However, when they re-engage in the depths of Cloud City, things take a turn. Vader, using his power, starts throwing debris at Luke. Luke is able to defend himself from the first one or two, but soon the cumulative effect wears on him and, eventually, he finds himself sucked out of a window.

The Cardinals, right now, are starting to feel like Luke waving his lightsaber as Vader peels things off the wall. The trade deadline came and went, removing two significant pitching options (and Lars Nootbaar, whose impact had been lessened this year due to injury). The club fended off that blow rather easily, as Alec Burleson had a three home run game right after the deadline and they took the next fire series. (Though it took a little luck and a Dane Myers error to salvage the Cincinnati trip.)

However, even in those series, the bullpen turned into an obstacle of its own, as even formerly reliable arms causing angst. When you almost lose a 10-5 lead with only three outs remaining, that leaves a mark. Then, before the Philadelphia series started, another implement came hurtling the club’s way as Andre Pallante went on the injured list. That night, Hunter Dobbins left his start with a strained forearm, never a good prognosis. A club that had gone more than a year and a half without a starting pitcher injury had two of them hit in the same night.

The club winds up dropping the first two in Philadelphia—one because, in part, Jose Fermin needed to play center field in an extra-inning game and one because Quinn Mathews didn’t have it and the large deficit meant that Ryan Fernandez went for two innings2. Suddenly a team that left Chicago on a serious high now is back to one game over .500 and while reeling is an overstatement, staggering might not be.

This team has shown a significant resiliency all year, of course. When they slipped under .500 a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t necessarily expect them to return to that level or any significant mark above yet. Yet they got to three games up before the Philly series and it would have been more had the Reds series gone the way it should have instead of the way it did. I’m not saying that they are flying out the plate glass window on their way to the depths yet, but another bit of debris might wind up shattering that window and forcing them to try to hang on.

There’s a lot of great things about this team and no matter what happens this has been a successful season. All gas tanks eventually hit E though and it’s possible the warning light is coming on.

So it’s been quite some time since I put anything here and for that I apologize3. We’ll get into a few reasons for that in the personal section at the end, but for the moment I wanted to hit on a couple of things that happened this month. I’ve addressed these topics and more on both Meet Me at Musial and Gateway To Baseball Heaven (available wherever fine podcasts are downloaded), but I’ll hit some of the high points here for those that aren’t regular listeners.

The first big thing was, of course, the trade deadline. The scuffles of the team in July made it easier for Chaim Bloom to do what he was always going to do, trade Dustin May and JoJo Romero. I didn’t necessarily expect them both in the same trade, however! It was an interesting packaging of assets and it produced results, getting two excellent outfield prospects out of the Brewers. I have no issue with Bloom picking the in-division rivals to make this deal. For one, neither May nor Romero is going to help the Brewers in 2027 and beyond, unless of course the Brewers extend them. The Cardinals aren’t catching the Brewers in 2026, so why would we get worked up about them getting better in the short-term? Besides, this could help keep the Cubs from taking the division (it seems nothing can keep them out of the playoffs entirely) and that’s always a good thing. Trading in division with expiring contracts is fine, unless you make it easier for the Cubs to win the World Series. That goes against first principles of being in the Cardinals organization, in my book.

The trade of Lars Nootbaar was a little more interesting, in part because it came so late in the day, just minutes before the deadline. In my last post, I said I didn’t think he’d get moved and I really didn’t, but it made sense in the fact that the club had done without Noot a lot this season and he’s always been more of a theoretical contributor than an actual one. Statcast loves him, baseball card numbers don’t. Noot’s hitting under .200 since the deal (walking eight times, striking out seven, continuing to reinforce the idea he’s become a little too passive at the plate) and, suffice it to say, his eventual replacement has been a bit more productive.

