'We won’t concede anything': Chaim Bloom sets the tone for a new era of Cardinals baseball

ST. LOUIS — Without being the one to bring up the word ‘rebuild’, incoming president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom laid the foundation for the next era of St. Louis Cardinals baseball under his leadership—with all eyes fixed on the long-term goals of the club.

“Our top priority will be to build our talent base for the long-term,” Bloom said. “That may mean hard decisions and short-term sacrifices. But to get where we want to go, we can’t take shortcuts—and we won’t.”

Bloom addressed the media and fielded questions from reporters in a press conference on Tuesday at Busch Stadium. With the John Mozeliak era effectively reaching its conclusion the previous day, Bloom’s press session was forward-facing—addressing the burning questions on the near and long-term future of the club.

The timeline for the Cardinals returning to annual contention didn’t necessarily crystalize during Bloom’s introductory press conference, but the new POBO did lay out a strategy that reiterated the target of building back to success—and then sustaining it—as the undercurrent for front office decisions moving forward.

“We will always want to win,” Bloom said. “We will hunt moves and decisions that allow us to do that right now, too. As long as they also serve our ultimate goal. But when we have to choose between short-term gratification and our bigger goal of contending consistently, we will choose the long-term.

“We will make moves with that ultimate goal in mind, because simply put, that’s where this organization needs to be.”

It has been reported that the incoming regime is more open to the concept of rebuilding compared to the previous one, but Bloom deftly toed the line on the topic Tuesday. The extent to which the Cardinals must take steps backward to begin moving forward wasn’t definitively outlined just yet.

What did become clear was Bloom’s belief that a long-range strategy does not permit a decline in the present-day expectations of those involved in the organization.

“Our strategy is long-term, but we won’t lower the standard that we hold here every day,” Bloom said. “We won’t concede anything and we will always compete. How we work, how we scout, how we train, how we develop and how we play, those are things we control and that we get to decide every day—and we will get after them with intent.”

For his part in the proceedings, team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. was asked more pointedly for his response to the message sent by Cardinals fans by way of their presence—or, lack of it—at Busch Stadium throughout the season. 

It was a trend that seemed unavoidable given the rhetoric surrounding a transition year that permeated the end-of-season press conference 12 months ago. But after the past year played out as many might have anticipated it would, DeWitt Jr. leaned on the club’s past successes under his guidance while acknowledging that the recent history has been understandably disappointing to the fan base.

“None of us were happy with the results we’ve had,” DeWitt Jr. said. “Our goal is always to get into the playoffs, and we’ve done it for many, many years. So, our goals have been reached a great majority of the time.

“We’re not there now and we haven’t been for a couple years. So I understand their frustration. They love the Cardinals. They love the Cardinals winning. But as I said, we have a history of winning and we’re going to make every effort to get back to it.”

Though the notion of rebuilding seemed to have been an underlying theme of the proceedings, the word itself wasn’t uttered until a reporter asked a question containing it. DeWitt Jr. answered the question by repeating the buzzword—and working to contextualize where the Cardinals are on the topic of it.

“I think we are where we are,” DeWitt Jr. said. “In terms of rebuilding, we’re obviously looking to build a better team. We’re not going to throw everything out and start from scratch. We’ve got some good, young players coming. We’ve got a bunch of good, young players on the club now. So, we’ll build around all of it.”

More questions will be answered in the days and weeks to come as the statuses of several key players are eventually revealed. But while staying somewhat vague on specifics, Tuesday's introduction to the Chaim Bloom era represented a solid first step in what is likely to be one of the more active winters of change to St. Louis baseball in recent memory.