A View From The Sunny, Hopeful, Kind-Hearted, Silver Linings Optimist:
“Hey, the Cardinals woke up Monday after taking two savage beatings from the Cubs in three days at Wrigley Field. And our scrappy Redbirds, while enjoying their scheduled day off, are still only one game out of the National League’s No. 3 wild-card spot. Isn’t that a victory? So let’s smile! The glass is half full!”
The Realistic, Pragmatic, And Somewhat Annoying Pessimist:
“Yes, the math tells us the Cardinals are a game out of a playoff spot. Great. When do we get the trophy for that? Take a closer look at that half-full glass. It has cracks that are getting larger and more ominous. Have you noticed their crumbling starting pitching – and John Mozeliak’s predictable but demoralizing refusal to intervene and remove Miles Mikolas and Erick Fedde? Have you noticed how quiet the St. Louis offense has been in so many games?
Actually … there’s something to take from each of the two viewpoints.
1. Yes, I do believe the Cardinals are fortunate to be only one game out of the third wild-card as I type this before MLB play begins on July 7. And I was somewhat surprised to see FanGraphs give the Cardinals a 32.2 percent probability of reaching the postseason.
2. The Cardinals should be in worse shape than this. But that’s a lot less about the Cards and more about the other NL wild-card bidders.
– The Mets are 7-15 in their last 22. But they are stirring, having gone 4-1 in recent days including a series win over the Yankees.
– The Padres are 10-13 in their last 23.
– The Giants are 8-13 since June 14, and the downswing included a series loss to the abysmal White Sox. But the Giants have rallied by winning four of their last five games.
– The Diamondbacks are in a bad way, having gone 3-8 in their last 11 games to slip under .500 (44-46.)
– The Reds can’t sustain any brief spells of momentum. The Cincinnatians followed a 9-2 surge earlier in June with a 7-9 comedown in their last 16.
– The overrated Braves are 39-50 after losing nine of their last 11 contests.
The mysteriously brilliant Milwaukee Brewers are the only NL wild-card contender rolling along and bagging victories without much interruption. Since May 18 the Crew and their 24th-ranked MLB payroll have the NL’s best record at 29-15, .559. Oh, and Brandon Woodruff is back in their starting rotation for the first time since late in the 2023 season.
3. Despite their recent disasters, the Cardinals are still five games over .500 for the season at 48-43. They’ve exceeded my expectations. Can they stay that way? I’m not overflowing with confidence.
THE SIGNS OF ALARM
A) The starting pitching is cracking. The Cardinals rank 27th in the majors with a 5.01 starting-pitching ERA since May 20. They’ve managed to stay just under .500 (21-22) over that time.
Much of the carnage can be attributed to failed starting pitchers Miles Mikolas and Erick Fedde. Since May 20 they’ve combined for a 6.67 ERA in 17 starts. The Redbirds are 1-4 in Mikolas’ last five starts and 2-7 in Fedde’s last nine outings.
Rookie Michael McGreevy had a 5.74 ERA in three starts for the Cardinals in June. So if we include McGreevy in the rotation trend since May 20, the ERA is 6.52 in the 19 starts made by Mikolas, Fedde and McGreevy.
And don’t forget – Matthew Liberatore endured turbulence, with a 10.29 ERA in three starts from May 30 through June 11. But he’s recovered with a 2.25 ERA in his last four starts.
Sonny Gray has a 2.86 ERA in his seven starts since May 20. But over that same time frame, consider this: Fedde, Mikolas, McGreevy, Liberatore and Andre Pallante collectively have pitched to a 5.49 ERA in their 36 starts.
Pallante has a 4.09 earned-run average in his eight starts since May 20 but is trending well with a 2.22 ERA in his last five outings.
Final note on the rotation: the Cardinals just got done playing 11 games against the Cubs since June 23 … and Sonny Gray started none of those contests. But Mikolas and Fedde started three of the seven games against that Team Up North, and predictably the Cubs battered the defenseless duo for 18 runs — and nine homers! – in 11 innings. That’s a 14.72 ERA.