The return on that deal was solid as well for someone with those issues. I was at the Springfield Cardinals game last night in Little Rock and Daniel Eagan looked pretty sharp, taking a no-hitter into the fifth and really just having one iffy inning.4 I didn’t get to see Sandro Santana, the second part of that return, but he’s been pretty smooth5 so far, striking out 11 and walking just one in 5.2 innings.

All in all, Bloom had one of the better trade deadlines that we’ve seen and we could see the dividends starting as early as late next year, I think. Could Josiah Ragsdale start at AAA next year and be knocking on the door by the All-Star Break? I’d think it’s possible (depending, as everything does, on the CBA). The same with Eagan maybe, though I’d guess he’s a Springfield guy to kick off 2027. Santana, though, feels like a fast riser possibility. Hopefully at the end of the season we can have Kyle Reis on one of the shows and we can see how likely that idea is from an expert.

On one of the shows, I made the argument that you could trade May and Nootbaar and either hold serve or perhaps get better by promoting Mathews/Dobbins and Baez to fill those spots. Basically, that’s what the team has done now and while it remains to be seen if they are better, there’s definitely some excitement around the replacements, though after this weekend that’s more on the offensive side.

As we all know, Joshua Baez made some amazing history last Saturday in Chicago. To hit a home run off the first pitch you see in the majors is awesome enough, but then to hit two more, spraying the ball around the yard while also putting it in the stands, was incredible. Add to the fact that it happened in Wrigley against the Cubs and, well, if they ever top that start to a career, I want to see it.

Baez currently has five hits, four of the home run variety, and we’ve seen the strikeout issue we knew was going to rear its head (12 in 32 at bats). However, the power is there—even most of his outs are hit hard—and we’ll likely see some more big moments from him before the year is done. Hey, he’s already gotten two steals so he’s in the 2/2 club. Right there with Pedro Pages and ahead of a lot of guys, including the traded Lars Nootbaar.

As probably all of you know, Bernie Miklasz has started up his Substack. A number of you have found yourselves over here from a link on his page, I believe, and for that I thank him and you. I haven’t done the full subscription thing yet, but I plan to soon. I know Bernie will have a lot of free stuff but not only do you want to have access to all he writes, it’s a way of saying thanks for all he’s done throughout his long St. Louis career.

The podcasts are going well. Besides the regular shows—Allen and I did a Musial this morning and David and I will get a Gateway in tomorrow—I had the chance recently to talk with Michael Clair, author of We Sacrifice Everything To Baseball, currently drastically discounted at Amazon. It was a fun talk about his book on the Czech baseball team, so I recommend giving it a listen!

When my birthday rolled around at the beginning of the month, I kicked off an idea that I’ve come to term #ProjectHailCyclones. Between now and my next birthday (when I turn 52), my goal is to have lunch/dinner/coffee/etc. with at least 52 of those that graduated with me from Russellville High School (home of the Cyclones, to explain the hashtag) in 1993. While I have a great group of guys that I still see regularly, I’m expanding out to those that I didn’t know as well either then or now.

So far I’ve had five of these with at least two more scheduled for next week. It’s been a really interesting experience so far, spending time doing some reminiscing, of course, but also talking about what’s going on now, how things are, and just spending time connecting. I’m finding that it’s needed for a lot of folks these days.

Most notably, we don’t know how he is getting on either the 40-man or the 26-man roster.

Getting on the 26-man isn’t terribly hard, as there are plenty of options there. The year has not been kind to Matt Svanson, who could go down to Memphis for a bit. It’d be surprising if the Cards changed course on Luis Gastelum this quickly, but it’s undeniable he’s had a rough start to his major league career.

Honestly, the 40-man and 26-man might be taken care of in the same pen stroke, as Peter Strzelecki, who wound up taking the loss this evening, could get in the DFA column that Jared Shuster has perfected (three time champion) and Scott Blewett, Matt Pushard, Chris Roycroft, and Bruce Zimmerman have dealt with. While it’s unfortunate for Mr. Strzelecki, especially since bullpen arms of any quality are of use to this team, that is the path of least resistance.

