Monday, August 04

SAN DIEGO -- Looking out over the party-like scene at Petco Park on Friday night as the joyous, sellout crowd of 44,933 danced near their seats and mouthed the words to blink-182’s “All the Small Things” in unison, it was difficult not to wonder when such feel-good moments might return to St. Louis and Busch Stadium.

Those Padres fans had plenty of reasons to be in a festive mood, of course, with Manny Machado making stellar backhanded plays, Fernando Tatis Jr. gracefully running down liners and newly acquired reliever Mason Miller pumping in heat at 102.5 mph. The Padres are going for their first World Series title, and it showed with their aggressiveness at the MLB Trade Deadline.

Cardinals fans assuredly remember those heady days with a franchise whose history is as rich as just about any in sports. Cards fans of a certain age can still close their eyes and see Ozzie Smith back-flipping before games and being even more acrobatic during them, managers Whitey Herzog and Tony La Russa thinking two steps ahead of foes, Adam Wainwright twirling those air-bending, knee-buckling curveballs, an almost superhuman Albert Pujols willing the franchise to greater heights and David Freese belly-flopping into third base after arguably the most clutch triple in World Series history. The backdrop to those moments was a palpable anticipation for the next game: beers, jackets and hats flying above a Busch Stadium crowd that throbbed with raw emotion, and honking horns filling the night air in downtown St. Louis.

These days, however, the footage of those events is getting grainer and the memories are getting foggier. The Cards haven’t won a playoff series since 2019, they likely will wrap up their third season in a row without an October of playoff games and they were sellers at the MLB Trade Deadline for the second time in three years. The Cardinals sold off the expiring contracts of Ryan Helsley, Phil Maton and Steven Matz -- and rightly so -- but that likely doesn’t make the sight of a homegrown talent such as Helsley wearing a Mets jersey any easier.

Rebuilding -- a concept as foreign in St. Louis over the past three decades as untoasted ravioli -- is starting to take shape in Cardinals Nation. President of baseball operations John Mozeliak once told me in 2022, after the Cards had clinched a division title, that rebuilding wasn’t allowed in St Louis -- and that’s the way he wanted it. However, that’s exactly where the Cardinals find themselves -- smack dab in a rebuilding process that will be trying for a fanbase known more for its passion than patience.

The final two months of this season probably aren’t going to be much fun for Cardinals fans or easy for the young ball club -- as evidenced by the Cards scoring one run in a three-game stretch from Tuesday to Friday. The 2026 season is likely to have a very similar feeling, with buzzwords such as “opportunity” and “development” poised to dominate the conversations surrounding the team.

To be frank, rebuilding is zero fun in its infancy stages. Rebuilding can be hard to watch, frustrating to experience and downright painful to endure. It requires full buy-in from organizations and guarantees them nothing. But what makes it fathomable is incremental progress and the promise that brighter days are ahead. Manager Oliver Marmol said as much, noting that it helped him swallow the bitterness of Helsley leaving to know that the personnel return should help the Cardinals be better in the future.  

“We knew we were going to have to make some tough decisions to set this thing up for the future,” Marmol lamented. “We’re building toward that, and we’re making tough decisions that will allow us [to win again] quicker.”

Rebuilding the Cardinals will fall onto the very capable shoulders of Chaim Bloom, who will take over for Mozeliak once the 2025 season ends. As an advisor the past two seasons, Bloom has started remaking the team’s Minor League structure, and tangible growth is already evident.

It is a first step in a journey that figures to be arduous. But with a strong Minor League system feeding the MLB club -- always the lifeblood of a Cardinals organization that prided itself on its draft-and-develop approach for decades -- the club should be able to make a certain recovery in time. Supplement a strong system with a commitment to spending on free agents -- as the DeWitt ownership has proven to do in years when true contention is possible -- and the Cards can be a model organization again.

Then, Busch Stadium will again resemble the party-like scene at Petco Park from this weekend, with fans filling the building, dancing at their seats and savoring the winning product on the field.   

One of the biggest things to come out of the MLB Trade Deadline as it relates to the Cardinals was what the franchise didn’t do. Even though they were bombarded by offers for All-Star infielder Brendan Donovan and there was plenty of interest in their cluster of left-handed hitters -- Alec Burleson, Nolan Gorman, Lars Nootbaar -- the Cards didn’t trade any of them.

While an argument certainly can be made that the club needed to clear out some of its duplication and logjam in the outfield, at first base and at DH, the Cardinals basically declared the core of their squad going forward with their refusal to deal any of those players. Mix slugger Willson Contreras, shortstop Masyn Winn, DH Iván Herrera, outfielders Victor Scott II and Jordan Walker with that group of lefty hitters, and the Cards believe they have the makings of a solid offensive foundation from which they can build.

Now, expectations of that group are going up, Marmol stressed.

“I feel really good about where guys are mentally and what is ahead of us,” Marmol said. “You have to go through certain things as a group and come out on the other side of it and be better for it. They have the right mentality of what we’re trying to do over time, and they’re going to be a big part of it.

“This lineup is what’s next, and some of those guys in the bullpen, they’re what’s next. There’s way more enthusiasm now [than in a season like 2023] because we’re investing in a group that is what our future is going to look like. [Friday’s] conversation was strictly about this group taking on more ownership of the team.” 

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