The St. Louis Cardinals took quiet, but impactful hit on Friday night.

After eight years in the organization, former Assistant General Manager of Amateur and Pro Acquisition Randy Flores is leaving the team to take over as the General Manager of the Houston Astros. Chandler Rome of The Athletic reported the news on X.

The Cardinals Lost An Important Piece Of The Organization

While this may not sound like much at first glance, this is a tough loss for the organization. Flores joined the organization in 2015 initially as a director of scouting, replacing Chris Correa. He became an assistant general manager after the 2018 season. While he may not currently be a household name among all baseball fans across the league, he has played a major role in building this young core that the Cardinals currently have up in the majors.

Think about the Major League Baseball Draft in recent years. The Cardinals have had a lot of success drafting. The vast majority of the roster right now is homegrown and there's more coming from the top of the minors. Just since 2020, the Cardinals have drafted guys like JJ Wetherholt, Masyn Winn, Jordan Walker, Alec Burleson, Liam Doyle, Joshua Baez, Tanner Franklin, Quinn Mathews, Nathan Church, Michael McGreevy, Gordon Graceffo, Cooper Hjerpe and many, many more. In 2020 alone, the Cardinals drafted Walker, Burleson, Winn and Tink Hence, among others.

Now, of course, not every decision made by the team in the MLB Draft in recent memory has been a hit, like Hence. But you can see Flores' fingerprints all throughout the organization right now. A chunk of the core was selected in large part because of the work that he and his team did in the scouting department.

On the bright side, the Cardinals have an executive on their hands who has had success everywhere he has been in building out the farm system. That is, of course, president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom. He had success with the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox's farm systems before coming to St. Louis. Under Bloom, the farm system already has improved in general, thanks in large part to the trades made by the club while cutting ties with veterans, including Brendan Donovan, Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Lars Nootbaar, Dustin May and JoJo Romero.

The Cardinals are in a good place, but it's tough to lose someone who helped put the building blocks in place. The Astros got a good one.