Brad Ausmus met face-to-face in Las Vegas with a former Cardinals teammate as part of an interview for the most significant hire of his first time leading an organization. The conversation gave him a fresh view of someone he once sprayed champagne with, and it came as the Cardinals were still piecing together the rest of their staff.
That detail matters because the hiring process is still moving even after Chaim Bloom confirmed that Joel McKeithan had been brought in as the new hitting coach. Ausmus’s interview was not just a formality; it was tied to a central decision in a staff that has not yet been finalized.
The setting underscored how personal these decisions can be. Ausmus was not talking in broad terms with a distant candidate. He was sitting across from a former teammate, someone he already knew from the Cardinals, and that made the exchange different from the usual front-office evaluation. He said the interview showed him a new side to a person he had once celebrated with after winning together.
At the same time, the larger picture remains unfinished. McKeithan’s hiring is in place, but the Cardinals have not closed the book on the rest of the coaching group. That leaves the organization in the middle of a process that is visible, active and still incomplete, with the final shape of the staff yet to be announced.
The next step is the one the Cardinals have not taken yet: finishing the staff. Ausmus has already begun making the kind of face-to-face judgment call that can shape how a first-time leader builds around him, and the unresolved pieces now sit at the center of what comes next.
