The Cardinals reached the All-Star break with a 51-46 record through 97 games. The All-Star break is here, and it’s always the proper time to evaluate a team now that we’ve seen three-plus months of baseball.
This isn’t the “halfway point” of the season; the Cardinals have played 60 percent of their schedule. Which is even better because it’s given us more time to learn about them.
With that in mind, this is what I’ve learned so far. And before play resumes for the Cards on Friday at Arizona, I will go deeper into some of the areas I’m about to discuss today in shorter form.
For now, I won’t look ahead to what might happen after the break – including the July 31 trade deadline – until later in the week.
1. So far the 2025 Cardinals have exceeded expectations.
They’re five games over .500 and only 1 and ½ games out of the NL’s No. 3 wild-card spot. The 2022 Cardinals of Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright had the same 51-46 record through 97 competitions. Before the season The Athletic projections gave the Cardinals an average of 76.5 wins. Baseball Prospectus was more optimistic at 78 victories. As long as they don’t do worse than 31-34 over the final 65 games, the Cardinals will finish with a winning record.
Making the playoffs will be more difficult, but I’ll explore that in greater detail in a column this week. For now, I’ll leave it at this: FanGraphs gives St. Louis a 28.4 percent probability of making October’s tournament. But nearly 100 games in, after so many grim prophecies of hellfire and damnation – and that’s just among the team’s fan base – the Redbirds are better than anticipated.
2. Cardinals fans aren’t impressed.
The 2025 Cardinals are generally likable, compete hard, play with energy and joy, and already have 24 comeback victories. But among the team’s fans there's a lot more yawning than fawning. At the All-Star break, the Cardinals have slipped to the No. 16 ranking among the 30 franchises with an average of 29,465 tickets sold per home game.
The Colorado Rockies – record 22-74 – have sold an average of 30,128 tickets per game at Coors Field. The Rox have the worst winning percentage (.395) in MLB since the start of 2019.
Such thin attendance is no surprise in many MLB markets … but in St. Louis, this is a stunning new reality that will likely lead to another hold-the-line on payroll in 2026.
And I don’t even want to think about how bad this can become should the owners-players get into a nasty labor fight after the ‘26 season that will cause a delay (or much worse) to the start of the 2027 season. “The Best Baseball Town in America” may be handing over the crown.
3. This is an inconsistent team in a number of ways.
– The zig-zagging started early, with the Cardinals winning their first three games, only to lose 15 of the next 22.
– Their pattern has been especially volatile since early May. Their sizzling 16-4 streak in May was abruptly chilled by 11 losses in the next 16 games.
– After rebounding to go 10-3 from June 16-29, the Cards flopped to a 4-8 mark in their last 12 before the All-Star holiday.
– The Cardinals won 22 of their first 32 games at Busch Stadium (.687) but are 7-10 at home since June 8.
– The Redbirds have had dramatic streaks of high and low in games determined by a one-run margin: an 0-5 record early, followed by a 12-3 turnaround, then more recently a 4-7 fade in one-run decisions before the All-Star break.
This inconsistency is reaffirmed by a simple look at the team’s run-differential trend: plus 37 runs in the first 38 games, and a minus 20 in the 39 games after that.
My takeaway? The Cardinals have good talent, but not great talent. They don’t have an elite player, and you need at least two, three or even four of those guys. Which means Redbirds are extremely vulnerable to a sudden erosion of their pitching quality, and/or when their offense goes on tilt because a few guys are struggling simultaneously.
4. When the starting-pitch goes bad, the team record will follow accordingly.
No question, the Cardinals have an inconsistent offense. They’ve scored no more than two runs in a game 32 times already, sixth most in the NL, and they are 5-27 in those outages. The Cards have scored no more than a single run 23 times– tied for the second most among NL teams. Their record when held to a run or less is 1-22.
So yes, there are other factors. But the starting pitching was a substantial factor in determining this team’s fate during the first 97 games.
From the start of the season through May 28, the Cardinals had a 32-24 team record shaped by a 3.69 starting-pitching ERA that ranked 10th in the majors. Their quality-start rate in the first 56 games was 44.6 percent, one of the best in the majors. And keep in mind when a team benefits from a quality start, they usually win that game 70 percent of the time.
