Quick Cardinal Predictions

While traveling, I didn’t get this out the door before the season. But it’s obvious this is a franchise in transition, stripped of Mo’s castoffs and now asking a rotation of unknowns to carry a young, uneven lineup into a division the Cubs have already claimed as their own. Sigh. The projection systems have the Cardinals winning somewhere between 66 and 75 games.

They are not wrong to be skeptical. But they are wrong.

These systems don’t know what Dustin May looks like when he’s right. They don’t know whether Matthew Liberatore’s improved command is real or a sample-size illusion. And they almost certainly have no idea what to do with Wetherholt, who posted a .973 OPS at Triple-A Memphis last year and has never taken a major league at-bat. Development doesn’t show up cleanly in preseason models. The last three seasons my Cards predictions were within five games of the eventual finish; the data told the story with the caveat I didn’t model a sell-off last year. Here, there just isn’t any data.

I’m a homer, but the honest case for optimism runs through pitching. Liberatore looks like a genuine mid-rotation arm. McGreevy has feel. May, signed on a one-year deal, was sitting 97-98 this spring with the hard sinker working—the best he’s looked since his Dodgers days before two Tommy John surgeries interrupted everything. If that holds for 150 innings (a big if), the Cardinals win games they lost last year. A bullpen anchored by Romero and O’Brien isn’t embarrassing. This staff can keep games close.

The real variable is Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman.¹ They are the lineup’s power ceiling. If both find themselves and produce 25-plus home runs, this offense functions. If one or both disappoint again, there’s nobody behind them to compensate. Wetherholt can get on base. Winn can hit. But who else on this roster is going to drive in 85 runs? That’s the challenge.

Quinn Mathews (the Stanford lefty who lit up the minors in 2024 before a shoulder injury derailed 2025) is the wildcard. He’ll start in Memphis, but five or six strong starts gets him a call. If he arrives in July and shows what he showed two years ago, the Cardinals finish the year feeling genuinely encouraged about what’s coming.

With a thumb in the air, I have them at 75–80 wins (again, that sample size problem). Fourth place in the NL Central but not an embarrassment. A year that tells you about the next three.

But hey, who knows? It’s the first time I’ve signed up for Cardinals baseball on MLBTV in three seasons, not knowing the answer is exciting. And I think there’s something here; maybe momentum takes us somewhere.²

Hope may not be a strategy, but it will keep me watching.

Changelog