A year of transition arrives.
Whenever I try to treat this like a business, they tell me to relax, it is just a game. Whenever I try to just play the game, they tell me I need to remember it’s still a business.
It’s me. I’m back with Part 5 of the off-season analysis. These are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4. Wondering how many parts? Maybe if I’m going for a Star Wars-esque trilogy of trilogies? Nope. Part 6 is the summary.
An off-season analysis wouldn’t be complete without looking at the management and business side. There are scant analytics to evaluate, and any changes could take years to materialize as changes to the product on the field. I really can only find two metrics. Wins-and-losses (not so good recently) and draft-and-develop success. I will be updating draft-and-development analytics with data through the end of 2024, later this winter. The draft part of talent acquisition appears to be fine. The other parts? Not so much.
On the business side, revenue drives spending. Pure and simple.
The Cardinals are a franchise that prides itself on taking the long view. Significantly cramping their style is the uncertainty of the near- and long-term revenue picture. As the RSN model fails in slow-motion, the Cardinals are left without a firm grasp on future broadcast revenue. Their broadcast contract with Bally had 8 years remaining at ~75m-$80m- million a year. By the end of the 2024 season, neither of those numbers appeared likely to occur. The revenue certainty, when it appeared to exist, allowed them to plan out long-term contracts with confidence. Now, they don’t even know how much revenue they will be receiving in 2025, much less in the year 2032. If reports are accurate, the Cardinals may end up with ~80% of this year’s $76m payment to stay on Bally, meaning their broadcast revenue could take a $15-$20 million hit from prior years forecast.
BREAKING NEWS!! Cards renegotiate broadcast deal with FanDuel. At least now they know when this slow-motion disaster will end. In ways, they were disadvantaged because they are not creditors owed money by Bally/Diamond Sports, they are a joint venture partner. This whole fiasco has to finish, and the bankruptcy discharged before they know for sure when (or if) they can get out of the arrangement they have and move on to a new model. Now, they are beginning to set up the new model with FanDuel, with the direct-to-consumer (DTC) option. I gather they don’t know how long this will take, nor how much capital they will have to invest or how long it will take for a new DTC streaming model to provide stable revenue flow. I gather they are optimistic their new model will be lucrative, but the interim uncertainty is killing their preferred planning processes. From a baseball standpoint, the impact is that big $$ and/or long-term contracts are probably a no-go until this all works out. Considering those types of contracts haven’t been a strength of this team, that is probably not a bad thing.
Since I wrote this, the FanDuel contract has been publicized, although still a bit short of details. They haven’t yet settled on pricing for DTC, although we can guess at around $20/month. I am gathering that Cardinal’s management knows enough now that they are comfortable that they have cut payroll enough to be OK but would need to cut more to allow breathing room and flexibility to fix holes in the roster. We continue to watch how this plays out. At least the end seems more in sight.
In addition to the uncertainty in the broadcast revenue stream, this season’s attendance drop calls into question what their ticket and concession related revenue might be for next year. Early season ticket sales tend to be the barometer on that, but it’s a bit early on that.
To-date, I don’t think they know what their 2025 payroll can be, because they don’t have a good handle on what their 2025 revenue is expected to be and the error bars on any estimate, while narrowing, are still considerable. Up until recently, they haven’t seemed optimistic, although they appear to be gaining certainty, which is an improvement.
Leadership is in transition.
Much has already been made of recently announced changes. Chaim Bloom becomes POBO after the 2025 season ends. Mo plays out one more year, operating both as GM and POBO for one last hurrah. In the next year, it sounds as if Bloom will focus his energy on re-energizing the Cardinals player development program. It sounds like there has been enough neglect in that area over the last few years so he could be quite busy just with that. Realistically, this arena is the Cardinals’ bread-and-butter, so re-focusing on that is probably where they need to be. I’m a bit mystified about how they lost their way here, but things happen, and a course correction is being made.
Cerfolio comes in from Cleveland to be Assistant GM for Player Development and Performance. It’s good to see the Cardinal’s keeping up with title inflation trends. He notably works for Bloom and will be knee-deep in the overhaul of Cardinals draft-and-develop program.
On the field, so far, McGee moves to the front office. Brant Brown comes in as hitting coach. I live in the Northwest and have some exposure to his limited time in Seattle. He has some different ideas and different approaches. That can be either good or bad. In this Cardinals organization, he might come to be viewed as a bit of a “rusty nail”. That might not be a bad thing, as things have gotten a little stale. We will see.
One trend appears with these changes. When BDW Jr. said they were going younger, he meant it on business/management side, too. The Miami connection is hard to overlook. I wonder if Kim Ng ends up here? The Cardinals could use a new GM soon, so I hear.
Culture changes take a long time, particularly with the Cardinals transitional model. At the same time as Bloom eases in and Mo eases out, BDW III continues to assert a more active role and BDW Jr. eases away. In 5 years, it’ll be easy to look back and see how the culture and decision-making processes changed, but it’s hard to foresee right now. Other than knowing there will be change.