From May 30 until now the team record was 19-22, and there’s no mystery here. Their starting-pitching ERA over the 41 games was a bloated 5.27 which ranked 28th in the bigs. And the team’s quality-start rate plummeted to 29 percent over the 41 games.
Here’s an updated at the starting-pitching ERAs since May 30:
Sonny Gray, eight starts, 2.75 ERA, team record 6-2.
Andre Pallante, seven starts, 4.89 ERA, team record 2-5.
Michael McGreevy, three starts, 5.74 ERA, team record 2-1.
Matthew Liberatore, eight starts, 6.15 ERA, team record is 4-4.
Erick Fedde, eight starts, 6.44 ERA, team record 2-6.
Miles Mikolas, seven starts, 6.45 ERA, team record 3-4.
In McGreevy’s defense he wasn’t a regular starter. He made three spot starts, had a more representative fielding-independent ERA of 3.72, and received praise from manager Oli Marmol after each outing.
5. The St. Louis hitters struggle to win matchups against left-handed pitching.
This is a familiar topic by now, but just to review the performance through the first 60 percent of the STL schedule:
– As a team the Cardinals batted .232 with a .351 slugging percentage and .658 OPS against lefties – ranking no better than 20th in any of those categories. Per wRC+, their overall performance vs. lefties was 12 percent below league average offensively.
– The abundant supply of left-handed hitters is a significant problem. As I wrote here last week, no MLB team has made more plate appearances with left-handed hitters facing left-handed pitchers. And that’s gone poorly for St. Louis, which ranks 20th in average (.203), 25th in slugging (.351) and 23rd in OPS (.589) in these left vs. left matchups. Overall the Cards are 29 percent below league average offensively in these LHB vs LHP clashes.
— Make no mistake, one of the problems is the shortage of major impact by STL’s right-handed hitters when going up against lefties. Their group of RH batters is exactly league average in the matchups against left-handed pitchers. And there is absolutely nothing special about a .250 average and .707 OPS in these encounters.
6. The Cardinals have little speed in their game, don’t run the bases well, and don’t execute “small ball” with any real skill.
I feel guilty for pointing this out … because there’s always so much loud noise about how the Cardinals are “DOIN SOME MANUFACTURING!” or “PLAYIN’ SOME SMALL BALL!
– The Cardinals are 12th in the NL with 54 stolen bases and their swipe-rate success is league average (78%)
– The Cardinals do have a high count of extra bases taken on batted balls in play, so I commend that. But they’ve done so only 43 percent of the opportunities to grab an extra base. That’s about league average.
– The Cards overall ranking in the FanGraphs baserunning metric is 12th among 15 NL teams.
– Victor Scott has snatched 24 bases in 26 attempts for a fantastic 92.3 percent success rate. All of the other Cardinals collectively have swiped 30 bags but have been caught stealing on 43 percent of their attempts. That’s horrible.
– Minus steal attempts, STL runners have been thrown out on the bases 30 times – 7th most among NL teams. They’ve lost seven runners at third base, tied for the second most in the NL. Their 11 runners lost at home is the NL’s sixth highest total.
– Small ball? Umm, no. The Cardinals are last in the NL with a productive-out rate of 24 percent and have the second-poorest success rate (47.8%) on sac-bunt attempts.
I’ve praised the Cardinals for doing a good job of hitting the ball to the opposite field for singles, but let’s make a note of something here: every opposite-field hit doesn’t happen because of an intentional action. Some are just happy accidents.
7. The Cardinals have been very fortunate with injuries.
According to data from Baseball Prospectus, only the Phillies have had their players miss more days to injuries than St. Louis this season. And in terms of performance value lost due to injuries, the Cardinals have suffered the least amount of negative impact of any team in MLB. On the other hand, this could mean injuries will be more of a hindrance to the Cards over their last 65 regular-season games. We'll see.
8. The so-called “Runway” season has mixed results.
We’re seeing some success, yes. But some of the positives – or examples cited – are misleading or exaggerated. I’m saving a deeper look at that in a stand-alone column I’ll write for Tuesday.
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.