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Before doing any research on a hypothesis to confirm its veracity, the ‘evidence’ is really just a gut feeling about something—it’s anecdotal.
But anecdotally, it sure feels like the St. Louis Cardinals have had a helluva knack for come-from-behind wins in 2025. So I went scouring the box scores for answers to determine if how it feels is reflected in reality.
By my count, the Cardinals have 14 comeback wins in 2025, counting any game in which the team trailed at some point but ended up with a W.
That’s the same count found by this list that ranks the most comeback wins across MLB this season, which I’ve otherwise not spent the time to verify.
But since the list of a relatively obscure stat seems to have accurately identified the Cardinals’ comeback win count correctly, I’ll trust the overall quality of the list enough to share that the Cards’ 14 come-from-behind wins this season rank tied for eighth in MLB in the category (If you’d like to go through the box scores for the other 29 team to verify that the list’s counting matches up, be my guest).
Tied for eighth among 30 teams is nothing crazy, relatively speaking, but it’s certainly an improvement over the Cardinals’ tendency to win from behind last year—which, generally, wasn’t especially strong.
According to the same ‘Champs or Chumps’ list from 2024 (the name of the site alone was reason enough not to trust it, at first), the Cardinals finished with 33 comeback wins that year, which was tied for 19th in MLB. I did scour the box score from every 2024 Cardinals win to confirm it—St. Louis had 33 comeback wins last year. Okay, I’m deciding to suspend my disbelief and trust Champs or Chumps.
For what it’s worth, according to Champs or Chumps—which, as a reminder, we’ve collectively decided to trust based on the 2024 and 2025 numbers being accurate—the 2023 Cardinals won only 28 games in comeback style, which tied for the third-fewest in baseball.
This year, the Cardinals current 14 comeback wins puts them on pace to win around 40 games in this fashion for 2025. That would equate to seven more comeback wins than they ended up earning last year. Last season, the Cardinals didn’t win their 14th game in come-from-behind fashion until June 22.
The feeling that a team is never out of a game is a difficult one to quantify, but when you put together as many data points as these Cardinals are compiling, it becomes a hard notion to deny.
This characteristic has been a hallmark of the Cardinals’ marvelous May, as the Cardinals are 18-7 this month (and 18-5 over their past 23 games). During this run in May, St. Louis has racked up 10 of its 14 come-from-behind wins.
So if it seemed like the Cardinals’ propensity for battling back was suddenly a key factor to their recent success, the evidence is more than anecdotal—the numbers back up the feeling.
After not carrying this capacity to a very notable extent in recent years, the Cardinals now have the DNA of a team that knows how to battle through adversity and win from behind.