Or Chaim Bloom could pull the trigger, start the carousel, and start making trades.

On Wednesday night, Dustin May started against the Chicago Cubs. He was fully in command, looking exactly like the pitcher we hoped the Cardinals were getting when they signed him this past winter. After five innings, he had allowed no runs, one hit, two walks, and struck out three while throwing just 70 pitches.

And he was pulled from the game to hugs and well-wishes from the rest of the guys in the dugout.

It wasn’t quite #HugWatch, since a completed trade wasn’t the reason May was pulled early from his start. However, it was clear that the Cardinals weren’t going to risk injury to a player that they intend to deal off before 4 PM Central on Monday afternoon.

This is what we always expected, of course, from the very moment May became a Cardinal. The best-case scenario was that he would pitch well, rebuild his value, then get sent to a contender at the deadline. The fact that the Cardinals were contenders for much of the year put a wrinkle in things, but given that they are now two games under .500, the decisions are a lot easier for Bloom and company to explain to the fan base.

May’s been a great Cardinal and I’d love to see the two sides discuss a return this winter. However, it’s best for both sides if a deal gets done. The question is, when is going to happen?

It would be interesting to look back at the John Mozeliak era and see how many of his deals were done on deadline day, how many the day before, etc. The last few years, it felt like whatever deal was done (and a deal wasn’t always done) was done just minutes before time was called and pencils were down. It wasn’t always the case, of course—the Colby Rasmus deal was done a couple of days before the deadline, for instance—but that’s the impression that Mo left, one he’s already contradicting out in LA as he made one of the first deals of this cycle.

How is Chaim Bloom going to approach this, though? May would seem to be one of the better arms on the market and as such you would think that he would want to wait as long as possible to extract value. That would also seem to be the case for the names that have been bandied about but very well may not be traded, such as Ivan Herrera, Pedro Pages, Lars Nootbaar, Riley O’Brien, Andre Pallante, or Jimmy Crooks.

What about Ryan Stanek, though? Do you try to squeeze every ounce out of that deal, knowing that the difference between a deal made Saturday morning and a deal made Monday afternoon may be minuscule at best? I don’t know. I would guess if, should Strzelecki not be the play, it’s probably Stanek getting shipped out to kick things off. Stanek pitched Thursday afternoon and they might be open to moving him before he is needed in the bullpen again.

We know May is going and we figure Stanek is as well. Are any of the other players really going to be moved? My gut feeling is no. If they can get the package they want for Nootbaar, an ask that is said to be “astronomical” right now, then they pull that trigger but I’m a little iffy if they’ll get it.

I really don’t think that they will trade Ivan Herrera. Move him out from behind the plate, sure. I just can’t see them giving up on that bat, though. Maybe if they were able to get a top-notch talent back, but it’d almost have to be someone that’s already established themselves somewhat and if that’s the case, why would a team trade them off?

I think a lot of the smoke around these guys is a little extra trade hype because at this time of year, there’s not a lot that is actually happening but a lot of people talking about things that could happen. The Cardinals will surely listen to offers on anyone on the roster but at the end of the day, I’d not be stunned if it was just May and Stanek that wound up leaving the team via trade.

Back to Quinn Mathews, though. Given his status and the fact that you are adding him to the 40-man roster, I don’t think he’s coming up just to give the rotation a little break. I’m not 100% sure he’s coming up to fill the upcoming May hole (not to be confused with a maypole) in the rotation.

After all, Hunter Dobbins has pitched well and there seems no reason why he shouldn’t be up here should a trade happen. So here are three possibilities.

1. The Cardinals are going to go with a six man rotation the rest of the way. That would help pitchers like Kyle Leahy and Michael McGreevy get fewer innings the rest of the way and not have them jump up a lot in their innings compared to last year.

