2026 Wasn’t the St. Louis Cardinals Year-It Might Have Been the Start

I am going to need a bit of time to digest the 2026 Cardinals season. The first half was largely defined by optimism and excitement, but the cruel forces of regression to the mean in the second half took much of the Bloom out of the Cardinals’ rose. The preseason ZiPS projected win total was 76 with an 80th-percentile projection of 82.8 wins. The Cardinals sit at 77 wins with two to play. If you take ZiPS as the gold standard, which I personally do, the Cardinals have marginally exceeded expectations. That is certainly better than marginally underachieving, but it is not the resounding success that looked like a real possibility in the early going. Today, I want to highlight a few of the things that I think I will remember when I look back on the 2026 Cardinals.  

The Position Player Core Emerging and Fading

Through the first half of the year, the Cardinals were really mostly fun. And that was mostly because of the position player core. The defense was great, and the offense was solid and seemed to have a penchant for late-inning dramatics. The combination of the completely unexpected Jordan Walker breakout and the highly anticipated JJ Wetherholt excellence stole the show. Along with the two stars, Masyn Winn, Alec Burleson, and Ivan Herrera gave the Cardinals a legitimately excellent core. Through the first half of the season, the Cardinals had five players on pace for 3+ WAR seasons.

This group was producing at an elite level. Like, a “this position player core is good enough to compete for a World Series” level. I was curious how they stacked up against other teams’ core position player groups, so I pulled each team’s top five WAR players through June 27 and looked at the combined WAR production.

Through the first 80 games, the Cardinals’ quintet’s WAR of 10.3 was the fifth best in baseball. For reference, the Cubs had the best group of five with 11.5 combined WAR among Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch, Seiya Suzuki, Dansby Swanson, and Ian Happ. 

I think we were all braced for some potential regression from Jordan Walker in the second half, but regression and/or injury hit the group hard.

After the tepid second half, the Cardinals’ core five WAR total ranks 20th for the full season. I still feel really good about this group moving forward. Wetherholt and Winn dealt with injuries. Burleson only had a minimal step back. Herrera’s finish is slightly concerning, but with his track record, I expect this to be a minor bump in his career trajectory. Walker is, of course, the elephant in the room. This team looked completely different while he was obliterating baseballs in the middle of the lineup. Hopefully his second-half performance is his new floor and he can continue to build moving forward. 

The Starting Pitching Stepping Forward

Part of the reason the starting pitching sticks out to me is just how fun the Kyle Leahy breakout has been. Leahy went from being one of my least favorite pitchers to watch to perhaps my favorite on the team. His second-half charge led a rotation that only got better as the year went on. At the end of April, they ranked 29th in MLB in WAR. They improved that ranking every month and have climbed to 12th in baseball for the full season. Here is how the first and second halves compare.  

Despite trading away May, the Cardinals’ rotation has still improved in the second half, going from 4.8 WAR to 7.0. Pallante and McGreevy have remained steady by the underlying metrics throughout the season. Leahy had his coming-out party and Mathews has looked good in his first eight starts. 

I am absolutely in agreement with those who argue the Cardinals should go after a top-of-the-rotation pitcher this offseason via trade or free agency, but the quality of the depth that emerged this season is going to give the team a lot of flexibility moving forward. The Memphis rotation going into next year could conceivably be Liam Doyle, Jurrangelo Cijntje, Tekoah Roby, Daniel Eagen, and Mason Molina (with a star-studded AA rotation behind them). The current rotation sets a high floor and the prospects on the way provide a high ceiling. Hopefully we look back on 2026 as the beginning of a decade-long run of starting pitcher excellence. 

The Bullpen Woes

I did frame this article as the things I would remember from this year, so, unfortunately, the bullpen must be mentioned. I don’t want to dwell on the negatives too much, but other than Riley O’Brien pitching lights out for a month or so at the beginning of the year, not much went right for this unit. The surface statistics like ERA and WAR paint the bullpen as one of the five or ten worst pens in baseball, but it felt much worse. The 29 blown saves are the most the team has had since 2008. The LOB% of 68.4% was second-worst in baseball. 

I don’t think it is reasonable to frame the bullpen as the reason the Cardinals missed the playoffs. Going by Win Probability Added (WPA), the Cardinals’ bullpen contributed -2.82 wins. The MLB average bullpen was around +2. So, an average performance would have ostensibly netted the team about five wins. Five additional wins would still have the team five games out of the last Wild Card spot. If you swapped in the No. 1 bullpen by WPA, Atlanta at +11.71, then you would have a team sneaking into the playoffs. This is not to make excuses for the pen, but just to illustrate how narrow this team’s path to the playoffs was. 

I would love to see Chaim Bloom make some targeted acquisitions this offseason, but internal help is on the way too. The good news: things are unlikely to get any worse than this year. 

A Glimpse Into the Future 

To end on a positive note, we got some extremely fun debuts this year. Joshua Baez, Leo Bernal, Quinn Mathews, and Cooper Hjerpe have all been on the prospect radar for years and all of them acquitted themselves quite well in their limited St. Louis time. We will all remember Joshua Baez’s three-homer game at Wrigley as the signature moment of the season. But the thing that will make these debuts truly significant is what they do next. Baez and Bernal give the Cardinals two more players who could join the aforementioned core five to anchor the next great team. Bernal looked like a 10-year veteran (mostly) and has the on-field swagger and presence reminiscent of Yadier Molina. Baez hit 41 home runs across the minors and majors and could be the big power bat that the team has been searching for. Yes, they both have questions that they will need to answer, but the upside is tremendous and both should be penciled into the Opening Day lineup in 2027.   

On the pitching side, Mathews and Hjerpe overcame a lot to make successful St. Louis debuts. There are still plenty of questions around health and strike-throwing ability, but both have the upside to be difference-makers in the rotation. 

In addition to the big four prospects (and Wetherholt), Luis Gastelum, Cade Winquest, Brycen Mautz, Blaze Jordan, Jimmy Crooks, and Bryan Torres all made it to St. Louis for the first time. Not all of these gentlemen are likely to be impact big leaguers, but all of them made the 2026 season more exciting.

What I’ll Actually Remember

The harsh reality is that I probably won’t remember much of the 2026 season five or ten years from now. In St. Louis, we remember the teams that play and win in October. I am broadly supportive of the approach the Cardinals’ front office and ownership have taken in bringing in Bloom and focusing on a real reset. But I am ready to see winning baseball and monetary investment in the major league roster again. I am willing to trust the process for now, but the thing that would make 2026 truly stand out is if it is the last season in which the Cardinals miss the playoffs in the next decade or so.