Fun Fact: Only one team wins the World Series every year. Which means 29 teams don’t win the final game of the year which according to Moneyball means their season didn’t fucking matter. When a team gets eliminated from winning the World Series I’ll do a profile of their season.
Today’s Team….
How Did They Get Eliminated
On their off day on Sept. 25th the Cardinals were eliminated when the Mets beat the Cubs at Wrigley.
What Do I Know About This Team Because I Only Follow the Brewers
The Cardinals are my second least favorite team in the division behind the Cubs, but depending on the year and the season it can easily be flip-flopped. This year they were just annoying, a thorn in the side of the Brewers at times. They played the Brewers tough and for the most part played some really good baseball to start the season. (Much to the chagrin of the front office, more on that below).
Watching the Cardinals play the Brewers this last weekend I saw something that I’m not accustomed to when I watch any Cardinals game: empty seats. The “best fans in baseball” are not supporting their team this year and it is showing in the attendance. This once again goes back to the front office decisions that are being made.
Paul Goldschmidt was no longer on the team, but that wasn’t a big deal because he had struggled all of last year for the Red Birds. So many times did Goldschmidt miss balls right down the middle. He would be 1-11 going into the final game of a series and you were just waiting for the, “oh, he’s starting to get hot right as he heads out of town 3-4 game with a HR.” But that never happened for Goldschmidt. He’s with the Yankees and I think he’s bounced back.
Nolen Arenado is still on the team for now and he is the smoothest Third Basemen in the league. From researching the Rockies I saw that the Rockies are still paying some dead-money to Arenado. He still has 2 years on his contract but the send-off he got in their final home game signaled that he will be traded in the offseason.
Who else could be traded in the offseason? Sonny Gray and his contract, Wilson Contrares and his contract. Who will hit free agency? Miles Mikolas who looks like a miner from the Gold Rush. Ollie Marmol, the manager will probably be gone after this season as well.
Things were going against the plans of the Cardinals front office but then the Miz happened. Jacob Misiorowski would make his big league debut and throw 6 scoreless innings. The Brewers would go on to win 6-0 and take the series 3 games to 1. I went to the Father’s Day game with my son and my Dad. My son fell asleep after the 1st inning but then woke up when everyone cheered for Yelich’s homerun. This would kick off Miz mania in Milwaukee which right now is just a mild case of the dizzies. Since this series these two teams have gone in opposite directions. The Brewers would pull off an amazing 9th inning rally against the Cardinals that would give them a playoff spot. Then a week later the Brewers would beat the Cardinals in extra innings when the Cardinals forgot how to run the bases when a pitcher looks you almost all the way back to 2nd. The Brewers would go on to win the division next day even though they lost and the Cardinals would have to listen to the celebration from across the stadium.
I once had a CFO I worked with who was a huge Cardinals fan. There was a fundraiser where the executive team had cutouts and you would spend money to put the cutouts in other people’s cubicles. I actually paid money so the cutout of him would come to me and I decked out his cutout with all the Brewers stuff I could print off or already had at my desk. It was worth it.
Watching the Cardinals play the Brewers recently it looked like the Cardinals found a bunch of beer league softball guys to play on their team.
So Now That I’ve Actually Done Some Research What Happened to this Team
So let’s get into this front office deal. All the research I’ve done has come from reading 3 seemingly AI generated articles about the situation in St. Louis. So I have to do a lot of inferring based on these articles and the transaction wire.
The long and the short of it is that the Cardinals decided to do a transition of power instead of outright firing John Mozeliak . They hired Chaim Bloom to take over the baseball operations but not until Mozeliak's contract expired at the end of the 2025 season. This basically meant there was one person who was making decisions for the club that wasn’t going to see them through in future seasons, and a GM in waiting who had to watch all of these things happen.
Now I’m sure Bloom has been putting his plans together, and doing his homework so he can hit the ground running once the season is over. But this is the worst scenario in any job, training your replacement.
The fans have noticed and have stopped coming to games. The Cardinals rank 11 in the NL in total attendance. Brighter days may be ahead, but they aren’t happening anytime soon.
They had played good baseball and hovered around .500 until the Father’s day series against the Brewers. They would go 39-45 after this series and even though they hung around they could never get back into Wild Card contention with the likes of the Giants, Diamondbacks and Reds playing much better baseball in the 2nd half. They were able to make it the final week of the season, much better than many expected. They were still 4 games back with 6 to play heading into the final stretch with games against the Giants and Cubs remaining. Two teams either trying to get into the playoffs or trying to build momentum into the playoffs.
They traded away their star closer Ryan Helsly, but that was the only splash move they really made at the deadline.
This team didn’t hit the long ball which a lot of that comes from Arenado having a down year and being injured for a chunk of the season. A lot of their other offensive weapons seemed to plateau in recent years.
