year period they had the 4th-most wins in MLB, trailing only the Dodgers, Braves, and Damn Yankees. The team won a lot of games and the owners made a lot of money. Good deal for everyone.
Pitching splits for JC in 2025, his only professional season:
Righty versus righty bats: .166/.224/.256 (241 plate appearances)
Righty versus lefty bats: .252/.372/.473 (156 PA’s)Internet obscenity laws prohibit the posting of his numbers pitching left-handed. But look at the righty/righty line! That folks is a paltry .480 OPS allowed, and I invite any industrious researcher to locate a right-handed starting pitching prospect in any organization who held righty batters to a lower OPS in 2025.
So what we have here is a guy who could be truly excellent IF he can meaningfully improve against lefty batters. (Let’s say, knock 100-120 points of OPS off that number.) It’s a big if, sure. But he’s already so darn dominant against righties, that even if his splits continue in exactly the same way as 2025 going forward, I think he’s still a very plausible #4 starter or wipeout reliever if deployed properly.
I’d rather have Sloan, certainly, but that was never going to happen. But all in all, I agree with those who put the total return at roughly a grade B. To be blunt, Ledbetter is nothing. And Peete is a long, long longshot — but intriguing, anyway. But JC in my opinion has a higher upside than anyone anywhere has given him credit for, and the two draft picks are quite valuable, especially to a franchise that has excelled at draft & development for the past 30 years.
I did NOT want to trade Donovan. I did NOT want any version whatsoever of a “rebuild,” or whatever it’s being called this week. I don’t trust Bloom, ownership, Marmol, or his staff to lead this team going forward.
But it was a fair deal, for two inexpensive years of Brendan Donovan.
The Dodger philosophy it should be noted has obviously shifted some, just in the past few years. Per Cot’s Contract’s, LA was just 4th in MLB in 2023 when it came to the Competitive Balance Tax numbers for their 40-man roster. The number then was $268 million.
For 2025 they were highest, at a whopping $417 million. I believe that was roughly $70 million above anyone else. (And recall, they only had the majors’ 5th-best record in 2025.)
Yeah, if you rank three prospects in your top 30, including one in the top 10, you cannot then rank the farm system #11. The math won’t work.
If we look at KLaw’s top 100 list of individual prospects — and actually tally up the estimated career WAR numbers for each prospect slot — it’s clear that any one of four franchises could reasonably be considered number one farm system: Detroit, LA, Milwaukee, and Seattle. Then there’s a modest dropoff to the Pirates, then another to the Redbirds, who are pretty decisively ahead of the remainder of teams.
I’m sure that when KLaw ranked individual players, he was incredibly meticulous. But I’m almost equally sure that when he ranked farm systems, he went by feel rather than math.
To show what I mean, let’s just make a quick side-by-side comparison between his #6 organization, Washington, and his #11 Cardinals.
He ranks Washington’s best prospect 53rd, and the Redbird’s best is Wetherholt at #7.
Washington’s second-best is ranked 76th, and St. Louis’ number two is Doyle at 26th.
Finally, the Nationals’ 3rd-best is rated #94. And per KLaw, Rainiel Rodriguez is 29th.
(Conveniently for the purposes of this exercise, each organization has just three in KLaw’s top 100.)If we add them all up, assuming each of those prospects have been evaluated perfectly, that’d be roughly 12 career WAR, 8 WAR, and 6 WAR for the Washington trio. And approximately 55 career WAR, 25 WAR, and 20 WAR for the Cardinal threesome.
So, based solely on KLaw’s own top 100 rankings, that’s 100 WAR to 26 WAR in favor of St. Louis. And of course there is absolutely no way that non-top 100 depth could ever come remotely close to making up such a profound gap as 74 WAR.
KLaw can say that the Cards have the 11th-best system, but his own individual rankings say they clearly have the 6th-most talent, when taking just top 100 type prospects.
