ST. LOUIS, Mo. — The St. Louis Cardinals are parting with one of the front office figures most tied to their homegrown roster. Randy Flores, who spent the last eight seasons as an assistant general manager in St. Louis, was hired Friday as general manager of the Houston Astros.
Flores, 51, put in 11 seasons with the Cardinals front office. He arrived in 2015 as scouting director and moved up to assistant GM after the 2018 season, overseeing amateur and pro player acquisition.
His fingerprints are on much of the current St. Louis core. Since 2020 the club has drafted players such as Masyn Winn, Jordan Walker, Alec Burleson and JJ Wetherholt, and most of the big-league roster was developed inside the organization.
Before moving into the front office, Flores pitched parts of eight major league seasons as a left-hander and was in the bullpen for the 2006 Cardinals team that won the World Series. He later coached at USC and built OnDeck Digital, a video capture tool now used by MLB scouting departments.
In Houston he replaces Dana Brown, who parted ways with the Astros in August. Houston had leaned on a group of executives, among them senior advisor Jeff Bagwell and owner Jim Crane, to handle baseball operations in the meantime.
Flores originally came to St. Louis to replace Chris Correa as scouting director, and he spent the following decade shaping how the Cardinals evaluated amateur talent before the draft.
The departure leaves president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, who built strong farm systems in Tampa Bay and Boston, to steer player development in St. Louis without one of its longest-serving scouting leaders.
Section: More St. Louis MO sports news
Filed under: St. Louis MO Sports News
