The St. Louis Cardinals made a ton of progress in year one of their rebuild under Chaim Bloom. While contention is still likely a few years away, there are certainly reasons for fans to be excited. The organization has now assembled a group of young arms that are major league ready or at least very close. Two that stand out are Tekoah Roby and Cooper Hjerpe.

Bloom discussed both of those arms in particular, but also his approach to building a pitching staff for the future.

"With both of those guys, I don’t think we should write off the chance of being legitimate – and you don’t need to qualify this at all – they’re just good major-league starting pitchers,” Bloom said to Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “They both bring something unique to the table. They’re very different. It’s a cool position to be in. To have guys like that who we can talk about in our picture for 2027. That is where we’re getting to and, frankly, that just needs to be the standard.”

The Cardinals' pitching approach

In the last few years of John Mozeliak's tenure, the Cardinals signed Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn to bolster their rotation. These were all aging veterans, and outside of Gray, there really wasn't much upside to look forward to.

But under Bloom, the Cardinals are trying a different approach. Instead of spending a lot on aging veterans, they are limiting what they spend on pitchers in free agency and are instead trying to build a strong staff from within.

Because starting pitching is so expensive in free agency, many teams, including the Cardinals need to find a different approach, and this has allowed them to assemble a ton of depth, which sets them up well for the future, but also leaves room for a value addition to the rotation that won't break the bank.

The Cardinals were low on pitching depth before Bloom took over, but his approach has allowed them to modernize the accumulation of more pitching. And ultimately, with the rising cost of starting pitchers in free agency, this is an approach that other teams might follow as well as they look to improve for the future.

Roby and Hjerpe are two arms that could make sense for the rotation next year, so it will be interesting to see what the options are come spring training.