“Dobbins could end up being a good get. I don’t expect greatness but I’m hopeful for consistency.”
Yeah, I prefer Dobbins to Fitts. And Fajardo to Clarke, who just injured himself opening Christmas presents. In fact, the longer I look at Yhoiker, the more intriguing he becomes. Best teen twirler for the Birds in a decade. (Flaherty at 19 was developmentally about where Fajardo was this year at 18. Both excelled in Low-A, but Jack had more durability, Fajardo more raw velocity.)
I disliked the Sonny Gray trade, but Bloom gets a robust B+ for the Contreras deal.
2022 Arizona goes 74-88
2023 Arizona wins the N.L. pennant
2024 Toronto finishes last in the A.L. East
2025 Toronto wins the A.L. pennantThese are extreme examples to be sure, but I think mediocre MLB teams are almost always closer to excellence than they appear; fans are easily benumbed by repeated losing and begin to believe the talent isn’t there. Anyway, after three straight years without October baseball, my patience has already run out.
Even with a poor manager, a poor pitching coach, and a poor hitting coach who cost the team 5-6 wins in 2025 all by himself, I feel the club can be a true talent 90-win team in 2027. Or with a legitimate, average manager/staff, it could happen immediately — because the vast majority of the hitters & pitchers are on the good side of the aging curve.
The Cards were 12th in revenues in 2024 at $398 million and are 12th in franchise valuation at $2.55 billion.
This situation is an emergency for the team, like a leak in the cement pond would be an emergency for the Clampetts.
Donovan is not a “super-sub.” He is an above average MLB regular whose defensive versatility also adds value beyond his simple WAR numbers, which are plenty good in and of themselves.
“Would anyone trade Brendan Donovan and Riley O’Brien to Seattle for two Top 100 prospects in Michael Arroyo (No. 63) and Jurrangelo Cijntje (No. 90), plus the Mariners’ Round B Comp Balance Pick?”
I absolutely would not make that trade. Because Donovan & O’Brien are in no way redundancies, and they cost almost no money. They are closer to necessities, if the Cardinals want to have a wildcard shot this year or next. And it is not clear at all, based on the StL front office behavior, what their intentions are in that regard.
I mean, I’ve heard it said again and again that they aren’t trying to win in 2026 — but then they spend twice as much on injury-riddled longshot Dustin May as they would have to pay Brendan Donovan in 2026. May is an overpaid, one-year, win-now acquisition. Hardly the mark of a “rebuild.”
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Just an aside: assuming the prospects have been ranked flawlessly, the 63rd-ranked minor leaguer will eventually put up a career WAR total of roughly 9 or 10, and the 90th prospect perhaps 6 career WAR. That’s simply not good enough, for a guy who’s halfway to a 20 WAR career and makes almost no money, plus a very good relief pitcher who makes nothing at all.
If I were dangling that Redbird pair as trade bait, I would insist on a top 25-35 type of prospect in return, kinda like when they traded for Tyler O’Neill.
“From a Seattle perspective, Brendan Donovan has a certain Adam Frazier vibe … a lefthand-hitting second baseman who can play the outfield.”
“In my view Donovan is far and away the better baseball player than Adam Frazier in every area of the game, but yeah, they both stand in from the left side.”
The two players are similar superficially, but the numbers back you up, Andujar. Per 162 games (according to Baseball-Reference) Donovan has been worth 3.7 WAR for his career and Frazier just 2.1. Frazier was better than that in his 20’s, but basically what it boils down to is Brendan’s typical season is roughly equivalent to Frazier’s very best couple of campaigns.
Thanks for correcting my Chaim Bloom timeline, 25. (His Wikipedia page was somewhat misleading.) I will amend his Tampa grade from F+ to a solid D, same as his Red Sox grade.
“His tenure with the Rays started at a bit of a poor point (20th ranked farm system in 2014 per BA) and a below .500 record, and ended with them having a top 5 system and built the division winner in 2019 and the pennant winner in 2020.”
