As much as the standings and missteps of their player development system will shape the Cardinals' offseason, arguably the most significant factor in any of their decisions will be when the broadcast sports sinkhole reaches them, and how deep it goes.

The consternation will be televised.

This much is certain: The Cardinals games will be available to cable subscribers in 2025 and also subscribers to a forthcoming streaming service. What happens next, well ... stay tuned.

To explain how Major League Baseball (and other sports), Bally Sports Midwest/FanDuel Sports Network Midwest (and its parent company), and the Cardinals (and almost every other baseball club), got into this bind, the Best Podcast in Baseball brings Dan Caesar into the conversation. The Media Views columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 1988, Caesar could only think of one bigger story on the sports broadcast beat in his four decades than the one currently playing out in a Texas bankruptcy court. Diamond Sports Group, the parent company of many of the regional sports networks, filed for bankruptcy protection in spring 2023, and since then the entire industry as convulsed with confusion and concern.

Look no further than the Texas Rangers, who did not know where they would broadcast games for sure a year after winning the World Series and have had their ability to spend handcuffed by the uncertainty of their rights fees.

The Cardinals have advertised that they intend to trim payroll this winter, and a driving reason for this isn't just a shift to spending more on the farm system and its infrastructure. The Cardinals cannot be sure how much of their $78 million they're owed to broadcast their games in 2025 they'll be paid. The Post-Dispatch previously reported that Diamond Sports Group has approached the Cardinals about renegotiating their $1.1-billion rights deal, and Diamond Sports has threatened in court to drop all of its contracts for 2025 except for the Atlanta Braves.

How did this happen? What's next? What does it mean for the Cardinals? And where will fans watch games in 2025?

All of those questions are answered in this brand new Best Podcast in Baseball.

Short answer: It's going to get better for fans, eventually. It's going to take awhile and it's going to cost fans more, but access to games and the control fans will have over how they watch games will get better. But first, it could get worse.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold.

Continuing the conversation that began in the Best Podcast in Baseball episode 21, season 12, KMOX/1120 AM's Kevin Wheeler considers the question on how the Cardinals can accumulate younger talent, draft picks, or both.

The answer begins at first base.

The questions continue from there in this brand new Best Podcast in Baseball that ultimately reaches a discussion about the World Series and whether a clash between high-spending baseball royalty, the Dodgers of Los Angeles and the Yankees of New York, is great for marketing the game, good for the fans, great for the history buffs, potentially grand for TV ratings, and yet is it a positive for the industry?

The 2024 World Series is the culmination of several years with a consolidation of talents.

On the field will be two handfuls of future Hall of Famers, two 50-homer players, and the favorites to win this year's MVPs in each league. In fact, no World Series has featured this many past MVP winners.

And all of them have either been traded or, in the case of homegrown Yankee slugger Aaron Judge, reached free agency.

The billion-dollar constellation of superstars in this World Series are all players who have hit the jackpot of free agency or extensions, with the exception of Juan Soto, who is days away from doing so. If such players collect on the same teams, like the Dodgers or primed-to-spend Mets, what does that mean for how other teams contend, especially those in the middle markets? That is something else to watch in the wake of this World Series.

But the podcast resumes its discussion of the current Cardinals and how president of baseball operations is taking a franchise that is also part of baseball royalty and like a vintage muscle car sprucing it up before passing it along to a new owner, who is tasked with turning it into a lean, mean, more full-efficient machine.

Within the next two weeks, Paul Goldschmidt will become a free agent for the first time in his career, and the Cardinals must decide whether to present him with a qualifying offer to secure a draft pick if he signs elsewhere. Such a move would give Goldschmidt the choice to accept a one-year, $21-million contract for 2025 or see if he could better in the marketplace. As the Cardinals look to cut costs, their decision seems clear -- but in this brand new podcast, Wheeler and Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold discuss another motivation in play for the Cardinals and their "reset."

Are they better creating an inventory of players to trade in 2025 or picks, and what does that mean for bringing back pitchers at the end of their contracts like Steven Matz, Erick Fedde, and Kyle Gibson, who has a team option for 2025.

Could they be trade pieces?

If so, when would be the best time to maximize the return on them -- the offseason or the trade deadline.

BPIB discuss the benefits of setting an asking price and sticking to it versus the risk of injury and performance that comes with waiting for the urgent market of July.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold.

The official changes to some Cardinals' leadership roles, from the front office to the dugout, as they approach their "reset" winter continued on the eve of the World Series with the first new addition to the front office, a new coach, and a new role for an all-time great.

Kevin Wheeler, co-host of the drive-time show and baseball coverage at KMOX/1120 AM, joins the Best Podcast in Baseball to discuss with Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold the moves the Cardinals have made, the names involved -- and some of the motivations and goals driving them.

From there the conversation expands into an audit of the Cardinals strategy and financial position.

The team has advertised as cut in payroll as it bends young and reinvests in an eroded player development program, but there's more going on than just a shifting of dollars and sense. There is the potential for a huge cut in revenue that is driving some of their decisions, and is not their plan to increase spending on minor-league coaches and technology, nor the $100-million project to upgrade the Roger Dean Stadium complex in Jupter, Florida, with new player development facilities. Looming on the horizon is the possibility the Cardinals will not get some or all of the $78 million owed them from their broadcast partner for 2025 and the reality that the jackpot years ahead in their billion-dollar broadcast rights deal aren't going to come to fruition.

That shift in revenue prompts the questions that direct this podcast -- how much must the Cardinals cut, and how soon?

The answer may not be as simple as just shedding salaries.

There is a way for the Cardinals to chase their goal of accumulating young talent, clearing opportunity for in-house talent, and still cleave dollars off the payroll. And that is where this brand new podcast ends with Part 1 and will continue with Part 2.

Part 2 will drop Friday.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and baseball writer Derrick Goold.