-1600x900.webp)
The topic of development has been central to everything going on underneath the hood of the St. Louis Cardinals organization in recent months.
From the day of that 2024 end-of-season press conference in which John Mozeliak and Bill DeWitt Jr. acknowledged publicly the shortcomings of the Cardinals in several places behind the scenes when it came to infrastructure and player development, we’ve seen the organization put meaningful efforts into the areas that matter.
From the jump, Chaim Bloom was announced as the president of baseball operations in waiting, due to take over for Mozeliak after the 2025 season. Bloom was then empowered by ownership to make key hires in the departments of player development and performance, ushering in a new era for the organization that shifted the approach to such matters relative to previous iterations.
As we near the halfway point of the calendar in 2025, there is already evidence of growth in the club’s approach that should pay dividends down the road. That’s particularly relevant in the area of pitching development, which stood out as a noteworthy deficit for the organization in recent years.
The Cardinals have struggled to develop mainstays for the big-league rotation from its crop of home-grown talent, compelling the front office to solve gaping holes in the St. Louis starting staff by turning to free agency to do the heavy lifting in filling out a starting five. Battling the open market for quality names comes with sticker shock to the payroll, rendering those frequent trips to the free-agent pitching aisle an inherently flawed method for building a sustainable rotation and roster.
Simply, the Cardinals had to start getting more from their internal options in the minors, developing those players into capable contributors at the big-league level. But that means equipping those players effectively and putting them in positions to make the leap in a way that arguably hadn't happened with enough frequency in recent seasons.
Bloom tapped Rob Cerfolio as the club’s new assistant general manager for player development & performance, and the 32-year-old has spearheaded a culture to which pitchers throughout the Cardinals organization are responding favorably.
Nowhere has that shift been made more evident than in Springfield, where the Double-A Cardinals have been led by a young starting rotation bursting with potential.
Ixan Henderson has pitched to a 2.03 ERA with 65 strikeouts across 53.1 innings. After entering the year just barely among the Cardinals top 25 prospects according to MLB Pipeline, the 23-year-old lefty has quickly made a name for himself as one of the rising prospects in the organization.
After pitching to an ERA above 5.00 during his stint in High-A Peoria last season, the Cardinals didn’t hesitate to push 23-year-old Brycen Mautz up to Double-A Springfield, where he’s trimmed his ERA to 3.74 and boasts a strikeout rate of 10.7 Ks/9.
Former Cardinals Minor League Pitcher of the Year Max Racjic is finding his level at Springfield, too, as he hasn’t permitted more than three runs in a start since late April.
Then there’s Tekoah Roby, who was just promoted to Triple-A Memphis after being named the Cardinals’ minor league pitcher of the month in May for his efforts in Springfield.
During a Zoom call as he was being announced for the monthly honor on Saturday, Roby was asked by KMOX’s Matt Pauley about the differences he’s noticed in how the Cardinals are approaching development under this year’s revamped regime.
His answer was telling—Roby didn’t point to some newfangled analytical tendencies as the point that was top of mind when addressing a question like this one. His answer was of a simpler variety that points to the premise of how the Cardinals are implementing a new-school approach using a tactic that stands the test of time, regardless of industry or field.
Good old-fashioned communication.
“The first thing that stood out to me so far—and obviously, there's an analytical side of things that is a little bit different—but the first thing that stood out to me so far is just the quality of conversations I have with these guys,” Roby said, alluding to the roles of Cerfolio, director of pitching Matt Pierpont, and pitching coordinator Austin Meine in establishing a meaningful approach to player development for these young hurlers.
“With Pierpont, with Cerf, and with Meine, the quality of conversation is very, very high. It's always kind of tailored towards getting better. Understanding what is going well, but also understanding, as you go up in levels, things will change. Swing-and-miss goes down from double-A to the big leagues, so that's why it's important to get a lot of that here, things like that.”
Roby, who boasted a 2.49 ERA with 57 strikeouts across 47.0 Double-A innings prior to his promotion to Memphis, articulated how the player development staff has boiled down their communication of the important benchmarks that contribute to development, while accomplishing that in a way that suits the message to each player individually.
“Looking into the numbers, we have the things that they value highly that they like to see as performance indicators,” Roby continued. “So just understanding those more and taking those on as your own things to work on. They’ve done a great job of portraying the message of, okay, these things are what we like to see our pitchers do, what we like to see performers do. And they give you a plan on how to do it. They help you work your way into it, not just a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.”
So as it sounds, the updated approach to development within the Cardinals organization isn’t necessarily reinventing the wheel. Sure, as Roby alluded, there are analytically-inclined elements of what’s happening here. But it’s also refreshing to hear that it’s really, as much as anything else, the notion of getting quality baseball people in the building—and having enough of those resources to go around, rather than previous iterations of the system in which staff members were simply spread too thin to accomplish these goals at a high level.
The Cardinals seem to have the right people working with these young players, people who possess both the baseball acumen and the personal communication skills to present their teachings in a way that is consumable and digestible to players on an individual level.
If the early returns are any indication, the revamp happening throughout the Cardinals system could end up being the clear key to a return to prominence for St. Louis Cardinals baseball.