ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - The St. Louis Cardinals might not be good in 2025, but the season is mandatory for the Cardinals to get out of the mediocre middle, according to one prominent St. Louis sports commentator.
The Cardinals are now focusing on the 2025 season and beyond following another disappointing and frustrating season for the franchise. Following the season, the club announced that they would put more significant effort into investing in their player development and because of that, there's a pretty good shot that payroll is likely going down.
With payroll likely going down, it could lead to some players like Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras potentially on the trade block and getting moved. Because of that, the Cardinals could very well not be good next season.
Despite the Cardinals not likely being as good as Cardinals fans would come to expect every year, 2025 is still an important season for the club, according to Bernie Miklasz, who joined 'The Chris and Amy Show' Thursday.
"The Cardinals needed to retool things, they need to renovate things," said Miklasz. "I'm actually looking forward to 2025 because I think it is such a necessary step, a mandatory step to get the Cardinals out of the mediocre middle."
Miklasz says the direction that they are heading to now is certainly better than the direction that the Cardinals were in the last five or so years, where they were good enough fight for a spot in the postseason, but certainly nowhere good enough to make a run in the postseason.
"I think the Cardinals were overdue for what they're calling it a reset, a refresh or whatever they want to call it, I don't care, it's basically some form of rebuilding," said Miklasz. "They're overdue for it."
"They been stuck in the middle. Outside of 2023, they haven't been a horrendous team, but they haven't been a great team and they kind of like back and forth 'well they're pretty good on that, but they're mediocre.' I would prefer not to go on like that because if they to continue to go on with the same approach, the Cardinals were going to stay in the mediocre middle."
Despite seeing 2025 as an important year, Miklasz believes that the Cardinals shouldn't spend a ton of money at all this offseason due to the past mistakes made by the Cardinals over the last few years and with Chaim Bloom set to soon take over as president of baseball operations after next season.
"Let's just say if they went ahead and sign two or three people to multi-year contracts and those contracts don't work out. Then Bloom takes over a team that has more problems than it would've taken their menace in the Cardinals and viewed 2025 for what it really is-- a reset year, a transition year, the start of a minor or moderate rebuilding," said Miklasz. "The last thing you need to do is add to your troubles."
"You have to make sure you don't add to your list of things to be worried about."
