In less than a month, Major League Baseball is likely to implement a lockout, which would effectively shut down the sport and freeze all transactions. The St. Louis Cardinals don't have a lot of time to tackle some of their offseason needs before the lockout happens.

Granted, what they have been doing over the past few years is investing heavily in player development and trying to build an internal talent base from the ground up. So far, they have managed to do that, and it has allowed them to build a brighter future.

However, Major League Baseball's recent proposal would not be good for St. Louis.

Why MLB's proposal would hurt Cardinals

For context, MLB proposed postponing the implementation of a salary cap until 2028. But the problem for the Cardinals with this proposal is not so much the cap, but rather the floor.

The Cardinals are investing heavily in player development right now. They aren't spending big in free agency, but they are still spending money. The salary cap and floor is about player payroll. Granted, owners can invest in both player payroll and player development, but being forced to add more to the player payroll could limit what they can spend on player development.

If anything, the Milwaukee Brewers just proved that a team can win the World Series without spending big on players and investing in other areas. That is what the Cardinals are trying to do, and that is something they have been able to do in the past. Their talent bases were largely built from within in 2006 and 2011, when they won their most recent World Series titles.

The league is framing a cap and floor system as a way to level the playing field for smaller market teams, but a floor might actually hurt smaller market teams. The Cardinals do tend to punch above their weight, but they don't have the same resources as the Los Angeles Dodgers. If they have to spend more on players, that could impact what they are able to do with their player development system, and it could get the Cardinals back to where they were before Chaim Bloom took over.

The farm system was depleted, and the Cardinals were having to go out and sign players in free agency, while still not being able to compete with big-market teams for top talent. The Brewers built their team from within and by investing in player development, and if the Cardinals are limited in what they could spend there, that could pose a problem.