Just over a year after the Boston Red Sox fired Chaim Bloom, the Jewish baseball executive has secured his next gig at the helm of an MLB team.
Bloom, the 41-year-old front office veteran, will take over as the St. Louis Cardinals’ president of baseball operations beginning with the 2026 season.
Bloom joined the Cardinals front office as an advisor this season, and the team announced Monday that he would replace longtime president John Mozeliak when his contract expires after the 2025 season. Bloom signed a five-year contract with the Cardinals that will begin next year.
Bloom spent four seasons as the chief baseball officer in Boston, and while he successfully lowered payroll and bolstered the Red Sox farm system, his tenure was marred by multiple last-place finishes and only one playoff appearance. The team went 267–262 under his management, a disappointing record for a team in a competitive division that has won four World Series in the past two decades. (He was succeeded by fellow Jewish Yale University alum Craig Breslow.)
Bloom is a Jewish day school alum who observes Shabbat, and his experience in Boston was also marred by multiple instances of antisemitism. In early 2023, Bloom told the Boston Globe he had received death threats and was targeted with an antisemitic slur. The year before, the team released a minor league player after he launched a series of social media attacks against Bloom, including calling him “an embarrassment to any torah-following jew.”
Despite an underwhelming on-field output in Boston, Bloom has established himself as one of the sport’s foremost farm system mavens. According to MLB.com’s rankings, the Red Sox boast three of the top 25 prospects in baseball, all of whom were drafted by Bloom. Prior to his Red Sox tenure, Bloom was known for helping to build the Tampa Bay Rays into a perennial contender, despite that team’s relatively low payroll.
Bloom will reportedly focus on overhauling the Cardinals’ player development department, including hiring a new director of that division. St. Louis finished the 2024 season tied for a distant second place in the National League Central, but the team was just four games over .500 and has not made the playoffs since 2021. The team last won the World Series in 2011.
If Bloom can turn the Cardinals’ fortunes around, his first career championship would also mark the end of a years-long bet he made with a colleague over an unopened jar of gefilte fish. He still has the jar, which has occupied space in his offices in both Tampa and Boston.
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