By Rob Rains
As they took their turns speaking to the media on the second day of the Cardinals’ Winter Warm-Up on Sunday, some of the team’s youngest players all the way to the owners used the same word as they discussed the upcoming season – excited.
Is that your message to the fans, team chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. was asked?
“That’s my message,” DeWitt said.
“I’m excited,” he said. “Young players have always been exciting to me. Some of you who have known me for a while know I always sort of look ahead and follow all the minor league scores every day. I think we’re going to have a fun year and I look forward to it.”
Coming off a couple of rough seasons that resulted in a drop of a million fans coming through the gates at Busch Stadium, the Cardinals went into the off-season committed to focusing on the future and have followed through on that pledge, shedding veteran players from the roster.
There are only three players on the current 40-man roster more than 30 years old, all of whom are pitchers.
That transition has prompted many to use the term “rebuild” for the organization, but DeWitt said he prefers the word “build.”
“I don’t know about rebuild,” DeWitt said. “Chaim (Bloom) is a draft and development president of baseball ops, with his history. We’re on the same page with what he plans to do – build, don’t give up draft choices. It takes some time. Hopefully not long.
“I think Chaim’s done a really good job in building a core group of players that have nice futures ahead of them, including this coming year. You never know in baseball how things are going to work out but I’m excited. I think the path we are on is the right one.
“The number one goal at the moment is to get some of these young players actively playing and go from there. Our system is good; we have good young players coming.”
As he talked to fans over the weekend, Bill DeWitt III said the message he heard was an appreciation for the team making a decision about the future and sticking with it.
“Our fans are smart,” DeWitt III said. “I heard some things this weekend that many of the fans are glad that our strategy has clarified and is very focused and is very intentional. I think you could argue that the last couple of years were a challenge in terms of our strategic approach because of where we were in the competitive cycle and where we were from a roster construction standpoint – call it ‘in between’ or whatever you want to call it.
“There’s none of that at the moment. We’re very focused on what we’re doing. Our strategy is evident in the moves we’ve made already this off season and perhaps there will be some more. There’s a sense of, I don’t know, ‘refreshingness’ about that. I’m not sure that’s a word, but relief that we’ve embraced the clarity of it and doing everything we can in support of that strategy.”
From the owners to the players, there was an acknowledgement that the strategy to rely on younger players could come with growing pains.
All said that it also creates opportunities.
“If I’m a fan I’m excited,” said shortstop Masyn Winn. “We are building for the future.”
That future almost certainly will include top prospect JJ Wetherholt.
“We have a lot of young guys who are hungry to make names for themselves,” Wetherholt said. “It’s cool to have people talk about you, but you have to perform.”
Young starter Michael McGreevy understands that as well. He joked that now, with 91 days of service time in the majors, he is suddenly a veteran.
“It came quick,” McGreevy said. “He (Bloom) has given us a job to do. We want to create something we can build on.”
Victor Scott II last year created a word “youngry” to describe the Cardinals young players. With the team being even younger this season, has Scott thought about a new word to describe the 2026 squad?
“Maybe still youngry, younger youngry, I don’t know,” Scott said. “Definitely excited – a young core that we can all grow up with and develop as one. In the future that looks like a very good ballclub.
“It’s opportunity, that’s what I see it as. It’s a standard that has to be set among the young guys, what we will tolerate versus what we won’t. That comes to accountability as well, how we hold each other accountable in this group and what that looks like.”
DeWitt III said that as the young players develop, and start to become a winning team, he has no doubt fans will once again flock to Busch Stadium.
“Nobody’s having any pity parties,” DeWitt III said. “We’re working extremely hard. We love being in this business, we love the fan feedback. We try to understand it when it’s negative and seek to do things to make it swing positive. That relates to all of the things we are doing
“I’m pretty energized and excited on both the business side and the baseball side. Right now we’re working towards a point where we can see the team start to come out of this current level and get to another level.”
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To hear the DeWitts’ interview in it’s entirety, click the audio player, below.
