No, I did not expect the St. Louis Cardinals to have a 35-28 record and MLB’s sixth-best winning percentage as they flew to New York for a day off and a series against the Mets.
The only teams that had a higher winning percentage than St. Louis through Sunday were the Braves, Dodgers, Brewers, Rays and Yankees.
And the Cards’ .556 winning percentage was higher than every NL team except Atlanta, LA and Milwaukee.
The Cardinals have their problems and flaws. Sure. But all teams do.
The Cardinals have soft spots on the roster. Yes. But the same can be said about the other 29 clubs. And I hate to break it to you, but every team has its own version of Nolan Gorman to exasperate fans and set off a feeding frenzy on social media.
The Cardinals are inconsistent, and they can be frustrating. Watching the incompetent St. Louis offense clomp along during the month of May, it almost made me want to pass a kidney stone instead. Well, maybe not that … but … on too many May days, watching the Cardinals trying to hit was an unpleasant experience.
OK … but except for the Braves, fans that root for every other big-league team have experienced similar feelings in 2026.
The Dodgers endured a 5-9 stretch of losing baseball that included a lost series in St. Louis to begin May. And they flopped again with a four-game losing skid later in the month.
The Brewers had separate losing streaks of six and four games in April. The Yankees suffered a five-game losing streak in April and tripped to 10 losses in a 14-game sequence during May.
Inconsistency? Well, just ask fans of the Cubs and Reds about that. After ferociously knocking down every opponent in their way during two separate 10-game winning streaks, the Cubs have lost 20 of their last 27 games and are a brutal 0-8-1 in their last nine series played.
Beginning March 28, the Reds rolled to 20 wins in 30 games – only to get smacked around for 22 losses in their previous 33 games. The hellscape included getting swept at Busch Stadium over the weekend.
The Padres may be a source of perspective for those among us who seem to think the Cardinals are not allowed to be normal and average and human or clumsy and stink on occasion. San Diego is 2-11 in its last 13 games while batting .195 and averaging 2.5 runs per outing. Staying out west, the talented Seattle Mariners should be better than 34-32 but have way too many fluctuations.
Three things about the 2026 Cardinals.
1. The Cardinals are like an inflatable Bop Bag. The heavy-bottomed, inflated punching bags for kids. You land a hard punch and whack the thing, it goes head-first to the floor – only to immediately pop back up. It doesn’t hit you back, but no matter how many times you pound it, you can’t keep the Bop Bag flat on the canvas. (Not unless you take a dagger and deflate the thing. But hey, we don’t want any of that.) For the oldies out there – remember the “Weeble” commercials that had the catchy jingle? "Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down."
As Cards outfielder-second baseman Bryan Torres told the media after Sunday’s 5-3 win over the Reds: “There’s a lot of guys here who are hungry. They’re hungry to get more, and I think that’s one of the most important things about our team. We’re hungry. We never — we never — never, never give up. We come from behind … We never give up. That’s huge.”
Weebles.
2. Sixty three games into this increasingly intriguing campaign, the Cardinals aren’t supposed to be clutching the sixth-best winning percentage in MLB. Are you kidding me? Only recently have the FanGraphs projections displayed the Cards with a winning record (83-79) by the end of the season. Over at Baseball Prospectus, the defiant PECOTA system projects a 79-83 mark for the Redbirds.
3. The Cardinals have a total-cash 40-man payroll of $109.6 million this season, which ranks 24th among the 30 teams. Going into the new week, the Cardinals had a better record than 10 teams that have the benefit of 40-man payrolls that range from $203 million to $357 million: Mets, Phillies, Blue Jays, Astros, Cubs, Padres, Giants, Red Sox, Tigers and Orioles.
OK, now I must vent about something.
I do not understand the chirping about the team’s 35-28 record – because the Cardinals had a 35-28 last season at this point, and it didn’t end well.
I guess, well, what? The 2026 Cardinals are doomed just because the ‘25 Cardinals fell apart?
My gosh. I must ask a question to the chirpers: are you capable of enjoying anything?
Well, Bernie the Cardinals were 35-28 at this time a year ago, and they finished with a losing record. Translation: I’m not impressed.
Is this supposed to be a “gotcha” thing? Is it supposed to be insightful? Is this an example of deep thinking that will impress your fellow travelers on X?
This is another Lou Thing.
Whenever the Cardinals get to five or six or seven games above .500, these people bob up, suddenly surface, and depict themselves as wise diviners and soothsayers who will set the positive people straight.
They will not – NOT! – share in the joy of watching a likeable team exceed expectations. More than that, they want to extinguish the happiness of others.
These are the “SNL” Rachel Dratch characters – the Debbie Downers – who exist among us.
