J.P. Hill, writing at Viva El Birdos, has a decent breakdown of how he thinks the St. Louis Cardinals should handle the upcoming off-season.

Entering 2025, the Cardinals should not bother merely tweaking or retooling their roster as they have done in recent seasons. It’s not working. They also don’t need to start tanking or hold a firesale and gut their roster. That’s an unnecessarily extreme course of action.

The Cardinals should rebuild. They should commit to making some significant and painful changes to their roster both to clear salary and roster space and to better position the MLB team and the farm system for the future. Yes, the approach that I am suggesting will almost certainly impact their ability to contend in 2025. But doing this now will help prepare their roster for a return to contention in 2026 or, more likely, 2027.

I like a lot of what he has here.