Because I am a huge fan of Rick Hahn and front office strategy in general I will give my thoughts
I the interview with Jed Hoyer after they selled, which u can find on YouTube, some things he said made total sense and others were kind of questionable.
In the years of 2017-2020 they spent quite a bit of $ trying to add to the core they had so they could be great. It backfired financially I guess.
What does make sense is Lester,Rizz,KB,Baez, and Schwarber were not worth huge $ they wanted. But to me it's kind of crazy to just let go of everybody.
We'll see if the prospects they got are gonna be good, and in 2-4 years they will have alot of money to spend and they will buy some players. The white sox kind of did similar things although we never let go of nearly ALL of our good players.
He referenced other teams that have had down years, then got good again "the right way".
I have friends who are Cardinals fans and John Mozeliak has a little Kenny William's in him as they try to compete every year, and in the last 6 years they are average ballclub.