Their pitching staff is 29th in strikeouts and has given up the 5th highest opponent batting average. Sonny Gray has been the bright spot going 14-8 with a 4.33 ERA. Ryan Helsley had 21 saves for the Cardinals but he was traded and JoJo Romero has only 7 saves on the season.
Did Anything Go Right For This Team
The best thing you could say about this team is that they played way better than they were expected and weren’t eliminated until the final week of the season. They were able to get a few guys at the trade deadline, but with some average seasons from some big name players they weren’t able to move the guys they wanted to drop the payroll they wanted. They still can make moves in the offseason, but who knows if those will be as good as the ones that they could have gotten at the deadline.
Are They Going to Get Good Anytime Soon?
This team is going to be completely different next year. With a new leader in the front office this team is going to make a lot of moves and do whatever they can to get younger and improve upon their farm system.
They are right in the middle of the Majors on payroll now, but they are going to cut a lot of payroll and because they are in rebuild mode probably won’t be pursuing any big ticket free agents. Controllable talent will be the key phrase in any trades that happen in the offseason.
They do have four prospects in the top 100, their top prospect is number 6 on the list, JJ Wetherholdt will be up next year and be playing either Shortstop or Second Base. A former first round pick has been hitting over .300 in his two years in the minors.
Their first round pick from this year, Liam Doyle is a left handed pitcher that is more than likely 2 years away.
Just one postseason award.
When Nolen Arenado is on your team you can almost always pencil in a Gold Glove award. I haven’t actually looked at his fielding stats, but I’ll assume he’s the best in the league.
Hey Grok, in 100 words summarize the 2025 St. Louis Cardinals Please don't be racist.
The St. Louis Cardinals finished the 2025 season with a record of 76-80, placing them fourth in the National League Central division. Despite showing flashes of promise, including a strong stretch in May, the team's inconsistent play and a lack of a clear long-term direction ultimately led to them missing the postseason for the third consecutive year. The season was seen as a transitional one, with a focus on developing young talent like Masyn Winn. The team's playoff odds were negligible as the regular season neared its end, and they finished far behind the division-winning Milwaukee Brewers.
Masyn Winn hasn’t played since September 8th, and looks like will be the shortstop opposite Weatherhodt next year. He’s been fine. Not sure what kind of development he’s seen. I guess getting on the field is enough.
Did the Savannah Bananas Play at their Field?
They Did! Adam Wainwright, Lance Lynn and Jason Isringhausen (I know its spelled wrong but II’m lazy and you know my rule on too much proofreading) all showed up and made an appearance.
They were going to play earlier in the year but severe weather pushed them to later in the summer. That’s actually good they came back as soon as they could. Fans wanted them, i’m sure there were some local guys on the teams that wanted to play in their home stadium a good deal all around.
Is there a baseball movie featuring this team that has dumb baseball logic I need to vent about?
There isn’t. All of their movies are documentaries. So nothing to write about here.
HOWEVER! I would like to use this time to talk about a franchise that won’t fall into any of these write ups. A League of Their Own. This is a top 3 baseball movie for me and I don’t have a lot to gripe about it.
HOWEVER! Lets start with when Kit gets mad at Dottie for saying she should be pulled from the game. Afterwards, its revealed that they clinched a spot in the playoffs with the win. Which is it? a playoff or just the championship series? There are only 4 teams in the league so it had to have been just to make the championship. Weird phrasing but I will let it pass.
Then in the next scene the commissioner seeing the tension between Dottie and Kit says he can make a trade happen to make everyone happy. With the championship around the corner. What kind of league is this? If that’s the case I’d be getting on the phone with the two teams that are making the playoffs, make an offer and stack my team for the ‘ship.
Okay. So now lets move on to the TV Series that came out a few years ago. The thing that got me is that there was way too much CGI baseball. The thing that made the movie great was they were really playing baseball. You could see it, you could feel it. When they threw baseballs they threw real baseballs. In the TV series they have scenes where they are playing catch and they have a CGI baseball. They have CGI plays in the hole. When they swing the bat, when they pitch the ball; everything looks so animated. It really took me out of the series.
If you are going to make a baseball show or movie just let the actors play baseball don’t make it look weird.
How Will Your Team Do Next Year?
I never thought I would see a complete re-build year for the Cardinals but that is what is probably going to happen next year. A whole new ball club will be in St. Louis and maybe the fans will support this front office and team in the stands. A long season for St. Louis maybe not last place in the division but don’t be surprised if it is: 69-93
Next on the Chopping Block
I had the Rangers in this spot but it looks like its actually the Marlins who were eliminated today as well. So lets get the Marlins article finished up and posted.