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St. Louis Cardinals fans. Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images

Will St. Louis Cardinals fans really buy into 2025 plan?

By Kevin Henry | Last updated 9/30/24

In the midst of a decade in which the St. Louis Cardinals have fallen short of lofty expectations, the franchise asked fans for more patience on Monday.

Coming off a second consecutive year of falling short of the playoffs, the team announced on Monday that John Mozeliak, embattled president of baseball operations who has been at the helm since 2007, will return for one final season in 2025. After that, he will be replaced by Chaim Bloom, who was best known as the chief baseball officer for the Boston Red Sox between 2020-23.

Now, the question becomes how far the so-called "best fans in baseball" will actually stick with the team during a bridge season between eras of front-office leadership.

Rejoining Mozeliak for the 2025 season will be manager Oliver Marmol, who has a 247-239 record in three years leading the Cardinals. Marmol took the Redbirds to the National League wild card in 2022, but was swept out of the postseason by the Philadelphia Phillies.

During the just-completed campaign, St. Louis was as far as nine games back of the NL Central lead in early May, souring fans on the team's postseason chances not even midway through the season. Attendance suffered as the Cardinals stayed well behind the division-leading Milwaukee Brewers, finishing with an average of 35,532 fans per game. That's down from the previous two years when the Cardinals averaged more than 40,000 per game.

Padres Broadcasters Don Orsillo and Mark Grant describe the current state of Busch Stadium and the St. Louis Cardinals:

“Shocking”
“NOT the Busch Stadium I’m used to”
“Usually it’s packed”
“Not used to this EVER”

☠️ pic.twitter.com/gRKNkJTBGP
— Cardinals Talk (@theredbird_way) August 26, 2024

So the Cardinals won't be making any changes in the front office or the dugout and Mozeliak has said that he expects payroll to go down next season, per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Put all of that together and many Cardinals fans already have a sour taste in their mouths for 2025 before the calendar has even turned to October 2024.

Yes, there is a plan in place for St. Louis for 2025. However, will it be a plan that can actually keep Cardinals fans engaged? Franchise leadership is already making clear some of the changes that could happen before next season with former NL Most Valuable Player Paul Goldschmidt expected to not return at first base and starting pitcher Sonny Gray potentially on the trade block.

Those changes aren't the ones that Cardinals fans were hoping to see before next season. With the same leadership in place in the offseason and heading into the 2025 campaign, this will likely be a winter of discontent for those supporting the Redbirds — a team that has not won a postseason series since 2019.

Mozeliak admitted on Monday that he could have been fired after another non-postseason campaign, but believed having one more year to get Bloom ready to "hit the ground running" in 2026 would be more beneficial for the long-term success of the franchise.

Knowing that, will Cardinals fans buy into the plan? With a fanbase that expects success every year already showing its displeasure, it could be a very tough sell under the Gateway Arch.

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