The Cardinals picked a good year to be a surprise team. Going back to the offseason, and again in spring training, manager Oli Marmol and the players repeatedly sounded a theme. The Redbirds believed this could be a bracket-buster team that could shock their way into the postseason.
“Even though we are one of the youngest teams in the Major Leagues, the Cards are going to surprise people,” pitcher Michael McGreevy said in camp Jupiter.
Yeah, the boys were serious about this.
They are even more serious now. The Cardinals entered Wednesday’s game against San Diego with a 40-31 record and .563 winning percentage that ranked sixth in the majors and fourth in the National League.
St. Louis began play as the No. 1 team in the wild-card standings. FanGraphs gave the Cards a 55.2 percent probability of making the postseason in any capacity – and a 46.7% crack at getting there as a wild-card entry. Among the 12 NL teams that don’t lead their division, FanGraphs ranks Philadelphia and St. Louis as the two most likely wild-card contenders. The Cubs are third.
The Cardinals are proving themselves in ways that outsiders did not expect. And as I noted earlier, this is a swell time to be a surprise contender.
Why?
1. Because there is a large pile of mediocre teams. Heading into Wednesday, only 10 major-league clubs were better than two games above .500. Half the league – 15 teams – had a losing record.
2. Major league baseball is the land of opportunity for small-market and/or low-payroll teams. Five of the top 10 records belonged to teams with small budgets for 2026. All five ranked 25th or lower in the 40-man, competitive-balance tax payrolls: Nationals (25th), Cardinals (26), White Sox (27th), Rays (28th) and Guardians (29th.) The Brewers, who lead the NL Central, are clearly a terrific team – but also a team that ranks 20th in payroll.
3. The Cards’ severe payroll slashing hasn’t hurt them. Which means this is also a good year to be a really young team with only one rostered player, pitcher Dustin May, with a 2026 salary above $5.25 million. On the flip side, six of the 12 teams with the largest 40-man payrolls are wallowing in the mire with losing records. Having a Godzilla size payroll does give teams an edge in the postseason – but that doesn’t matter if they fail to make the tournament. That part isn’t looking so good for the Mets, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Tigers, Astros and Giants.
4. For now, making the NL postseason in 2026 is hardly the equivalent of climbing Mount Denali in Alaska, the tallest mountain in the U.S. Making the playoffs is probably more like walking up those steps at Cahokia Mounds.
As written by Baseball Prospectus, it’s entirely possible that 2026 would be the first time that more than half of the playoff teams finished the regular season with less than 90 wins.
“It could be one in which an 83-win team qualified in consecutive years,” BP wrote. “The Reds in 2025 (made it) when seemingly no one wanted to claim the third NL wild card spot. And the Rangers are on pace to do it this year as a second AL wild card. It could also be the first time that any team qualifies with a .500 record or worse in a full season.”
This bodes well for the Cardinals, as long as the Cardinals take care of business. Based on their 40-31 record through Tuesday, I scaled what it would take for the Cardinals to reach a range of 83 to 91 wins. And this was written before Wednesday’s game:
To reach 83 wins: 43-48 record the rest of the way, .473 win%
84 wins: 44-47 record over the remainder of the schedule; .484 win%
85 wins: 45-46 in remaining games; .495 win%
86 wins: 46-45 record in games left; .505 win%
87 wins: 47-44 mark in games to go; .516 win%
88 wins: 48-43 record in remaining games; .527 win%
89 wins: 49-42 record the rest of the way; .538 win%
90 wins: 50-41 mark over remaining schedule; .563 win%
91 wins: 51-40 in what’s left; .560 win%
THOUGHTS + FACTS
— All of the above is doable by the Cardinals. But on the higher end of that scale the Cardinals can’t afford to flunk too many opportunities to pocket wins that are in their hands.
--- Of course there are X Factors. There's no way of predicting injuries and the possible loss of important players for a long period of time.
--- And we don't know what Chaim Bloom will do before the Aug. 3 trade deadline. If he moves starting pitcher Dustin May, and-or outfielder Lars Nootbaar and a reliever (Ryne Stanek) or two, the Cardinals would lose some buoyancy. They'd have a potential shortfall of talent. Then again, Bloom traded Brendan Donovan, Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras and Nolan Arenado and the Cardinals improved.
— Since the playoff format expanded to six wild-card teams (3 per league) in 2022, the 24 qualifying wild cards averaged 89.5 regular-season victories. But six of the wild cards made the cut with a range of 83 to 86 victories.
— Update: after losing Wednesday the Cardinals will have to go 50-40 (.556) over their final 90 games to reach 90 wins. And they’ll need a 49-41 mark (.544) to get to 89 victories. I used 89 and 90 wins as the parameters because of my cited average of 89.5 wins by the previous 24 teams that earned wild-card passes from 2022 through 2025.
— The Redbirds can’t have too many games like Wednesday’s quiet loss to the Padres, when they barely managed a murmur offensively. When this team takes a lot of bad at-bats in a game, their offense goes from pretty good to pretty bad in short time.
— Opportunity lost: the Cardinals have had a chance to sweep a three or four-game series eight times this season. They have failed to complete the sweep in five of the eight. This series with San Diego was the latest dud with a chance to sweep.
— Considering that their offense scored just 7 total runs in 27 innings in the series the Cardinals were fortunate to win two of three games from the Padres.
— What’s up with the Cardinals sleepwalking in the daytime? By easing up with a chance to sweep the three-game series, the Cardinals inexplicably fell to 13-18 in day games this season. They’re 27-14 when competing in night games.
— The Cardinals have scored 4.8 runs per night game, and 4.1 runs per day game. Their pitchers have a 3.74 ERA at night, and a 4.54 ERA in dayball. (Shrugs.)
— Kyle Leahy pitched a solid game Wednesday, logging six innings for only the second time in 14 starts. The Padres got to him for three runs, seven hits and a walk. Leahy struck out seven. The worst thing he did was walk the Padres first hitter of the game to set up an easy stolen base, which in turn set up a 1-0 lead for the Friars. That was a shot of adrenaline after the Padres scored only two runs in the first 18 innings of the series.
— Alec Burleson: with a 1-for-4 day that included the Cards’ only RBI, Burly jacked his hitting streak to 17 games. He has 6 homers and 18 RBIs during the streak. Burleson is hitting .285 with a .347 OBP and .488 slug on the season.
— Jordan Walker is 2 for 16 (.125) in his last six games, and 8 for 40 (.200) in his last nine contests.
I’ll stop typing now. 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.