NOTEworthy Day …
1. So, what will Cards president of baseball ops Chaim Bloom do with Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker this offseason? There are no answers now. I’m not sure why people feel compelled to make predictions. In remarks to the media earlier this week, Bloom sounded like a man who is keeping an open mind. As he should. Because no moves can be made right now. Those decisions will come later. And while Bloom hasn’t given up on either player, he also acknowledges that his optimism has been “tested.”
With Walker and Gorman, both could be traded. Only one could be traded. Or both will stay with the Cardinals, though a 2026 season in the minors for Walker is possible.
Gorman doesn’t have any minor-league options left – which could increase the possibility of a trade. Gorman also bats left on a team that has too many left-handed batters, and that could be another reason for trading him.
2. If Walker could hit it would be a pretty big deal for the Cardinals. I say that for this reason: in 2025, right-handed hitting outfielders for the Cardinals combined for a .200 average, .263 on-base percentage, .287 slug, a .550 OPS and were 45 percent below league average offensively per wRC+. Walker and the team’s other right-handed hitting outfielders had 7 homers in 469 plate appearances and struck out 30.5 percent of the time. How are these wretched numbers even possible?
3. In 2025, Walker and Gorman combined to hit .211 with a .289 on-base percentage, .338 slugging percentage, .627 OPS, and a 33 percent strikeout rate. Gorman had 14 home runs. Walker had six homers. They combined for 714 at-bats. So together, Walker and Gorman averaged a homer every 36 at-bats. Poor.
4. Fun with numbers: over the last two seasons, St. Louis outfielders hit 76 home runs, the fewest by a team outfield group in the majors. Over the same two seasons, Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge out-homered the entire St. Louis outfield contingent all by himself – 111 home runs to 76. Yikes.
5. It’s going to be a long, cold winter for Mike Shildt and the Padres – yes, even in sunny San Diego. Thursday at Wrigley Field, Shildt’s team was abruptly ejected from the postseason for the second straight year.
In 2024, San Diego defeated Atlanta in the wild-card round and needed one more win to eliminate the mighty Dodgers in their NLDS showdown. But the LA pitching staff posted two consecutive shutouts to advance to the NLCS, and then to another World Series championship.
This time, the Padres needed to take the winner-take-all Game 3 of the wild-card round but couldn’t generate enough offense to take down the Cubs. The Padres scored five total runs in the three games and finished 3-for-26 with runners in scoring position.
Despite winning 90+ games for the second year in a row, the Padres have little to show for it. The No. 1 problem is the disappearance of the Padres’ top hitters, who repeatedly failed to deliver in big spots. Top of the lineup hitters Fernando Tatis Jr., Luis Arraez and Manny Machado combined for 4 hits in 33 at-bats against the Cubs.
Going back to the St. Louis days, Shildt has now lost 12 of his last 18 postseason games as manager.
San Diego’s pending free agents include first baseman Arraez, starting pitcher Dylan Cease, starter Michael King, closer Robert Suarez, and first baseman-outfielder Ryan O’Hearn.
The Padres went above the luxury-tax payroll again in 2025, and undoubtedly will slash payroll again before 2026. The window is closing.
6. The Milwaukee Brewers must save us from the living hell of listening to network people and writers and Cubs fans spending the next several weeks gushing about Pete Crow-Armstrong, and getting highly aroused over Pete Crow Armstrong, and showing how cute and clever they are by calling him “PCA.” Imagine how insufferable it will be if the Cubs defeat the Brewers in the division round, take the NL pennant, and advance to the World Series.
7. Would I be happy to see the Cardinals have a player like PCA? Of course. Because the Cardinals have no true star. Not one. We try to pretend that a couple of their guys are stars, but they’re what I refer to as “bad-team stars.” Which isn’t close to being a genuine star. When you’re the best player on a mediocre roster, it doesn’t mean you’re a star.
8. I’m picking the Brewers to remove the Cubs from October, but that’s probably wishful thinking more than anything. But I admire how the Brewers continue to put outstanding rosters together on a small payroll – and I appreciate their intelligent, all-around skill at playing ball.
9. The Cubs have an advantage over the Brewers that could be difficult to overcome – at least based on recent historical trends. As the great analyst Eno Sarris points out: in the last five years, the team with more home runs in a game has won that game more than 80 percent of the time. And more than 40 percent of the runs have scored on the long ball recently. “The Cubs have more power,” Sarris wrote at The Athletic. “It can be that simple sometimes.”
10. But if Kyle Tucker doesn’t hit – and he’s been way off form since around the start of August – the Crew can and will take the series.
11. Esoteric stat that I like because it’s different. In the four wild-card series, the team with the offense that had the higher regular-season barrel percentage won all four matchups.
– Yankees 11.8% to Red Sox 9.2%
– Cubs 10% to Padres 7.5%
– Dodgers 10% to Reds 7.2%
– Tigers 9.4% to Guardians 6.6
To tie this in with our previous note on the link between home runs and postseason success, three of the four teams that advanced to the division-series round had more home runs in the wild-card round. The only exception were the Tigers, who were out-homered by the Guardians, 3-1. That said, Detroit’s only home run came in the third and deciding game – and the Tigers had a 1-0 homer advantage over the Guardians in that one.
12. Dodgers vs. Phillies? Riotous fun. Big, personality-rich teams. Big payrolls. Big-moment stars. Big bats. Big arms. Drama. Plot twists. Ohtani and Schwarber delivering big punches in a home-run derby. Bryce Harper will do something to make you smile, because the man is a natural-born entertainer. I think the Dodgers have an edge because they have more pitching. And this LA team was built – lavishly – for October.
13. Jim Bowden (The Athletic) ranked the non-playoff teams this season by rating them in order of probability of making the postseason in 2026. Bowden had the Cardinals at No. 12, ahead of the Pirates, Nationals, Twins, White Sox, Angels and Rockies.
Wrote Bowden: “Longtime Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak stepped down at the end of the season, passing the torch to former Rays and Red Sox executive Chaim Bloom, who takes over as head of their baseball operations.
“Bloom’s first order of business was to see if veterans Sonny Gray, Nolan Arenado and Willson Contreras would consider waiving their no-trade clauses, and all of them have indicated that they will. The fact that Bloom talked to all three to find out that answer tells you his plan, which is continuing to rebuild with young players via trades, free agency, the draft and amateur signings.
“Bloom had success in Tampa and Boston building teams that way, but it takes time and continued patience, which isn’t easy in the St. Louis market – a dynamic Bloom became familiar with in Boston, as well.”
14. Finally, here are the World Series-win probability odds for each of the eight remaining teams, courtesy of Sportsline:
Yankees, 19%
Mariners, 17%
Phillies, 15%
Dodgers, 11%
Cubs, 10%
Brewers, 10%
Blue Jays, 7%
Tigers, 4%
15. Have a wonderful weekend!
Thanks for reading.
–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.