It wasn't so long ago that the St. Louis Cardinals were arguably the most pleasant surprise of the 2025 MLB season; once written off as a team in denial about its inevitable rebuild, the Redbirds shook off a sleepy winter to finish the first two months of the year smack in the NL playoff picture at 33-25.
Oh, what a difference just a couple of weeks can make. The Cardinals got swept out of their own ballpark on Wednesday, dropping their third straight game to the Toronto Blue Jays by a score of 5-2. St. Louis is now 3-7 in June, and just 13-13 since winning nine straight between May 4 and May 12.
Of course, it's a long regular season. Every team is bound to go through dry spells over 162 games. But it's hard to shake the feeling that this is something more, that all the concerns we had about this organization coming into 2025 just took a little longer to percolate than we expected. The clock may have already struck midnight on this Cinderella story, and that could lead to some very tough decisions.
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Cardinals pitching has come crashing back to Earth after dream start
The biggest surprise from the Cardinals' hot start was undoubtedly their pitching staff, largely the same as the one that struggled so mightily in 2024. Behind a breakout start from young lefty Matthew Liberatore and resurgences from the likes of Erick Fedde, Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz, St. Louis was suddenly pitching as well as anybody in baseball, carrying an offense that was solid but certainly far from elite.
Unfortunately, the bloom may be off the rose. The script has totally flipped since the start of June: Cardinals pitching is 25th in baseball with a 4.95 ERA this month, and Wednesday marked the eighth time in 10 games that they'd allowed at least five runs against. St. Louis isn't short on position player talent, but they certainly don't have the sort of pop to outslug teams like that on a regular basis. Their path to contention relied on clean, fundamental baseball and run prevention, but that formula is looking more and more perilous as players revert to the backs of their baseball cards.
And that's really the problem here. It would be easier to chalk this up to simply a stretch of bad baseball if we had more reason to believe in the underlying talent on this roster. But while Liberatore was once considered a legit prospect and might just be a late bloomer, it's hard to talk yourself into the likes of Mikolas and Andre Pallante; heck, even Fedde has over a full run of difference between his actual ERA and his expected ERA per Baseball Savant.
NL playoff picture leaves precious little margin for error
If the Cardinals played in the American League, we might not even be having this conversation. Unfortunately, they play in the NL Central, and that makes this recent funk loom even larger in the grand scheme of things. The Chicago Cubs have pitching problems of their own, but they also have one of the very best offenses in baseball, a machine 1-through-9 that can keep them in games. They've also opened their division lead back up to five games.
The Wild Card picture doesn't look much prettier, not with the Philadelphia Phillies, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants all ahead of St. Louis in the pecking order (plus the Arizona Diamondbacks and Milwaukee Brewers lurking). There just aren't many soft landing spots in the Senior Circuit, and no way to really back into a playoff spot; the Cardinals will have to earn it, and right now it doesn't look like they can.
St. Louis can't afford to make the wrong call at the trade deadline
All of which presents outgoing president John Mozeliak with one heck of a dilemma. St. Louis has kept itself within striking distance so far, and could well be at least on the fringes of playoff contention by the time trade deadline season rolls around. But while the Cardinals have paid lip service to the idea of being buyers rather than sellers in late July, what good would that really do if this is what this team is?
The hot start was fun, but it doesn't change the fact that St. Louis needs to keep adding young talent, as this recent slump has only underlined. There's pitching help on the way in the Minors, but the Cardinals desperately need more star power in their lineup, and selling some key pieces at the deadline would help them to construct their next competitive core. Passing up on that opportunity for a chance to make a legitimate run is one thing; doing so because of a hot first couple of months would be malpractice, and St. Louis needs to be really honest with itself over the next few weeks about what this team's ceiling really is.