The reality is, front-office churn is constant, in good times or bad. Just different reasons for the churn. If the churn starts more bottom-up (adding coaches, new roles, etc.) that will tell us there is decent consensus at the top-level about what needs changed. If the changes start at the top, that will tell us that ownership and the new POBO feel that leadership change must occur by changing out the leaders, which will then prolong the process as Bloom brings in his people, then those people bring in their people and on down the line.
How long?
The Cardinals are an amazingly stable organization. You’d have to go back to 1995 just to get a second reference point on the question for how long it can take to re-stabilize after management turnover at the top.
In 1995, BDW Jr and others bought the team from the Brewery. They brought in a whole new management team (Jocketty, TLR, Duncan, and others). A few roster patches brought a one year burst of fleeting success in 1996, but that was really the last hurrah of the old way. It took 4 years (1997-2000) to work everything out before success started appearing on the horizon. Drafting JD Drew, Albert Pujols and Yadi Molina didn’t hurt either.
In 2007, Walt Jocketty was let go after the front office had become dysfunctional and the team results started to show it. Interestingly, it took 4 years (again) before an era of success emerged again (2007-2011), with one brief interlude of fleeting success (2009).
This is too small a sample size to generate too many predictions about how long it will take to re-orient the ship this time, but it does suggest what a “quick reset” might look like. Probably the bigger question is … where are they at in this cycle? At the beginning? Several years in? Hard to say. I think it reasonable to expect 2025 and 2026 to be a bit on the bumpy side, from a front-office standpoint.
How does the palace intrigue affect the roster?
For the most part, not much. The roster is the roster, whether or not Mo or Chaim is the POBO. Even if Mo left today under a dark cloud, the read of the roster strengths and weaknesses would be the same and how they improve the roster will be just as revenue constrained, and full of the same puzzles related to younger prospects who haven’t fully developed yet.
Almost certainly, Mo will get some latitude to make the tweaks around the edges that impact the roster short-term. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand a good RH bat in the outfield and a decent starting pitcher would probably make this team competitive. I’d bet he gets some freedom to try to build a competitive 2025 roster within the financial constraints given. Whether he can get there or not remains to be seen.
Equally certainly, Chaim will have great sway in roster decisions made that impact beyond 2025. Given the vast majority of rostered players have more than 1 year of control and almost any roster changes would affect someone in this category, this would seem like he will get a say in most of the decisions, and we will start to see how decisions change.
About the manager…
The manager is under contract through 2026. Smart people like to point out that contract guarantees money, but it really doesn’t guarantee the years. That said, the Cardinals do like continuity.
I don’t really know how to evaluate a manager, since most of what they contribute can’t be measured. Some will say a manager can be measured with wins and losses, but I’d suggest that talent plays a much greater role in W-L than the manager does. That is just me.
When we explore his in-game tactical decisions, he doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. He plays the matchups well. I will say I haven’t seen him get out-managed in the way some of his predecessors did.
His line-ups were sometimes head scratching, although when you look at the composite roster, one can begin to realize the talent level forced him into difficult choices, often picking between bad choice #1 and worse choice #2. That comes from players with too many defensive limitations and hitters with very poor platoon-splits. On top of that, his top four power guys (Goldy, Arenado, Walker, Gorman) all seriously stepped back in their key contribution and there were no effective replacements. I’d argue that the greatest manager in history could not overcome that talent gap.
Looking forward, a grim reality in MLB is that most teams that rebuild/reset wait until the talent shift is well underway before they change out the guy in the manager’s office. Teams that don’t see talent level changing don’t change managers. Don’t believe me? Last year’s manager changes included: Angels, Astros, Brewers, Cubs, Giants, Guardians and Mets. The Angel’s are perennial manager changers. They need new ownership. Everyone else on that list had playoff aspirations with the talent on hand. No talent-deprived team changed managers – not even the hapless (hopeless) Rockies or White Sox. The White Sox will change manager’s this off-season, without a talent infusion, supporting the argument they need new ownership, too.
From that anecdote, and prior experience, I’d assume that the manager is probably secure for another year, at least. I would likewise assume that his position will become more tenuous as regime change occurs over the next year and the reset takes hold. Fortunately (for him), he will have time to build a relationship with the incoming POBO before the reins are handed over. That opportunity is rare for an incumbent manager experiencing an upper management change-out. Combined with the Cardinals’ penchant for continuity, it may alter the calculus a bit from the standard MLB model of new POBO brings in his own guy. Besides, Kevin Cash is under contract through 2028.
A key 2024-2025 off-season activity for the front-office
The Cardinals have a small group of players on long-term contracts with no-trade-clauses (NTC). Gray. Arenado. Contreras. Mikolas, too, but he is in the last year, which probably changes the equation with him. They need to have conversation(s) with each about their willingness to stay through a reset or their desire to move on. Key to that is identifying which teams would they have willingness to waive the NTC, if they do not wish to stay, and finding out if those teams want said player.
It sounds like they’ve had that conversation come to fruition with Contreras, who will move to 1B/DH full-time. We will see how this plays. Everything I read leads me to believe that Gray is OK with staying and is not inclined to ask out. Arenado seems to be more of a question. He may be the most redundant of this group, and thus the most expendable.
These conversations may do a lot for identifying how quick the reset might be and how competitive the team might be in 2025.
Next week … the summary. How might all these variables come together and define how the Cardinals proceed?
