Bernie Show: High IQ Cardinals?

12/05/24 • 35 min

The Cardinals announced three more hires Wednesday, as Chaim Bloom and Rob Cerfolio to continue to make moves to bring in smart baseball minds that will take the organization's collective Baseball IQ to a much higher level. In this video, I tell you all about the three new hires, and everything you should know about them, and why they appear to be a great fit for the Bloom-Cerfolio revival show. I have many details to offer, as well as some historical perspective, and I explain how a former Cardinals pitcher played a role in this.

This video isn't a quickie, but here's what I have to say about that: if you want the info, I am pleased to provide it. All of it. For now, let me leave you with this: as a Baseball Operation, the St. Louis Cardinals are a heck of a lot smarter today than they were a year ago. And that's even before Chaim Bloom officially takes over as head of the baseball department after the 2025 season.

Previous Episode

Bernie Show: Monty is da man.

When NHL general managers and owners fire their head coach -- which happens every 27 seconds, or so it seems -- there's usually a positive response from the players, who pretend to be motivated for a few weeks until reverting to who they really are.

For reasons that I explain in this video, I believe the situation is different for the St. Louis Blues and their new coach, Jim Montgomery. The team is 3-0-1 since Montgomery replaced the ineffective Drew Bannister, but so much has changed in a short time. The Blues are getting more scoring chances from the prime shooting areas of the ice. Before the coaching switch, the Blues' opponents had a significant advantage in controlling those areas. The Blues are now in the process of taking control of those territories, and that largely explains why they've scored 70 percent of the total goals during Monty's first four games. He does not care about shot quantity. He cares about shot quality. And that philosophy is paying off.

Montgomery brought an extensive history with 15 of the Blues' current players when he started the job, getting to know everything about them personally and professionally while assisting Craig Berube for two seasons in STL. This knowledge gave Montgomery a head start in taking a new challenge.

Four games is a small sample size and the Blues and Montgomery have a lot to prove. Their will be some tough times along the way, but this coach can handle it. For those who didn't understand it before, I think they can understand it now: Montgomery is the only coach that GM Doug Armstrong wanted after replacing Berube.

Montgomery wasn't available at that time; he was busy coaching Boston to the league's No. 1 regular-season record over his two-plus years as coach. But as soon as the Bruins fired Montgomery, Armstrong swooped in and got his coach. And the Blues appear to be a much better team because of it.

Next Episode

Bernie Show: Yadi as manager?

Yadier Molina's brother, Bengie, stirred the pot Wednesday by answering questions from the gang who do the morning show on 101 ESPN. Bengie, who does an excellent job of promoting his little brother, was ready to deliver a message:

1) Yadier Molina wants to manage the Cardinals.

2) But if the Cardinals don't hire him Yadi has "offers" to manage other MLB teams. Yadi is willing to wait for the Cardinals, but ...

3) Bengie mentioned a scenario that would have Yadi as the St. Louis manager, Albert Pujols as hitting coach, and Adam Wainwright as pitching coach.

4) Bengie also said Yadier prefers to wait (two years) until his son graduates from school.

There's a lot to digest there, so in today's video I discussed the pertinent aspects of this situation. And don't count out the possibility of manager Oli Marmol remaining in place for 2026. I can't handicap the odds of that because much depends on how the 2025 Cardinals perform in a soft rebuilding season.

But for the sake of conversation, let's start with this: if incoming president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom decides to replace Marmol after '25, will Bloom feel obligated to hire a Cardinals icon as the new leader? Or should Bloom hire the manager that he wants instead of going for a more popular choice - a beloved Cardinal -- to reenergize a disillusioned fan base and sell more tickets?

Good luck, Chaim!