2024-25 Offseason & Year in Review

[Cardinals]

A little bit late for this post, but it was another successful year for St. Louis last year. We took a 3-1 lead in the World Series but couldn't hit enough to bring it all the way home. Injuries to a bunch of key players in the final month of the season exposed some depth issues (Sonny Gray, Jojo Romero, Kenley Jansen, Craig Kimbrel), as well as Trout hitting the IL again forcing me to deal him didn't help matters. Still, we'll take a trip to the World Series and in 7 games every single time.

That won't be the case for the foreseeable future. For the first time in 10+ years, we're tearing it down. This is the start of a 2-3 year rebuild (likely three). I'll be a little surprised if I'm not a top 2 pick in next year's draft, but crazier things have happened.

Here's a look at the first rebuilding draft class for the Cards:

Hagen Smith
Theo Gillen
Seaver King
Cris Rodriguez
Jonathan Santucci
Rainiel Rodriguez
Mike Sirota
Drew Beam
Gage Jump
Royelny Strop

A fair amount of pick consolidation happened here. I am happy to have ended up with Smith, Gillen and King in the first. I wanted to end up with Gillen and Sloan with 18 and 20, but prioritized taking the bat at 18. When Tullar took Sloan, I went to King at 20.

The rest of the draft is a mix of upside (Rodriguez x2, Strop) and higher floors (Beam, Jump, Santucci). Hopefully a handful of these guys will be on my roster this time next year, but you never know.

Trades earlier this offseason netted me Quinn Mathews, Eduardo Tait, Luis Morales, Edwin Arroyo, Jake Bloss and others.

We'll need a lot to go right over the next 24 months to build this back into a championship caliber team, but it's a fun start at least.