Well-versed in Cards history, new exec a key to future

This story was excerpted from John Denton’s Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Outside of providing parents Rich and Lori Buffa two grandchildren and getting the family onto the field following the 2022 World Series, Jacob Buffa likely has never made those closest to him happier than he did in late October with his news of a homecoming.

Buffa, a 32-year-old native of Chesterfield, Mo., and a rabid fan of the Cardinals throughout his childhood, accepted a job to be the Cards’ senior director of international scouting. Informing his parents -- who have since relocated to nearby St. Charles, Mo. -- that he, wife Shanna and their kids would return to the St. Louis area was a joyous moment filled with tears, laughter and some hurried planning.

“Once I got the job,” Buffa said, “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is really happening.’ And I will say my wife didn’t wait 30 seconds before she started looking for homes in St. Louis, and that tells you a lot about how excited we were to be a Cardinal. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do was telling my parents. They were so very happy.”

Back in the early 2000s, when the “MV3” of Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds were starring in St. Louis, Buffa and family would attend approximately a dozen games a season. Buffa once caught a foul ball off the bat of Pujols. He went to high school with children of Cardinals stars Todd Worrell, Mike Matheny and Andy Benes, and he attended Game 6 of the 2004 NLCS, when Edmonds forced a Game 7 with a walk-off home run to beat the Astros.

Then there was Game 6 of the 2011 World Series, when Buffa was so angry about the Cardinals potentially losing that he went downstairs to watch the ninth inning alone. Of course, that was the inning when David Freese delivered a two-strike, two-out, two-run triple to tie the game -- one he later won with a walk-off homer in the 11th inning.

“I was always able to go to a lot of Opening Days and be around a lot of Cardinals history,” Buffa said. “So the Cardinals have been a huge part of my life since I can remember.”

Professional baseball has turned into a huge part of Buffa’s life, though that wasn’t always the path he expected to take after majoring in marketing at Missouri State University. He started Elite Baseball Academy in suburban St. Louis in 2016. From 2017-18, he worked as a talent scout for Prospect Select -- a job that impressed former Cardinals and Astros front office executive Jeff Luhnow enough to hire him as Houston’s performance coach.

Buffa quickly worked his way up the ladder with the Astros, moving from a sport science analyst to the director of performance science to the club’s senior director of player development. His rise is a testament to opportunity, belief and confidence that he can learn whatever he didn’t know.

“I always would have loved to have done this, but I never thought I would have been able to,” Buffa said. “I never got my major [in college] relevant to anything in my field. The Astros’ role was unique because it had on-field responsibilities with [strength and conditioning] responsibilities.

“I applied to that just because I really thought, ‘This might be the only chance I get to do what I really want to do.’ I took that first job with the Astros thinking it would look really good on my business résumé, but I just loved the environment there.”

Though he’ll never take credit for it, Buffa played a role in the enormous growth of 2022 World Series MVP Jeremy Peña by incorporating performance science information into the shortstop’s swing to produce impactful results. Buffa was also there pumping up the confidence of 2025 Cy Young finalist Hunter Brown when he doubted his stuff in the Minor Leagues, and he played a role in the Astros drafting outfielder Zach Cole, who made it to the big leagues in 2025 after being a 10th-round selection in 2022.

Now, back in scouting for the first time in seven years, Buffa hopes to elicit the same sort of success stories for the same Cards franchise he grew up living and dying with as a native of suburban St. Louis. He’ll be part of the brain trust reporting to new Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom.

“I’ve just been impressed with the vision Chaim has set forth, and I'm a big believer in him and what he's building,” Buffa said. “As a farm director for a couple years, I used to always think, ‘Man, if I had the chance to acquire players, this is how I would do it. I've been on the other end of it for so long, and now I'm excited about doing that.”