St. Louis Cardinals add to front office, hire Chaim Bloom - ESPN

The St. Louis Cardinals hired former Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom as an adviser Monday, bulking up their front office after the team's worst season in nearly 30 years.

Bloom, 40, was fired by Boston in September after the Red Sox were nearing their third last-place finish in four years. In the other season, 2021, Boston advanced to the American League Championship Series.

During his five seasons with the Red Sox, the team went 351-340 and turned around a moribund farm system Bloom inherited. But with fierce competition in the AL East, Red Sox ownership — which has pared payroll in recent years — pivoted from Bloom and hired Craig Breslow as the new chief baseball officer.

Bloom joins a Cardinals organization that entered 2023 with hopes of a second consecutive National League Central title only to crater, finishing 71-91. While president of baseball operations John Mozeliak and manager Oliver Marmol kept their jobs, owner Bill DeWitt Jr. sought an outside voice to help the organization right itself.

«I have known Chaim for a long time and feel that this is a great opportunity for the St. Louis Cardinals,» Mozeliak said in a news release announcing the hire. «It will be good to get an outside perspective of our organization from someone who is as well-respected as Chaim. Having a fresh set of eyes on all aspects of our baseball operations should be helpful.»

The Cardinals valued Bloom's experience with the Red Sox and before that the Tampa Bay Rays, whom he joined in 2005 as an intern. Bloom steadily moved up in the ranks, and when Andrew Friedman left to become president of baseball operations for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Bloom and Erik Neander were promoted to run the organization. They saw the Rays