With Halloween just a few days away, it feels very appropriate for the moment to pull this dead body of a Cardinals 2026 roster out and start dissecting what lies beneath the skin. Get your scalpels, bone saws, and retractors out, and let’s dig into what we can find!
Offense
This past week, we learned the Cardinals had decided to part ways with hitting coach Brant Brown, and for some, that came as a shock, not only because President of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom had conveyed that the Cardinals were “status quo” on the coaching staff, but there also wasn’t major fan pushback to have Brown removed from his position like recent previous coaches like Turner Ward or Jeff Albert. However, when you look across the board at where the team ranked in several major offensive team categories, the motivation to part ways and not renew Brown’s contract starts to make more sense. 22nd in team average, 22nd in team OBP, 29th in team OPS, 24th in Home Runs, 28th in ISO, 28th in wOBA, 26th in wRC+, and 25th in O-WAR. They finished in the bottom 10 in most statistical categories. There’s a lot of speculation around Casey Chenoweth, who was promoted this season from the Double-A squad because of his work with Cardinals breakout RF Jordan Walker, that he could wind up being the Cardinals’ next primary hitting coach. I would also expect Brandon Allen to get some serious consideration after being on the staff for several years and having an intimate familiarity with all of the Cardinals’ hitters.
So, what was the “Cause of Death” for this squad? When you have multiple organ failures occur all at once, it’s pretty difficult to identify one main cause; however, I would point to the power. It’s just an indisputable fact that teams that don’t slug the baseball consistently don’t win a ton of games on average in the modern game. When we look at the statistic ISO, or Isolated Power, which is the SLG% – BA, it tells you how often you’re generating extra-base hits and power, not just empty calories from singles. MLB average for ISO is .140, and the Redbirds had 7 players with a minimum of .140 ISO; that list included Baez, Walker, Burleson, Bernal, Urias, Crooks, and Herrera, who came in at exactly the league average of .140. The first 4 names listed are undeniably the Cardinals’ core of power producers. Urias was DFA’d in August, and Jimmy Crooks struck out 32% of his at-bats and struggled to make consistent enough contact for his power to be a relevant element in his game.
Ivan Herrera is one of the more unique cases, given that we know the power potential is real with him, but underlying metrics in terms of xSLG were down .101 points, Hard Hit% down 7.1%, and barrel% down 5%. We saw him trying to make several in-box tweaks to his setup over the course of the 2nd half of the season, and with Rainiel Rodriguez footsteps starting to get louder and louder behind him, the questions of his long-term viability in the organization, especially as he begins his trip through arbitration and his salary continues to grow, are how soon he is viewed as expendable.
Herrera was far from the lone letdown in this regard, JJ Wetherholt was impressive with the power in the 1st half of the season and the tendonitis in his wrist really zapped his impact until it was to the point where he could no longer even swing his bat competetively that the Cardinals forced Wetherholt out of the lineup and onto the IL, despite his persistent pleas to remain in the lineup daily. His and Jordan Walker’s 2nd half power fall-offs really created glaring issues with the squad’s ability to consistently score runs. Nathan Church’s .118 was 28th out of 31 CF with a minimum of 350 PA this season, and Masyn Winn’s was 30th of 33.
Potential internal boosts from guys like Jesus Baez and Rainiel Rodriguez next season should provide this group with the added thump they’re desperate for, though I don’t anticipate those guys being real options until maybe June at the earliest.
Defense
The St. Louis Cardinals have always prided themselves on their ability to play strong fundamental defense and suppress opposing offenses from scoring in lockstep with a pitch-to-contact-heavy approach. Chaim Bloom and the revamped front office group have shifted some of that approach to a more swing-and-miss-heavy dynamic among the pitchers they’re seeking through the draft, in trade, and international free agency. Pairing that with well-above-average to plus defenders on the diamond, along with playing 81 games in the offensive wasteland that is Busch Stadium, one Cardinals source posed the question, “Is run suppression and leveraging Busch Stadium really a bad way to build a ball club?” to me. The Cardinals have won a lot of games in the past with that approach, but my counter to their perspective is that fans come to the park to see offense too. That not just winning, but how you win as well, should be an important factor. Glavine and Maddux watched Big Mac hit balls out of Busch 2 and said, “Chicks dig the long ball,” and they’re right!
But getting off that soapbox, the Cardinals were a very strong team on the defensive side of the ball. The team ranked 3rd in outs above average (OAA), 18th in defensive runs saved (DRS; this one is strange to me), 3rd in fielding run value (FRV), and 5th in D-WAR. Fangraphs also has a metric, rGDP, that measures a team’s 2B/SS combo and their ability to save runs with double plays, and the Cardinals rated out as the number 1 middle infield unit at a +7 in 2026.
Side tangent number 2 on this topic. I know some Cardinals fans have inquired about the idea of moving JJ over the 3rd base, and I’m not at all, and neither are the Cardinals, inclined to consider moving Wetherholt off of a more premium defensive position up the middle. Furthermore, what he displayed this season in tandem with Masyn Winn up the middle has the potential to be incredibly special, foundationally special even.
Winn, Wetherholt, and Starting Pitcher Michael McGreevy are all Gold Glove finalists this season, and there are cases to be made for all 3 to take home hardware.
“Cause of Death” – N/A; this patient is still alive and well and should be for several years to come, barring a catastrophic accident.
