How an all-time Cubs free agent bust was the 'fissure' that broke the Cardinals' Way

Don't call it a rebuild. That's the message coming out of Busch Stadium these days as the transition from longtime front office executive John Mozeliak to Chaim Bloom gets underway. Sound familiar, Cubs fans? It should, because it's the same shtick Jed Hoyer fed to the Chicago faithful after taking over from Jed Hoyer in 2020.

How did it come to this for the St. Louis Cardinals? A number of factors have come into play, putting the storied franchise behind the eight-ball when it comes to player development and prompting this changing of the guard.

But in a recent appearance on the North Side Territory podcast with Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma, St. Louis Post-Dispatch beat writer Derrick Goold traced it back nearly a decade, when Jason Heyward chose the Chicago Cubs despite St. Louis being ready to offer him a massive free agent payday never before given out in team history.

“... I think maybe the inflection point that would involve the Cubs has mostly to do with Heyward choosing the Cubs over the Cardinals. The Cardinals' model for so long had been trade for a guy, bring him in, sell him on staying, extend him.”

That decision kicked off a chain of events in St. Louis that, when stacked on top of one another, led to where the team is today - with an aging major-league roster, a farm system MLB Pipeline ranked #19 in August and a player development system in shambles.

It's funny to think about the Cubs' Heyward signing as a disaster for anyone other than the Cubs themselves - but that's what I took away from Goold's appearance on the podcast. Of course, if you're a Cubs fan, more than a few of us can argue that $184 million was worth every penny given the team won a World Series during that contract, but it's undisputed Chicago expected more production from him when they signed him to the richest deal in franchise history.

The episode is 10/10 worth your time, because the similarities between what's happening now in St. Louis and what has taken place in Chicago over the last five years are striking. So, if you're in the camp that the Heyward signing was nothing but a massive dumpster fire, maybe you can at least take solace in this new spin on an old pain point.