2. Matthew Liberatore is going to the bullpen. Liberatore has a 4.84 ERA since May 1, 2025, a number that’s not been getting better as time goes along. There’s no doubt that he has his moments, but there always seems to be one inning that just blows up on him. He’s only gone six innings four times this year and, given that he’s had success in the bullpen before, you could see the club trying him there while letting Dobbins and Mathews work as starters in the big leagues.

3. Someone else besides May gets dealt. This would probably be Andre Pallante, though you wonder if a contender might look at the success rate of McGreevy and think he’d be good for the back of a rotation. I think this is probably the least likely option but something to consider anyway.

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Getting a chance to watch Mathews (and hopefully Dobbins) will breath some life into the last two months of the season. There’s no doubt that the club has been harder to watch lately as the offense has become almost nonexistent (they are well last in fWAR this month with a 0.3 mark for the entire team) and the bullpen tends to give up runs late, so it’s been a bit of a drag tuning in each night.

That said, this team is significantly different from the teams of the last couple of years. This is a team with interesting young pieces like JJ Wetherholt, who continues to plow along toward a Rookie of the Year title. While Jordan Walker has scuffled since the All-Star Break (name a bat that hasn’t) he’s still doing enough to make you want to see his at bats. If he starts finding his stroke, a bunch of home runs could come in August.

There’s been a lot of grief given Masyn Winn and his offense of late. Never mind that he had the third most RBI in July on the team (granted, low bar but still) and the second-most walks. The average hasn’t been there, of course, but it still feels like he comes up with big hits when it matters. I remember having the same feeling about Yadier Molina in 2006. If there was a runner on second, I’d have rather had Molina at the plate than a lot of other guys. Winn’s hit .240 since the break, the second-highest (among qualified hitters) on the team. If he can have an average bat, and I think that’s absolutely in the realm of possibility, he’s going to be very valuable, because that glove…..oh, that glove. Getting a chance to see Winn flash the leather is a good reason to keep watching until October rolls around.

You also wonder if we won’t see some other debuts. Will Joshua Baez make his debut and how will that go? Will Leo Bernal get a taste of major league life (probably not unless some trades clear out the catcher spots)? Could there be other debuts out there?

Of course, you can always watch the minors instead the last couple of months, because there is so much talent down there that you’ll never go wrong no matter what team you pick. That’s not a reason to watch the major league club, of course, but it will keep you engaged in your Cardinals fandom.

I’m very interested to see what Chaim does in the next 66 hours or so, but even if nothing happens, I’ll still have the game on Monday night, Tuesday night, and every night after that, looking for things that bring me joy, hoping for rallies like we saw Wednesday night against the Cubs, and staking out a claim for the 2027 and 2028 Cardinals.

Allen and I had a great talk this morning on Musial, talking about the deadline and things surrounding that. Last week Allen was recovering from knee surgery, so it was good to have his normal energy and excitement back. Always makes for a better show.

Last week David was out of pocket so Kyle Reis joined me on Gateway and we didn’t talk about the draft or things of that nature, because you can hear that on every single podcast out there, including non-baseball ones I believe. Always good to talk to Kyle who has a unique insight on this major league squad as well given how many homegrown folks are part of it. David and I will be back at it this week, though we may wait until Monday to let the deadline get past.

I finished up Project Hail Mary, which was a very entertaining and enjoyable read. I’ve heard great things about the movie, even from people that have read the book, so I’ll try to get around to watching it at some point. The book was great, though, if you haven’t picked it up.

A new Star Wars book, Legacy, came out this week. Set between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, it focuses on Rey and Leia. I’m still getting started with it and I think it’s going to be good, but it’s hard to know this early on.

If you’d told most all of us that the club would have 50 wins at the break, we’d have wondered if something pushed the All-Star Game to mid-August. (Some would have thought the break was coming in late September.) The team has played over expectations, even though it’s likely very little about the end of July is going to change.

