Another baseball season, just about over. But for the Cardinals, it’s already over because there’s no chance to qualify for the 2025 postseason. The Redbirds were eliminated Wednesday in a loss to the Giants.
And now it’s three games at the beer-garden ballpark at Wrigley Field. And for the St. Louis players, it’s onto the offseason. Roster changes are coming. See ya in Jupiter. Or maybe not. For Cardinals players, the trade market will determine who stays and who goes.
Unless the Cardinals sweep the Cubs, they’ll finish with their second losing record in the last three years. Going into Friday’s game against the Cubs, the Cardinals had a .481 winning percentage since the start of 2023.
Their level of success ranks 22nd in the majors and 11th among the 15 National League teams. The only NL clubs that have lost more games than the Cardinals over the last three seasons are Miami, Pittsburgh, Washington and Colorado.
What’s the title of a popular song on Third Eye Blind’s first album?
For the Cardinals, yeah, it’s happened again. This franchise has now missed the playoffs for the sixth time in the last 10 seasons. The only NL teams that have missed making the playoffs more times than the Cardinals since the start of 2016 are the Pirates (10), Rockies (8), Marlins (8), Reds (8), Giants (8), Nationals (7) and Diamondbacks (7).
(Please note: as I type the Reds and Diamondbacks still have a chance for the No. 3 wild card. Depending on what happens this weekend, one or both teams will have eight seasons of falling short of playoffs. Instead of seven.)
In this Review, I’ll present a preliminary report on what went wrong for the Cardinals in 2025.
1. The Project Runway concept: Play the young players … but we can win … but the young players come first … wait, we can make the playoffs … young players come first … but what about winning a playoff spot? … Sounds good, but play the young guys … until you don’t play some of the young guys because you want to win.
Were the Cardinals trying to win? The players and manager, yes. Ownership and front office, no. When a manager has to make daily decisions based on conflicting priorities, well, good luck with that.
2. The awkward transition from John Mozeliak to Chaim Bloom. Mozeliak had the final say, but Bloom was in the shadows and available for consultation. Mozeliak welcomed Bloom’s advice, and asked for his opinions, but Bloom was sensitive to intruding on Mozeliak’s turf. The current president of baseball operations and the incoming president of baseball ops made the best of it, and both were honorable … but it was an awkward and confusing situation. And we were left to wonder: what if Bloom was in charge for 2025? Would his decisions differ from the judgments made by Mozeliak? And manager Oli Marmol was in the middle, having discussions with his current boss (Mo) and future boss (Chaim.)
3. Didn’t have enough talent. The Cardinals didn’t have enough impact hitters. Didn’t have enough dudes. Didn’t have enough quality starting pitchers. Didn’t have enough starting-pitching depth in the minors to replace struggling parts of the major-league rotation.
4. Couldn’t sustain the early success: The Cardinals swept Cleveland on the weekend of June 27-29 to move to nine games over .500 (47-38). At that point the Cardinals trailed the Brewers by a half-game in the NL Central standings and were 2 and 1/2 games behind the first-place Cubs. At the time the Cardinals had a .557 winning percentage that ranked 6th in the NL, and they were looking good with a run differential of plus 45.
From June 30 through their series earlier this week at San Francisco, the Cardinals are 31-43 pending the results of the Chicago series. Their current .419 winning percentage since June 30 ranks 13th in the NL, their run differential is minus 93. And since June 30 the Cardinals are 17 and ½ games worse than the Brewers and 8 and ½ games worse than the Cubs over that time. This was an excruciating fall for a team that had postseason aspirations in late June.
5. Collapse of the offense: since June 30, the Cardinals are 29th in the majors in runs, slugging percentage, home runs and OPS and are between 23rd and 27th in batting average, walk rate, and on-base percentage.
6. The decline of the starting rotation: from their first game of the season through the series sweep at Cleveland, the Cardinals ranked 16th in the majors in rotation ERA (4.05) and 7th overall in fielding independent ERA (3.77) for starting pitchers. Since reaching their peak the plummeting Cardinals rank 27th in both starting-pitching ERA (5.44) and fielding independent ERA (4.93) for starters.
Marmol and pitching coach Dusty Blake did an excellent job of keeping their starters healthy and fresh – STL starting pitchers did not spend one day on the Injured List – but the severe problem was a lack of talent. Mozeliak’s decision to stay with Erick Fedde for as long as he did was a travesty.
7. Too much summer sweat: After going 33-12 in May and June, the Cardinals crashed during an 8-16 month of July. The problem was a 6.54 ERA by their starting pitchers, the worst in the majors for July. And one of the main reasons for the sinkage was the 7.81 ERA in six July starts by designated No. 1 starting pitcher Sonny Gray, who was greatly bothered by the heat and the profuse sweat that made it difficult to get a firm grip on the baseball.
8. Moribund outfield offense: Through their first 159 games the Cardinals received a .224 batting average, .334 slugging percentage and .635 OPS from their outfielders. They ranked 25th or worse among MLB outfields in average, on-base percentage, slugging, home runs, doubles, OPS, and wRC+.
The primary reason was the investment of 1,408 plate appearances in Jordan Walker, Victor Scott II and Lars Nootbaar. But Brendan Donovan, Ivan Herrera and Nathan Church didn’t do much offensively when utilized as outfielders. Over the last two seasons, St. Louis outfielders are 30th in slugging percentage (.348) and home runs (75) and 28th in OPS (.650). This must change.
9. Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman: they skidded off the runway. Their combined 775 plate appearances through the team’s first 159 games produced extremely disappointing results. Walker had a year that was among the very worst – offense and defense combined – by a 23-year-old hitter in franchise history. Since coming into the majors in 2022, Gorman has the fifth-worst strikeout rate (33.8%) by a qualifying hitter in the majors.
10. Miscellaneous Stuff
— John Mozeliak should have spent some free-agent dollars on a low-cost, one-year deal for a right-handed hitting outfielder …
— From an overall standpoint, only one MLB team (Phillies) had more games missed by injured players than the Cardinals. So I’m not predisposed to make an excuse for the Redbirds. That said, with this team’s thin talent base, it’s especially harmful when Ivan Herrera misses 55 days, Brendan Donovan misses 28 days, Willson Contreras misses 11 days (and counting) and Gold-glove caliber defenders (Nolan Arenado, Masyn Winn) miss 57 days combined.
— And that doesn’t include all of the times Donovan played through injuries that significantly reduced his contributions on offense. In a 55-game stretch before the Cardinals FINALLY put Donovan on the IL, he batted .229 with a .640 OPS and just wasn’t the same player. What’s the point of running Donovan out there day after day when he’s clearly injured and incapable of playing well?
Thanks for reading and I hope you have a great weekend.
–Bernie
====
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 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, and Bernie does a weekly “Seeing Red” podcast on the Cardinals with his longtime pal Will Leitch. Bernie joins Katie Woo on the “Cardinal Territory” video-podcast each week, and you can catch a weekly “reunion” segment here at STL Sports with Bernie’s appearance on the Randy Karraker Show every Friday morning at 10:30 am.