Benjamin Hochman | Post-Dispatch
Sports columnist
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One week ago, the Cardinals’ executive Rob Cerfolio met me in the dugout at Busch Stadium — a symbolic location, because his whole job is to prepare prospects for a promotion here.
I wanted to hear from “Cerf,” the Cards’ assistant general manager for player development and performance, about, well, how the Cards are improving player development and performance.
“From a macro standpoint, it was really about increasing the size of our group,” explained Cerfolio, who said the club hired 20 new minor-league coaches and staff last offseason — and will hire a total “slightly under that” during this offseason. “How do we get the best people in house? There was some recruiting that we had to do there, but also — we needed to find the best teachers. …
“And then it was investing in (technology), whether it’s Hawk-Eye limb tracking data, whether it’s Catapult to measure workload, whether it’s Pulse Device to better have objective information on a guy coming back from rehab. There’s a bunch of technology that has helped give our great new people great tools. And it’s not just new people. It’s people that have been here for a long time.”
We all know the story. In recent seasons, the Cardinals fell behind in player development in the minors. There were fewer and fewer enticing prospects. In publications, the farm system’s rankings plummeted. Heck, there were times the Cards needed a starting pitcher from Class AAA to fill in — and there just wasn’t a guy who was ready.
So the franchise brought in Chaim Bloom to, first, revamp the minors. He, Cerfolio, farm director Larry Day and the staff did that this season. Now, heading into 2026, Bloom oversees the entire Cardinals baseball operations. It’s going to be a while before the big-league club is strong enough to win 90-plus games annually, like the good ol’ days. But 2025 growth in the minors gives hope that player development has improved and become more sophisticated.
Like Cerfolio said, we can look at that from a macro standpoint — Class AAA Memphis finished 80-68, while Class-AA Springfield (Missouri) finished 88-50 and won the Texas League title.
But to understand the minors, let’s get micro.
Let’s zoom in on one single prospect.
Meet Brycen Mautz (if you haven’t already).
He’s a lefty starting pitcher out of the University of San Diego. Second-rounder in 2022.
In 2024, he played in Peoria — but his stuff didn’t really play in Peoria. Pitching for the Cards’ Class High A affiliate, he had a 5.18 ERA. And while a pitcher’s record doesn’t singularly determine his worth, his 3-13 record was visually startling.
“We could have sat here for 10 hours last offseason,” Bloom told a small group of St. Louis scribes after last week’s big news conference, “and I don’t think any one of you would ask me about Brycen Mautz.”
Heading into 2025, Matt Pierpont was one of the new hires by Bloom and his lieutenants. Pierpont was named the director of pitching.
“(Mautz) was a guy that I remember Matt Pierpont coming up to me in spring training and pointing at him and saying, ‘That guy’s good,’” Bloom said. “And I don’t know if Brycen knew how good he was yet.
“I mean, now he’s starting to figure that out. He’s got two different fastballs that he can use. He’s got two breaking balls that he understands better. Ultimately, where the ceiling is, we’ll find out. But it’s just really fun to see the work that our pitching group did — Aaron Peterson, the pitching coach (at Springfield) — helping those guys, day after day, side (bullpen session) after side, outing after outing, to just understand who they were. And you end up with these guys pitching us to a championship.”
Mautz finished 8-3 in 25 starts with a 2.98 ERA. His strikeout rate increased. He led the league with a 1.11 WHIP (that’s walks and hits per innings pitched). And he was the starting and winning pitcher in the Texas League title game. He’ll likely pitch in Memphis in 2026.
“I think you saw (overall pitching improvement) on that Double-A club that won the Texas League, and even throughout the system,” Bloom said. “There’s been a lot made, not without reason, of sort of limitations of stuff — you know, velocity, swing-and-miss — with the pitchers in this organization. I think our pitching group was able to really help these guys, through both programming on the physical side and even just helping pitchers understand who they are and what makes them good. And you could see some of these guys grow throughout the year.”
This isn’t to say it’s been a quick fix. Or even fixed. The 2025 club in Peoria finished 51-79, while the Class Low A affiliate in Palm Beach finished 63-67. And there still aren’t big-league ready starters for 2026 (though we’ll see how Quinn Mathews does in spring). And regarding hitters, there are seven in the Cards’ top-10 prospects ranked by MLB.com — but four of the seven are ages 18-20 and far from that dugout at Busch.
But there’s optimism in the process.
And having two high draft picks helps.
The Cards seldom draft in the single-digit picks, but sub-standard performance from St. Louis led to the No. 7 pick in 2024 (infielder JJ Wetherholt, now the No. 6 prospect in all of baseball, per MLB.com) and No. 5 in 2025 (starter Liam Doyle, a flamethrower out of the University of Tennessee). And with a 78-84 record in 2025, the Cards will have a high pick in the 2026 MLB Draft (the lottery hasn’t happened yet, but the team is eligible for a lottery pick).
“I think the biggest thing that I’ve noticed with these (minor-league coaches and staff members), is a desire — they want to help you get better,” Wetherholt told me last week. “I mean, I know it sounds simple, but there’s a lot of guys out there, and especially in these businesses, that their goal is to get you better so they look good. And that might inherently be what they have to do … but these guys genuinely care about these relationships — and us as a player. They just want us to be better, and they’re going to do anything they can to help us. … We’ve got staff members that are hungry.”
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Benjamin Hochman | Post-Dispatch
Sports columnist
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