I was really fortunate to have St. Louis media icon Bernie Miklasz join me on Meet Me at Musial this past Friday. Bernie brought a lot of numbers that I wasn’t aware of (that’s kinda his thing) but he pointed out that the club might be over .500 for the season but they aren’t for certain periods. I don’t remember exactly his endpoints, but for example, their record since:

July 1: 6-6
June 15: 11-14
June 1: 19-18
May 15: 24-27

They were tied for second, 2 1/2 games out on May 15 (and 2 1/2 games clear in the wild card). Now, 8 1/2 games out and a game shy of being the third wild card. While the trending down has been fairly soft and gentle, it’s been consistent. The last time they were nine above .500 was June 16.

That said, the Brewers series really did a number on them. Win one of those first two, even, and it feels a little better. Win today as the Pirates are pounding the Brew Crew (how is it the Pirates have their number and the Cardinals are confounded by Milwaukee?) and even 7 1/2 feels better, especially after being 10 1/2 back earlier this week.

Still, while this team is fun, it doesn’t feel like there’s a rocket thrust coming, does it? I’m still hopeful they can finish the season over .500, but I’m pretty sure whatever Chaim Bloom wants to do at the deadline, he’s going to do it and not be concerned that he is short-circuiting a resurgent team. It’s great that they’ve gotten this far above water, but as Bloom has often reiterated, that doesn’t mean they’ve accomplished anything. It’s a nice step. The next step may be being resilient when certain pieces are out of the picture.

Bloom also has a way of having his cake and eating it as well. He can trade Lars Nootbaar, bringing in some prospect capital. We all love Noot and he’s played pretty well since coming back from that heel surgery from this winter. He’s still getting on base, the power is there, and if you have Nootbaar on your team, you feel pretty good about it.

That said, Nootbaar will face his final arbitration year this winter. It’s only a year and a half before he reaches free agency. If you don’t think that he’s going to be around or be viable for the next great Cardinals team, moving him makes a lot of sense now, when teams can get more control and, in theory, then pay more for him. He’d be a great help to a contender that needs a bit more on-base in their lineup and a good glove to boot.

Also, a trade of Nootbaar frees up a spot in the outfield for Joshua Baez, the belle of the minor league ball right now. We all know the power he’s shown in the minors, torching Triple A for 28 home runs to this point. There are some weaknesses in his game, but they have been slowly closing. While losing Nootbaar would be a blow, it would be significantly cushioned by the promotion of Baez, giving him a head start to see if he can be the guy he’s looked like the last two years at the big league level.

The other big piece might be Dustin May. May’s been a little inconsistent as of late, going just four innings today for instance. That said, he’s shown that the talent is there and he’s been relatively healthy. There’s always a need for pitching at the deadline and May could bring back a nice return, especially if some other names don’t actually make it to market.

That would put a big hole in the rotation, there’s no doubt about it. However, that hole could be filled by promoting Quinn Mathews to St. Louis to take his place. Mathews has been on a run as of late, including his start Thursday which saw him throw seven scoreless innings with seven strikeouts. To this untrained and slightly ill-informed eye, Mathews has started to regain the luster he lost last year.

Could he pitch as well as Dustin May has been pitching? I don’t know. However, Mathews would perhaps keep any torches, pitchforks, and “what is this front office doing” comments at bay if a deal gets made. Much more than if you traded May and just plugged in Hunter Dobbins.

The bullpen pieces—do you pull the trigger on a Riley O’Brien trade after he gets back from the All-Star Game, do you ship out Ryne Stanek or JoJo Romero as originally expected—are a little less interesting when it comes to replacements. Obviously Ryan Fernandez would get promoted. Brycen Mautz might get a shot as well. I don’t know there’s any buzz-worthy names you could put out there besides Tink Hence and the Memphis results show that wouldn’t be a wise idea. Perhaps Cade Winquest, though I’d have to check with Mr. Reis to see how viable an option that is.