Thanks for the response, 25. I appreciate the thoroughness.
Just to clarify, the Tampa Bay Rays went 77-85 in Bloom’s first year as VP. Which was awful, given that he inherited an excellent base of MLB talent: In the previous four seasons they won 96, 91, 90, and 92 games. (They made the playoffs in three of those four seasons.) In a dramatic reversal of fortune, Bloom’s first four Tampa teams all finished with losing records — Joe Maddon by the way was manager for Chaim Bloom’s first losing season, then bailed to take the cub job.
Bloom’s fifth and sixth teams won 90+ games, and he left the club in good enough shape to play nearly .600 baseball for the next four seasons, under someone else’s stewardship. He gets some partial credit for that, sure.
But here’s the thing: if he truly knew what he was doing in Tampa, he wouldn’t have dragged what was then a perennial 90+ win team down below .500 for four straight years. And if he leads the Cards to a string of losing seasons from 2026 through 2029, that will make him an abject failure regardless of budgets or ownership interference or anything else. And if he does in St. Louis what he did in Boston — three finishes in the cellar in four years, including his final season in Beantown, he’ll go down as the worst Redbird GM in a century. No matter how much he spruces up the farm system (which has been one of three or four most productive in the majors over the past 30 years, even without good old Chaim Bloom).
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“With the Red Sox, he was hired with the imperative to cut payroll and build the farm (which was ranked 30th in 2019). He had to do some unpopular things (I think the Betts trade was basically forced on him) but did turn the farm around.”
Agreed, absolutely, the Betts trade was under duress from ownership. But a substantial percentage of baseball trades are under duress of one type or another; and for generational talent Mookie Betts, Bloom’s return (from his good buddy Andrew Friedman by the way) was fairly pathetic. An average regular, a below-average semi-regular, and a top 100 prospect in Jeter Downs who completely busted.
Look, maybe Bloom has a good trade or two on his resume. I’m not a student of his career. (The Sonny Gray trade doesn’t count. That’s a salary dump that garnered a sub-mediocre redundancy in Rich Fitts, and a talented but infinitely breakable Brandon Clarke. That’s somewhere between a C- and C+. Factor in the 20 million bucks the Birds threw in, and the grade drops to D or D-.)
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Lastly, I want to apologize, Brian, for the tone of my response to your remark about how to best judge a GM. I was way too snotty. Didn’t mean to be, but there you have it.
“I seem to recall Bloom working somewhere else before Boston where he was really successful at for nearly a decade.”
Bloom was VP or Senior VP for six years in the Tampa Bay organization. As in Boston, the team got worse when he took over and better after he left. In Tampa they made the playoffs once in six years under his stewardship. In Boston, once in four years. That is an awful track record, in an era where 40% of teams make the playoffs.
And again, he inherited strong teams in both cities. He hasn’t executed any re-builds. He has only lowered payrolls and/or made teams worse. He is a failure.
We could argue how much of the blame he deserves for his failures in Boston and Tampa. But I do not believe there is any reasonable argument about whether he failed in those places or not.
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“Seems there could be a better method to judge a guy than by the team’s place in the standings.”
At the risk of stating the grotesquely obvious, in sports the objective is to win. If Bloom were the CEO or CFO, then his job would be to maximize profits. But as a GM (or its equivalent) his job is to win games — to put the manager in the best possible position to win games.
Of course, any GM can’t be judged in a vacuum. Some inherit stronger teams than others, some have much more resources than others. Nevertheless, the job is to win, and Bloom has done a poor job of that over ten years with two other organizations.
But I want VERY badly for him to win in St. Louis, so I would LOVE for anyone to give me hope. Please, I implore you to give me hope, give me a reason to expect something positive to come from the Bloom Era. Not faith, not hollow optimism. A real reason.
“Amazing what you can get for $12 million these days.”
