Chaim Bloom took over as president of baseball operations of the St. Louis Cardinals following the end of the 2025 season, doing so after serving as an advisor to exiting PoBO John Mozeliak dating back
to September of 2024. Prior to those jobs with that particular NL Central power, Bloom served as Chief Baseball Officer of the Boston Red Sox from October of 2019 until his firing near the end of the 2023 season.
Bloom, I would wager, has a pretty good feel for both the farm system in place in the Red Sox organization as well as the way in which their ownership group works. So, it’s somewhat unsurprising to see him having struck two major trades with Boston, even if – in hindsight – it’s probably somewhat odd to see two huge salary moves between the same two clubs in one single offseason.
That’s precisely what’s happened, however. St. Louis, mired in (for them) a serious rebuild after finishing 71-91, 83-79, and 78-84 in full-season play dating back to 2023, entered this offseason not only with longtime head Mozeliak scheduling his own departure from the organization, but with a pretty public mandate to scale back their big-money expenditures and focus on a roster overhaul aimed far into the future. Nolan Arenado’s situation became the flashpoint for such direction over a year ago, and while the Cards haven’t (yet) managed to find a taker for the $37 million still owed to the future Hall of Famer, they have now officially manged to jettison both of Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras to Boston and save a pile of money in the process.
In something of an interesting twist, pitcher Hunter Dobbins – who made 11 starts in 13 appearances for the Red Sox at the big league level last season – is the lone player heading back to St. Louis who was in the Boston organziation when Bloom was running things there. The rest of the two respective hauls came on board more recently, in case that’s any indication of just how long-term the Cardinals were willing to project when it came time to making these two deals go through. So while these two respective deals for Gray and Contreras surely had Bloom’s connections with Boston written all over them, it wasn’t purely so he could pilfer the farm system he himself had created.
What he has done through looping his known quantities in Boston into the equation, though, is shrink St. Louis’ payroll significantly. Per FanGraphs, their estimated 2026 payroll now sits at just $106 million after wrapping their 2025 season at $144 million, and that’s before they probably find a taker for Arenado somewhere else…even though Boston is still in the 3B mix with Alex Bregman floating in free agency. Further deals sending away Lars Nootbar ($5.7 million in 2026) and/or Brendan Donovan ($5.4 million) could reduce those figures even further, moves that would continue to pull the Cards right into exactly what they’re aiming to be at the moment.
Namely, a rebuilding team – but a rebuilding team that’s losing games on the cheap, not on the expensive. There’s nothing worse, after all, than actively being bad in the loss column while also being on the hook for a lot of bloated, bad contracts. This series of moves by the new St. Louis front office, though, has steered them into the much more palatable waters where they’re bad now, but hoarding cash to use to emerge sooner from their rebuild than they otherwise would have, something that should be viewed as an unfortunate development for the rest of the division.
To Boston’s credit in this, each of Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras still bring a lot to the table, and the Sox are going to be better for it in 2026. Flexing their financial might here landed them two established players who previously had no-trade clauses, moves that suggest they not only used their dollars, but their reputation as a place where you can go to win baseball games as a huge selling point that other franchises simply couldn’t offer.
The Cincinnati Reds, in particular, should be watching St. Louis with anxious eyes. This is their window, after all, a time for them to press the gas for a small ‘peak’ as they continue to employ their boring and blasé path of ‘avoiding peaks and valleys’ to maintain some relevance from borderline mediocrity. They’ve got a roster in place that, with a few additions, could have the upper hand over most all of the division at the moment, especially that of a St. Louis franchise that has so long held that upper hand itself. And St. Louis, clearly, is making the kinds of moves now to make sure they don’t forfeit that upper hand for long, leaving the Reds faced with the significant decision of whether to go for it while they’ve got it, or simply bide their time once more until it’s once again much, much more difficult to succeed with their slow-boat approach.