The point is, this would be different than the John Mozeliak teardowns of the last couple of years. This wouldn’t be necessarily a free fall as the recognizable parts are shipped off. This would be an opportunity to see prospects we’ve been waiting for, albeit at the cost of some solid contributors. I’m very interested to see how Bloom approaches this deadline. While I don’t know that things on the field would impact what he did very much, not currently being a playoff team does make those moves easier for some people to swallow.

JJ Wetherholt isn’t a prospect anymore, having graduated off the lists earlier in the year, but people still want to see him and they are going to be able to for quite some time to come. It’s fascinating that Wetherholt becomes the core player of the new Cardinal era. Not that it isn’t deserved—Wetherholt has stepped right into the major league life without missing a beat and is a strong favorite for Rookie of the Year. He’s remarkable in all aspects and the Cardinals are lucky he slipped down to them a couple of years ago.

However, while Wetherholt fits in age-wise with Jordan Walker, Masyn Winn, and others, he’s also a rookie. The Cardinals had him under control (unless the CBA changes things) for five of the eight years his extension covers anyway. While it’s great to get him locked in and at a rate that very well may feel like a bargain in a few years, I’m just surprised that they went to him instead of Winn or Walker first, given that they are closer to free agency.

Maybe they were going down those paths with all those players and they arrived at the destination with JJ first. Maybe the other two aren’t ready to lock themselves into St. Louis yet. There’s all sorts of reasons why this is the first long-term agreement of the new regime. It’s not a bad one at all and it is kinda fun knowing that you can get that Wetherholt jersey now and not regret it.

I don’t tend to get worked up about the All-Star Game. I have always held that it is an exhibition (which is why I hated when “it mattered”) and the fans should see who the fans want to see. I like that every team gets one representative, because I remember the times when Ozzie Smith was the only Cardinal you were going to see. (That feeling has been around the last few years as this rule is the only reason a St. Louis player suited up.)

That doesn’t mean it’s perfect—the large markets dominate now in a way that they didn’t as I was growing up and before. I’m not sure how you mitigate that, because I do think fans that can’t get to a game should have the option to vote. (Maybe not 5 times a day, mind you.) Maybe it’s a rule where no more than two players from the same team can start, I don’t know. Of course, nowadays the bench players may get more time than the starters do.

Which leads me to the other thing that I wish the All-Star Game was that it will never be again. One of Stan Musial’s most famous moments was his game-winning shot in the 1955 All-Star Game. That came in the 12th inning. Sure, Stan didn’t start but he still played almost all of the game. It used to be that getting selected for the Game was the true honor and playing in it was a bonus. Look at that box score, for instance. Red Schoendienst got six at bats. The AL used four pitchers. The AL might use four pitchers in one inning this coming Tuesday!

In my mind, this really accelerated in 1993. Cito Gaston was managing the team and didn’t use Mike Mussina. Which might not have been an issue except that this game was in Baltimore and folks wanted to see the hometown hero. Gaston was booed for keeping him off the field, especially since the game was not close enough to be concerned about extra innings. Mussina wasn’t the only player to not play, of course. Darryl Kile and Tom Glavine didn’t pitch for the National League and hitters Robby Thompson and Andy Van Slyke stayed on the bench for the NL. (In fairness, I’m going by the box scores and at least a couple of these might not have been eligible for the game due to injury replacement. They are still listed on the roster, however.)

It seemed to me that after that, the starting pitchers started going two innings instead of three and there was more of an emphasis of getting everyone in the game, which directly led to the debacle of 2002 in Milwaukee, when both sides ran out of pitchers after 11 innings and Bud Selig threw up his hands, called it a tie, and then tried to make the game mean something in the future. It wasn’t his smartest idea.

So yes, I would like to see the starters play more. Only Riley Greene from last year’s starting lineup got three at bats. Freddie Freeman only got one! What’s the point of being a starter to get one at bat? And no pitcher went over an inning, some went just a third of a frame because the three-batter-minimum rule gets waived for this game. For a sport that wants to showcase the game, all this winds up doing is showing off the worst aspects, constant breaks for pitching changes and the inability to really showcase anyone since everyone needs their share of the spotlight.