Cue the trombone … wah-wah-wahhhhh … the camera zooms in for a closeup of Debbie Downer as she ruins the good mood. Note: I turned to AI for a little joke-writing assistance because I needed help in getting the Debbie Downer responses to fit and closely resemble the way the character delivered dialogue on Saturday Night Live. It’s not like I have the actual SNL scripts to lean on.
– On the Cardinals’ surprisingly good record: "It’s neat that they're winning right now. But you know, winning too many games during a transition year just ruins our draft lottery odds, ensuring we miss out on elite, generational talent for the next decade.”
– On young players having a ‘breakout’ season: “I like seeing the ‘kids’ do well, but statistically, the league usually figures out their weaknesses by the All-Star break, and that will lead to the kids mentally unraveling in Triple A in the first stage of a lifetime of unfulfilled potential and heartbreak.”
– On the Cardinals’ thriving and happy team chemistry: "They look like they're having so much fun in the dugout. It kind of reminds me of the 1994 Montreal Expos... right before the player strike cancelled the World Series and the entire franchise collapsed and eventually moved to Washington D.C.”
— On the possibility of the Cardinals making the playoffs: “It’s nice that we’re in the wild card race, but playing extra games in October just adds more innings of unnecessary wear and tear to our pitchers' elbows, until their ulnar collateral ligaments inevitably snap like overstretched rubber bands, requiring invasive Tommy John surgeries that could ruin their careers.”
But seriously … or at least kind of seriously.
What happened with the 2025 Cardinals has absolutely nothing to do with the 2026 Cardinals.
This is a different team.
+ A team being led by a new front office.
+ A different team with many new players.
+ A team with a totally different vibe.
+ A rebuilding team that was not expected to win.
+ This team was, according to Baseball Prospectus, forecast to lose 99 games.
+ This team entered a new adventure in 2026 after trading veterans Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Brendan Donovan and Nolan Arenado.
+ This team is tied for the youngest roster in the majors.
+ This team has an active-cash payroll of $50 million to fund its 26-man roster. The 2025 team had an active-cash payroll of $85 million.
+ So with one of the least experienced teams in the majors and one of the lowest payroll in the majors … these Cardinals may not hold up. Their record in close games and extra-innings games could flip, because that’s pretty normal. All of these comeback wins? You can’t rely on them as a steady way to pile up victories.
+ But let’s understand something here, OK? If this team fades, the experience is completely irrelevant to 2025.
+ This team does not have a starting rotation that includes Miles Mikolas, Erick Fedde or the poor version of Andre Pallante.
+ Last season the 2025 team had a rotation with Mikolas, Fedde and the overmatched and lesser form of Pallante. And when those three pitchers started a game last season the Cardinals had a 31-49 record for a .388 winning percentage. When any other pitcher started a game, the Cardinals had a .573 win percentage. Do the simple math. With a couple of better starting pitchers, the ‘25 Cardinals would have made the playoffs.
+ When that ‘25 team collapsed to a 31-46 record after getting to nine games over .500 on June 29, a lot of that had to do with their horrific 9-25 record in games started by Mikolas, Pallante and Fedde.
+ This ‘26 team has the 10th-best ERA (3.44) in the majors since May 1. There’s more potential with this group. The bullpen has turned in one of the finest performances in MLB over the last 32 games.
+ This team has the new Jordan Walker. This new Walker was the lost and confused Jordan Walker in 2024 and 2025. Based on fWAR, that Walker was the worst position player in baseball over the two-season period.
+ This dynamic Jordan Walker currently ranks:
– 2nd among NL hitters in slugging, 4th in RBIs, 5th in home runs, 6th in OPS, 6th in runs, and 7th in fWAR.
– 4th among NL hitters with a 159 wRC+ that makes him 59 percent better than a league-average batter. That 159 wRC+ ranks No. 6 among 160 qualifying big-league hitters.
+ This team has JJ Wetherholt, the best all-around National League rookie based on fWAR. The 2025 Cardinals did not have – repeat, not have – JJ Wetherholt. He was still in the minors.
+ This team has a healthy Lars Nootbaar and better all-around depth in its position-player collection. And there’s more help available down on the farm.
So why would any person with a reasonably solid baseball IQ look at this year’s 35-28 Cardinals, and immediately theorize that this year’s 35-28 will lead to a losing record, just as last year’s 35-28 led to a losing record – even though there are massive differences between the ‘25 and ‘26 Cardinals?
Hey, the 2026 Cardinals could falter and ultimately fail in a longshot quest for a playoff spot. But that wouldn’t mean these relentless Debbie Downers were right.
The Redbirds are more likely to fall short if president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom trades away Nootbaar and pitchers Dustin May, JoJo Romero and Riley O’Brien before the Aug. 3 trade deadline.
There could be a plague of injuries. Or the Cardinals could just keep winning. A baseball season has many, many possibilities.
So why don’t we wait to see how this plays out before going into the flippin’ Debbie Downer act?
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. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.