Craig Counsell and the Cubs thank you very much. I assume Cards manager Oli Marmol had a valid reason for skipping Gray in the two series with the Cubs, and I’ll ask him about that Tuesday at noon when he joins us in his weekly appearance on the KMOX “Gashouse Gang.”
B) The STL offense has been a no-show with increasing frequency. And yeah, it’s disturbing. This isn’t just a little ol’ slump.
Let’s start with this nasty little fact. The St. Louis hitters have produced two runs or fewer in 15 of the team’s last 19 losses since May 30.
The Cardinals have been shut out in six of their last seven losses.
Opponents have shut out the Cardinals nine times in 91 games, and the nine shutouts are tied for the fifth most by an offense in MLB this season. Why this matters: in 2024, the Cards were blanked only six times in 162 games. And those six shutouts in ‘24 were the third fewest among the 30 MLB offenses.
St. Louis has scored no more than one run in a game 23 times already this season in just 91 games. (That’s tied for the fifth most in MLB.) The key stat: last year the Cardinals were held to one or no runs 24 times in 162 games. Big difference. STL’s All Or Nada offense in ‘25 cannot be trusted.
Seeing the Cubs up close for seven games puts the condition of each offense in sharper perspective. Among Cardinal regulars, Brendan Donovan is No. 1 with a 124 OPS+ that’s 24 percent above league average offensively. (Ivan Herrera has a 158 OPS+ but has been limited to 42 games because of injuries. And the Cubs? They have five regulars that have an OPS+ higher than B. Donovan: Michael Busch, Kyle Tucker, Seiya Suzuki, Pete Crow Armstrong, and Carson Kelly.
THE HIDEOUS RECENT TREND
A loss is a loss, no matter what they look like. It doesn’t matter if you score seven runs and lose – or score one run and lose. All losses count the same in the standings.
But I can’t gloss over the stuff we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks – a time when the Cardinals starting pitching and offensive production began breaking down simultaneously.
In their seven losses to the Cubs and Pirates since June 25, Birds were outscored 46 to 3. In their four wins over the Cardinals over the last two weeks, the Cubs outscored their overmatched rivals 33 to 3. In a word: appalling.
THE ANEMIC OFFENSE ISN’T SURPRISING
Not if we consider these factors in their last seven losses to either the Cubs or Pirates.
– Herrera’s formidable presence is missed, and the STL offense is considerably weaker without his bat in the lineup. Herrera is the team’s best all around hitter, packing a .320 average, .392 onbase percentage and .533 slug. No other Cardinal hitter is close to matching Herrera’s combination of stellar numbers. Herrera’s two different IL stints aren’t an excuse for other hitters doing poorly – but the missing impact is the reality.
– In their seven losses the Cardinals had 45 at-bats with runners in scoring position and squeaked for just four hits. That’s an .088 batting average with RISP. The severity of such a drought would cause famine for any offense.
– In the seven losses the Cardinals had a .124 batting average, a homer, and three RBIs from a large group of hitters: Brendan Donovan, Alec Burleson, Lars Nootbaar, Masyn Winn, Nolan Gorman, Thomas Saggese, Victor Scott, Pedro Pages, Nolan Arenado and Willson Contreras.
Those 10 hitters produced 23 hits in 186 at-bats and struck out a combined 45 times. Yes, Contreras and Arenado were banged up or out for some of those losses. But still. This is bad. You can’t have 10 different guys starving for hits at the same time.
I’ll be back with another column on Tuesday, and for part of that I’ll be typing some positive words. There are a few things to like about this team, even though the Cardinals rank 12th among the 15 NL teams with a 15-18 record (.455 winning pct.) since June 1. The only NL clubs that have done worse than St. Louis since the beginning of June are the Rockies, Braves and Nationals.
Thanks for reading …
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. You can access all of his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him weekdays on the “Gashouse Gang” or “Redbird Rush Hour” on KMOX (104.1-FM and 1120-AM) and he is a regular guest on the “Cardinal Territory” video show hosted by Katie Woo of The Athletic. Bernie does a weekly “Seeing Red” podcast with Will Leitch on the Cardinals.