One of the Cardinals’ biggest offseason questions has a simple answer in theory and a much messier one in practice: yes, they need outside help. The harder part is figuring out what kind of help actually makes sense for a club that has spent so much time building from within.
That’s the lens Brandon Kiley of BK and Ferrario on 101ESPN used when he broke down how World Series teams are usually put together.
“You cannot do this exclusively with homegrown talent, and right now, the Cardinals are kind of trying to do this with exclusively homegrown talent,” Kiley said.
He pointed to the Brewers as a team that leans heavily on talent brought in from outside the organization.
“The Brewers in particular, they’ve got six homegrown position players. That’s pretty good.
That’s half of your roster from a position player perspective that you developed. That originally entered the minor league system and major league system through the Milwaukee Brewers.
“They also have six position players that were acquired via trade, and one other that was a free agent. In their rotation, if you look at their five guys, it’s two homegrown and three that they traded for.
In the bullpen, it’s two homegrown and six that they traded for. So the vast majority of the roster for the Brewers, especially if you look at the pitching side of things, is actually not homegrown.”
Kiley said the Rays operate the same way, only even more aggressively.
“The Rays even more so. They only have three homegrown position players currently on their active roster.
Eight of their position players were traded for, two came via free agency, and one of them they got off waivers. On the pitching side of things, it's the same story.
One starter was homegrown; three came via trade. One bullpen arm was homegrown, three were trades, three were free agents, and two came via waivers.
In other words, when you look at the roster for the Rays, they only have five homegrown players who’re on their World Series roster.”
That argument lands because the Cardinals are plainly stocked with their own guys, and at times last season the lineup looked like a parade of Baby Birds born in the Lou.
But there’s a catch: “homegrown” can be a slippery label, even if Kiley is using it consistently. The bigger point is less about where a player started and more about how teams use the market to build a winner.
The Brewers and Rays remain the template for the Cardinals, though the comparison gets complicated fast. Those clubs do shop outside the organization, but they also know how to turn other teams’ castoffs into real contributors.
That’s how the Rays can take a former Cardinal like Ryan Vilade and turn him into a serviceable MLB hitter who helps them reach the postseason. It’s how the Brewers can take someone like Jake Bauers, an average bat until he landed in Milwaukee, and get more out of him. In 2026, he was among MLB’s most productive hitters.
For the Cardinals, though, that kind of move comes with two major roadblocks.
The first is roster space. Chaim Bloom addressed that point recently on the Seeing Red podcast with Will Leitch and Bernie Miklasz, saying he didn’t want to shy away from “internal competition.”
That sounds good in a vacuum. But once internal competition starts becoming a traffic jam, the organization has a problem.
St. Louis has a wave of talent coming at nearly every position.
So where exactly do external additions fit? Not until 2027?
And even then, is there enough time to develop consistency with project players? It took the Brewers two years to turn Bauers into the NLCS MVP.
The Cardinals, in that sense, feel like a club on the edge of something new. Bringing in outside pieces takes commitment, and it’s hard to commit when you’re still figuring out who you are. The Cardinals don’t even know what the Cardinals are yet.
The second issue is more practical: St. Louis may not be the right kind of landing spot for those bounce-back bets.
Dustin May arrived in the Lou in 2026 and rediscovered a little of himself during a successful first half before being traded at the deadline. But the numbers tell the real story: a 4.55 ERA and 0.3 bWAR to close the year.
That’s not a breakout. That’s getting by.
Even if May looked better beneath the surface than the stat line suggested - enough for the Brewers to pay a pretty penny for him at the deadline - the Cardinals still didn’t turn him into someone they could count on, postseason or not.
That’s where St. Louis trails the Brewers, Rays, Guardians and the rest of those clubs that seem to find value where others miss it.
They go thrifting and come home with Balenciaga. The Cardinals come back with a Gildan shirt with a picture of Michael Scott on the front.
Fun, sure, but not exactly a staple.
So the path forward is narrow. The Cardinals can either develop a superstar or go out and get one. Their current prospects may have superstar tools, but until they prove it on the big stage, that’s just possibility.
And if the front office goes shopping for a star, it won’t be cheap. It would take a strong supporting cast already in place, plus the willingness to outbid Steve Cohen and the wealthy teams in Los Angeles.
Kiley’s larger point still stands: the Cardinals will need outside additions if they want to get back to contender status. The real question is whether they can find the right kind of addition for a team in this kind of transition.
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