What’s in the Cards for the Cards?

It’s no longer early. Whether or not one considers the preseason prognostications about the Cardinals being contenders entering the 2023 season to be well or ill-conceived, they’re certainly not contenders now. Reassurances that it was still early in the season no longer work with baseball approaching the halfway point and the All-Star break. Wednesday night’s collapse in the eighth inning against the Astros dropped St. Louis to 33–46, giving the team a four-game cushion in the ignominious contest to be the worst in the NL Central. The only silver lining is a sad one: in a sea of humiliations, nobody notices another bucket being bailed into it. The Cardinals’ playoff chances haven’t actually evaporated completely, but they more reflect the bland mediocrity that covers the division rather than any great merit of the team. For the first time in a long while, “what’s next?” may not be simply “second verse, same as the first.”

To describe the Cardinals in recent decades, I’d personally call them the best of baseball’s conservative franchises. One of the shocking things about the team is just how unbelievably stable and consistent it is. I was in middle school the last time St. Louis lost 90 games in a season (1990); only five living people on the planet were around for the last time the team lost 100. Even just looking at starts rather than entire seasons, this is one of the worst-performing Cardinals squads that anyone alive has watched.

The franchise has had worst starts, but most of those were in the days of very much yonder. Outside of a possible handful of 105-year-old St. Louis residents, we really only have two Cardinals teams in recent memory that got off to worse starts.

If you’re looking beyond 2023, the Cardinals are in a bit of a pickle. It’s been a long time since they either tore the roster down to its foundations or went whole hog in offseason investment, and they might find themselves in that awkward zone where they’re neither good enough to win now or later. Ken Rosenthal over at The Athletic wrote about this dangerous trap in which they’ve been ensnared, and it’s one of the reasons I’m writing this piece. To quote Ken:

Drafting and developing remains the Cardinals’ specialty. Both The Athletic’s Keith Law and Baseball America ranked their system ninth-best in the majors before the season started. So, if a free-agent splurge is unlikely, why not make a push for even more young talent and move Goldschmidt in addition to the more obvious trade candidates? And if Goldschmidt goes, why not Arenado in the offseason?

Sounds like too much, I know. Mozeliak, in his comments Friday, all but said it would be too much. A team averaging nearly 41,000 at Busch Stadium and profiting greatly from the adjacent Ballpark Village should seriously think twice about ever resembling a tanking club. But if only as a thought exercise, let’s consider how such an idea might play out.

So what I want to do is to test out how viable trying to finesse a Goldilocks strategy would be at this point. Let’s start with some fresh 2024 projections for the Cardinals — that is, the Cardinals who are under contract for 2024 — and try to assemble a team out of them:

This is the strong part of the Cardinals; the core is entirely signed for the 2024 season. All six of the team’s MLB free agents are pitchers, with Paul DeJong as the only projected departure here, for the moment, and I don’t think many people reading this will disagree with my notion that his $12.5 million team option will not be picked up.

But even with a solid set of projections, there are cracks showing. As a group, ZiPS sees these players as about three wins worse overall next year than it initially envisioned their 2024 seasons back in March. In other words, even with good projections, there has been some decline in the long-term outlook.

It’s about to get much worse, though; it’s time to look at the pitchers:

While the outlook has actually improved slightly for 2024, overall, it’s a group that’s missing the top end. Outside of Helsley, who ZiPS doesn’t even know is out with the dreaded forearm strain, nobody projects to shine. And losing Jordan Montgomery in particular hurts. Let’s put it this way: ZiPS projects Matz to lead the rotation in K/9 in 2024.

Now, if I shift around the playing time to a more realistic allotment, bring in some more reserves, and repeat the process with the other four teams in the NL Central, here’s what I get for 2024 NL Central standings using only players under contract:

That’s 11 games worse than the 2023 projection, and even though the Cardinals won’t literally stand pat, I can’t see them adding 11 wins relative to what the other NL Central teams add this upcoming winter. They probably can’t improve the offense significantly in free agency, short of signing Shohei Ohtani. (They’re not signing Shohei Ohtani in free agency.) Starting pitcher is probably the area that can add the most wins, but the problem is that the pickings look rather thin. There’s also already $125 million committed for 2024, and with arbitration and the various salaries of the team’s various depth pieces, you’re probably looking at around $150–$160 million as the starting point. The team’s ownership group has given no indication that it’s about to go Steve Cohen on free agency; for $35 million, St. Louis couldn’t even keep the team’s current rotation, the one with the 4.81 ERA, intact. The needs on the pitching side are more than a couple of no. 3 starters and a few relief arms.

So in the end, I am forced to agree with Ken’s thesis: the Cardinals no longer fit the necessary requirements to stay their long-term course. It’s not enough to expect the rest of the division to out-mediocre them; whether it’s an aggressive rebuild or an aggressive spending spree, they need to upset the apple cart.