“CIF, that could also be the biggest bargain of the offseason in 10 months.”
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Yeah, he could be a bargain. Or a bust. Or nearly anything in between. But let’s think about the most reasonable range of outcomes. Since the past is usually the most reliable predictor of the future, here are the dollar values per year that he’s been worth, according to Fangraphs:
2025 $6.4 million
2024 Zero
2023 $10.1 million
2022 $2.2 million
2021 $4.1 million
2020 $4.0 million
2019 $7.7 millionPretty terrible. I mean, I knew it was going to be *bad* — but not *this* bad. Then again, Chaim Bloom led the Red Sox to three last-place finishes in his four years in charge there. So why should we expect anything smart from him? Because he’s buddies with Andrew Friedman?
Clarke 20
Pushard 50Clarke has already had Tommy John surgery, two separate serious shoulder problems, and served time on the disabled list for blisters. Plus he couldn’t get High-A batters out at age 22, where he walked 25 men in 28 innings. I don’t care if he throws 100, 150, or 200 miles an hour. He’s a long, long, longshot.
Jeff Kent age 24-29: 106 OPS+ (Best year was 111 at age 26.)
Jeff Kent age 30-37: 134 OPS+
Jeff Kent turned 30 in 1998, which was the year his teammate Barry Bonds began his illegal PED regimen. But maybe that’s just a coincidence.
Honorable Mention:
Noah Mendlinger
Juan Garcia
Alan Reyes
Yeferson Portolatin
Chase HeathAmong the 746 Dominican Summer League batters with at least 50 plate appearances, Portolatin posted the highest walk rate at nearly 30%. So maybe he’s too passive; but maybe he has an unusually discerning eye at the dish. (Probably some of each.) The switch-hitting keystoner has an okay defensive rep, and he swiped 23 bases in 27 tries, in just 40 games played. His excellent OPS+ of 145 was second only to Sebastian Dos Santos among DSL Redbirds.
Backstop Chase Heath only got 58 trips to the plate after being drafted in the 20th round out of Central Mizzou — but he hit very, very well in those 58 PA’s, and very, very well in college, and very, very well in two tries against summer league competition. Fun fact: last two years of college, he homered 25 times with just 27 whiffs. Also, homered in 3 of his last 7 games for Palm Beach, all at Roger Dean Stadium. Real sleeper.
“I wish they would have Elissalt dial the FB back a couple MPH and work on control. Placement within the zone. Working in, out, up, down. Work in secondaries, change speed. Find a way to get batters out besides trying to throw it past them.”
Amen. But unfortunately the new super-modern Cards seem to be obsessed with velocity & movement. Not preoccupied with it, obsessed with it. To the detriment of pitcher development.
“That is a nice reminder, mudville. One could argue that the Cardinals would have won the ’81 World Series if the season had stayed one season instead of being broken into two seasons. We will never know.”
And one could argue that the Birds woulda won the ’85 Series if not for Don Denkinger. And won the ’87 Series if not for the air current manipulations in the Metrodome, where the Twins of course won all four home games in the World Series. Link: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story?id=1585964
Not that I’m bitter.
My earlier quote:
“Recall that halfway through the 2025 season, Derrick Goold told us that based upon his information from Mo, Bloom, and the front office, the club planned to invest little or nothing in free agents. (And I don’t think anyone here expects the club to add payroll via trade.)”And there was this response:
“Yes, I recall that, however, in the past few weeks, Bloom indicated the Cardinals would be spending at 2025 levels. If that is the case, the Cardinals have $38 million for free agency, and if they trade Nootbaar, Donovan and Romero, that would free up another $15 million.”
If Bloom said that, I believe he’s a big fat liar, plain & simple. But the question is, does anybody have a link to a direct quote from Bloom — or anyone in the organization, or any respected journalist — to indicate that the Cards are planning to spend (on the 26-man roster) at 2025 levels in 2026? Thanks in advance!