Pitching
Let’s start with the rotation and call it like it is. This was a group that was mostly comprised of bridge starting pitchers and short-term placeholders for the inevitable high-upside, high-octane, swing-and-miss-generating demons that are ascending through the minor leagues at a rapid pace. Dustin May was a 1-year flier the Cardinals were able to get the most out of and flip for more high-upside young talent. Andre Pallante has 2 years remaining, and that’s right around when the Cardinals expect to be entering their next contention window. Kyle Leahy is over the age of 30, and while it’s not guaranteed to be an immediate or steep decline in his career, there are historical markers that suggest that he won’t be a focal point of the rotation by that time as well.
Michael McGreevy is a prototypical back-of-the-rotation starter. When he enters arbitration within 2 years, are the Cardinals going to pay him above the league minimum if guys like Hunter Dobbins, Richard Fitts, Mason Molina, Cooper Hjerpe, Tekoah Roby, Daniel Eagan, Teegan Kuhns, Jacob Odle, or Cade Crossland exist? That’s not even mentioning the big elite arms like Liam Doyle, Tanner Franklin, Jurrangelo Cintje, Brandon Clarke, or Yhoiker Fajardo. To go along with a Quinn Mathews who has already emerged from the farm. My answer would be no, and the smart money would be to bet against it. So, I and other Cardinals content creators have been kicking around the idea of when, not if, McGreevy eventually becomes someone the Cardinals can leverage in order to obtain the next needed piece to add to their ever-restocking farm system at a below market level rate with years of team control remaining.
This is the process the Brewers, Guardians, and Rays champion. Cycling young, inexpensive strikeout arms rather than committing 6 years at a 30 million AAV that most couldn’t stomach, with the possibility of a missed season due to TJ or any of the other laundry list of injury pitchers’ experience.
This season, the Cardinals’ starting pitchers had a bit of a mixed bag of results. 12th in ERA, 12th in FIP, 24th in K%, 11th in BB%, 26th in BAA, and 24th in WHIP. These results coincided with pitchers like McGreevy falling off in the 2nd half, Leahy having a weird April and September, Andre Pallante had 3 or 4 poor starts against the Brewers but was terrific against pretty much every other oppononent, Dustin May was dealt mid season and his spot was taken over by Hunter Dobbins whos season was derailed by injury, and then Quinn Mathews had only 1 real non competetive start in the final 2 months of the season but it wasnt enough to raise the tide, and Matthew Liberatore found a way to strike out more batters but had trouble stopping a spiraling inning from going out of control more times than not.
“Cause of Death” – It’s the strikeouts. 3 of the 4 teams that competed for the pennant this season were in the top 5 in K%, the only exception was the Tampa Bay Rays, who still came in at 13th. A lot of the earlier names I alluded to will help infuse the swing-and-miss stuff into the pitching staff over the next 2 seasons.
Now let’s move on to the bullpen, a group that, results-wise, was a bit of a night of the living dead. 20th in ERA, 19th in FIP, 23rd in K%, 26th in BB%, 19th in BAA, and 22nd in WHIP. Fundamentally, this was a bottom-10 position group in the sport, and that’s not good enough. Gordon Graceffo, armed with his new slider, really took some important strides forward this season; the emergence of Luis Gastelum was a fun jolt once he corrected the pitch-tipping issue. Justin Bruihl was solid if unspectacular and a true horse out of the pen. Riley O’Brien has closer-type stuff but clearly had moments that were less than brilliant, to put it kindly. Guys like Cade Winquest, Hancel Rincon, and Max Rajcic were able to show some things in their opportunties. Same with Ryan Fernandez though im not sure what his long term future looks like with St. Louis when they continued to not call him up down the stretch of this season.
Sandro Santana, so much of this guy’s stuff has been made such a big deal of, and for good reason. He has a real chance to make the club out of spring training, and that would instantly be a huge boost to the group going forward. I also think of all the places on the roster that Chaim Bloom might try to strike and improve with a big-league addition this offseason; it’s in the bullpen. So, I’ll be curious to see how this group is reshaped between now and opening day, whenever that is.
‘Cause of Death” – K-BB%, the strikeout-to-walk ratio was horrible, and you can get by with high walk rates if you also strike out a lot of guys, and similar with the inverse, though much tougher, that you can get by with fewer strikeouts if you don’t walk anybody. It’s really hard to have success if you walk too many and don’t strike out enough, especially for all of the high-leverage moments the bullpen has to perform in. This bullpen might as well have suffered from a gas leak because if someone struck a match (did damage), it usually resulted in a blow-up.
So, as the official VEB coroner, this Cardinals 2026 body has been on ice for over a month now, and the diagnosis would indicate that this St. Louis crew suffered significant muscle atrophy and asphyxiation, as the wind that filled their lungs in the first half of the season was quickly squeezed out of them after their failed 5-game series against Milwaukee in early July, and the thump and muscle from the offense in the first half atrophied and weakend due to injury and fatigue that ultimately slowed their offense down to a crawl in the 2nd half to the point it could no longer compensate for a less than stellar pitching staff as a whole.
I also want to add to the “notes” column of the examination chart that, though this team wasn’t expected to survive much of the season, the intention was not to do so but to see how long it could sustain itself under its own power, and we saw some important growth steps from players on the roster. I expect next season’s body of work to hold up much longer than this one was able to. It might even make it the whole season with a timely cortisone shot or 4 in the arm throughout the season to get it there. Alright, enough metaphors.
-thanks for reading
