Chaim Bloom (Source: MLB)
(Source: MLB)
As the new president of baseball operations for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chaim Bloom is running the show.
Bloom has a plan. He believes the best way to describe how he sees the organization going forward is developing talent from within.
“We’re fully committed to where we need to go,” Bloom said.
He replaces John Mozeliak, who stepped down after the end of last season
Bloom is not inheriting a job that will be easy.
The franchise has seen better days. It has been 13 years since the St. Louis won the National League pennant.
The Cardinals have missed the playoffs for three consecutive seasons after they were eliminated in the NL Wild Card Series in 2022.
St. Louis has 11 World Series championships in the 134-year-old history of the ballclub. Only the New York Yankees have more World Series titles.
The most recent World Series title came 15 years ago in Tony La Russa’s last season managing the club.
In the last decade, St. Louis has won just one playoff series. In the last five years, the Cardinals have won just one playoff game. The Cardinals finished this past season with a 78-84 record.
That is unacceptable, Bloom said.
“Our goal is to field a team every year and compete for this division and a World Series championship,” Bloom said. “We can be good but never good enough.”
Bloom, a 2004 Yale University graduate, spent 15 years (2005-19) in the Tampa Bay Rays baseball operations department, including the final three as senior vice president of baseball operations.
Bloom held the title of chief baseball officer for the Boston Red Sox from Oct. 28, 2019, through Sept. 14, 2023. The Red Sox advanced to the American League Championship Series in 2021 under Bloom’s watch.
(Lou Countryman photo)
Lou Countryman photo
After spending the last two years as a senior advisor to Mozeliak, Bloom now takes charge in St. Louis.
He will follow the “draft and develop” system the Cardinals have used under Bill DeWitt Jr., the team’s chairman.
“The Cardinals win first and foremost with players we develop,” Bloom said. “That operating model that has sustained this organization for decades is still sound.
“But for it to develop the results that we need, we have to be elite at acquiring and developing baseball talent in every aspect.”
In the past three years the Cardinals saw the farm system fail to produce any impact players, and fans showed their displeasure.
“I understand their frustration,” DeWitt Jr. said. “They love their Cardinals. They love their Cardinals winning. We’re going to make every effort to get back to that.”
Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III said he has noticed what the fans did.
“Message received,” DeWitt III said. “We know a winning team is most important in terms of attendance.”
That’s the plan.
There are no quick fixes to what ails the franchise. Bloom is not putting any polish on what he thinks is the way to go.
It starts with getting younger and letting those players develop.
That doesn’t mean there is not any hope for this season.
“I’ve tried to be very clear about this,” Bloom said. “We are not prioritizing short-term success over what needs to happen in the long term, and even with that, I think the mindset is such that you’re never going to stop trying to win, and there is some way by which you’ll always assess where you are by the standings. That’s not going to change. It is also that we can’t let that distract us from where we need to go.”
Win totals alone is not the measure of progress that is being sought by the organization. Don’t gauge success by the standings in the Central Division, either.
“Whether it’s stuff that happened here at the major league level, stuff that happened throughout the system and even stuff behind the curtain – that is going to be necessary for us to succeed over time and make really good acquisitions and really smart baseball decisions,” Bloom said. “That is further ahead than it was. That’s a big part of how I’m going to assess that. It’s important to feel like we have kind of charted some kind of course from where we are to where we need to be and that we are moving down that path.”
Youth must be served.
“We know we are going to have to do this really from within,” Bloom said. “I’ve said it a lot of times, and I’m going to say it a lot more times. That’s how the Cardinals have always won. That’s how we win. For us to put resources toward that – if we do it right those will pay off for us tenfold in terms of really good, young talent on the field and being able to sustain that. And keep replenishing that.”