ST. LOUIS — Since the offseason began, the St. Louis Cardinals have consistently advertised their plans to reset ahead of the 2025 season.
These plans do not just pertain to next year’s roster. Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. and team president Bill DeWitt III are unveiling new approaches throughout the organization. The overhaul of the Cardinals’ player development system has been well-documented. The club is also reassessing revenue, declining ticket sales and improving the game-day experience at Busch Stadium.
This has led to a drop in payroll, a decision hardly popular with an already embittered fan base. Yet it’s one Cardinals’ ownership felt necessary as it attempts to re-establish the club as a premier organization in drafting and developing.
“We do what we think is best for the team, current and future,” DeWitt Jr. said during a news conference Monday morning, the final day of the annual Cardinals’ Winter Warm-Up weekend. “Obviously fans have their own opinion. We’ve got wonderful fans, and they’re knowledgeable. I think a great majority of them understand what we’re doing and approve of it. Others don’t. They think maybe we should go spend money and see if we can’t get it back that way. But it’s hard to do. You have big markets that are going to do what they do and we’re not in a position to compete at that level of payroll.
“There’s a time to (increase payroll) and a time to build. We’re trying to balance that so that we have the opportunity to have competitive teams every year.”
Bill DeWitt Jr. and Bill DeWitt III spoke to getting the Cardinals back to being a “draft and develop club” & various revenue concerns.
The big takeaway: It’s not just the roster that’s resetting. Projected revenue, player development, game-day experience are all a part of this.
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) January 20, 2025
St. Louis remains one of six teams that has not spent a dollar on major-league free-agent signings. The Cardinals’ projected 2025 payroll is $146.6 million, per Cot’s Contracts. That would rank 16th in Major League Baseball and would represent nearly a $30 million drop-off from last year’s Opening Day figure.
While the Los Angeles Dodgers’ aggressive offseason pushes their projected figure to $309.1 million, the biggest spenders in the NL Central are the Chicago Cubs at $178.6 million (13th in the majors).
The Cardinals’ projected payroll will obviously change if Nolan Arenado is traded; the Cardinals have spent more than three months attempting to trade him to no avail. Originally, if the Cardinals could not offload the remaining $74 million of Arenado’s salary, the club would likely have had to trade off other heavy salaries. That is no longer the case, DeWitt Jr. said.
“No, I don’t think so,” DeWitt Jr. said when asked if keeping Arenado would mean trimming back different areas of the roster.
Arenado or not, ownership is sticking to its reset plans. The Cardinals have struggled for several years to balance spending on their major-league roster while adequately supplementing their player development system. Now, St. Louis is trying to go back to its roots and will shift its priority back to drafting and developing homegrown talent.
“You have to be realistic of where you are in the cycle,” DeWitt Jr. said. “We’ve made every effort to have the best teams that we can have, but it’s at a sacrifice. We haven’t had draft choices because we’ve lost them when we’ve signed players. We’ve generally picked low in the draft. The best way to build a championship club, in my view, is to have good young players coming through the system.
“I’ve always been a draft-and-develop guy,” he added. “I think that’s the best way to build a baseball team. Back when we bought the club, that’s the path we took. I think we’ve reached a point in time where it’s appropriate to focus on that.”
The Cardinals, once championed for their advancements in player development, failed to keep up with the swift modernization of it over the last decade, something DeWitt Jr. admitted on Monday.
“There’s a quote from Branch Rickey: ‘Get the players and the rest will take care of itself,’” DeWitt Jr. said. “In today’s world, you’d say, ‘Get the ballplayers and develop them, and the rest will take care of itself.’
“Over the last number of years, the investment in developing has really expanded dramatically. To be honest, we were a little behind in that regard.”
Additionally, most of their free-agent signings and trades have not panned out as expected — or at least have not resulted in enough playoff wins. The Cardinals have made the postseason three times in the last five seasons, but have not won a playoff game since 2020 and have missed the playoffs in back-to-back years.
Combine the above with a decline in ticket sales, uncertainty over television revenue and a looming transfer of power in the front office from president of baseball operations John Mozeliak to advisor Chaim Bloom, and the decision was clear for ownership. They believe this reset presents the best chance to return long-term sustainability to St. Louis baseball.
“The way to build a sustained, competitive window is to have good, young, improving, cost-controlled players that you can supplement where the system falls off,” DeWitt III said. “If you look at averages throughout the league, competitive windows for middle to upper-middle market teams can last quite a long time.”
The Cardinals will have a better idea of where things stand from a revenue standpoint after the 2025 season. While they were able to restructure their television deal with FanDuel Sports Midwest (formerly Bally Sports Midwest), they took a pay reduction of nearly 25 percent — or roughly $18 million. However, Cardinals’ games will be available as a direct-to-consumer option for the first time in 2025, which is something that could boost revenue. Just how much is key.
The Cardinals have not finalized the pricing of their direct-to-consumer streaming package, but DeWitt III said he expects the cost to be around $20 a month, similar to the St. Louis Blues’ deal.
“The big kind of unknown that we’re really interested in seeing is what sort of subscription numbers we will get from the direct-to-consumer product,” DeWitt III said. “Unfortunately over the last number of years, a lot of fans — through no fault of their own — have not had access to our games. Now everybody has access. What does that look like for us? That’s a big unknown that we’re really anxious to see.”
It is unclear how soon payroll will rise again. That timeline will be decided by gate and television revenue, of course, but it will also be dictated by team performance. Despite their lack of offseason spending, the Cardinals believe their current young players can compete within the division. They also believe that fielding a competitive team will entice fans back to the ballpark. In theory, that would help uptick payroll as well.
“It’s a revenue game,” DeWitt Jr. said. “If you have more revenue, you have an opportunity to spend more money. I think right now, I think we’re in a good position because we have a core of young players. It’s not like we’re starting from scratch.”
“We really have to clear the path for them so we know what we have, and when we can properly identify who the guys are that are going to be the foundation for our future success, then we can start adding back,” DeWitt III echoed. “Until then I think our fans know exactly what we’re trying to do, and hopefully they’re on board with it, and they’ll hang in there with us.”
(Photo of Bill DeWitt Jr. from 2022: Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)