Ideally, they’d cut the roster from 34 to something more like 26. Will there be more snubs? Sure, but you have that anyway now and the game would be much better. At least let the starting pitchers go two innings—if that breaks them, they were going to break soon anyway. Don’t sub a starter until the fifth inning at the earliest. Let people know that they may not get to play. It would be nice if every team got a rep on the field, but somebody from the 18 Dodgers that are going can take a load off and just be glad that they are there.

I didn’t mean to get off on that tangent, because I really wanted to just highlight that the Cardinals went from getting one player via commissioner edict (Jordan Walker) to getting three after injury substitutions were made. Walker, Riley O’Brien, and Ivan Herrera are all worthy of representing the club, even if Wetherholt is probably the one that would have gone if you were taking the second-best Cardinal in this situation. I look forward to seeing what they do in the game—not literally, because I don’t have a way to watch FOX, but I’ll find the highlights later. Good luck to Jordan Walker in the Home Run Derby as well—I’ll be watching that (on Netflix)!

We’ve been talking about the 2026 MLB draft for a long time now, especially after the Cardinals added picks in the Brendan Donovan deal that gave them a lot of options up front. I hope you all got a chance to listen to David’s special Gateway about the draft and I’m sure we’ll touch on that some this evening as well.

From all accounts, the Cardinals did very well in this draft. The first pick worries me a bit, though. Not because of the talent, because Trevor Condon seems to be very talented. It’s because he’s drawn comparisons to Pete Crow-Armstrong. There are few players that I really don’t like, but I have a visceral reaction to PCA. It’s not rational, but I feel like even if he wasn’t a Cub, I wouldn’t like him.

Condon is very confident in himself, which is a good trait to have unless it falls over into arrogance. As a less-than-confident person myself, that sort of apparent hubris can rub the wrong way. However, I also know that the Cardinals have been remarkably good judges of character for a long time and they haven’t been ones to put talent over who the person is in the past. If they felt that Condon was going to fit in well in the Cardinal system, I have no reason to believe he won’t. I’m sure if he’s putting up PCA-like numbers in the majors in a few years, I’ll come around. As long as he’s a little less crude to opposing fans and can come up with a celebration after an extra base hit that doesn’t feel….wrong.

For actual draft analysis, there are a ton of places to go. So many people on Twitter that give great analysis and information. You know you will get great stuff from Brian Walton and Kyle Reis, but there’s also Kareem Haq, Redbird Farmhands, and Adam Akbani, among others. We are truly blessed in the Cardinals community with excellent prospect coverage!

As I noted above, this week Allen took to Hawaii and Bernie filled in on Musial. I think we could probably talk for at least two hours once we get started. It’s always a joy to have Bernie on and I know we’ll do it again soon. I also had a chance to talk to Randall Sullivan, author of The First All-Star Game. I’ve made it about a quarter of the way through the book and I was glad to talk it over with the writer, especially someone with the background he had. It was an interesting conversation and I hope you check it out. There’s a contest in there if you are interested also!

On the book front, I finally started Project Hail Mary yesterday. I’m about 150 pages in and I can see why folks were enamored with it. I’m very interested to see where this goes and it’s been a very enjoyable read so far. I only expected to make a small dent in it but I couldn’t really put it down.

This has gone on so long that I doubt anyone makes it to this part, but tomorrow (July 13th) marks 19 years since I first sat down and wrote a post at a blog called C70 At The Bat. Kip Wells had ruined my post-ASG hopes for the team (I didn’t get into how much it bugs me when people try to compare players doing something “before the All-Star break”. The Cardinals were 40-45 that year at the break, they are 50-45 this year. That’s 10 extra games! No wonder more people can do X before the break now!)

At that time my son was a little more than two and a half, now he’s about to start his senior year of college. My daughter was less than two months old, now she’s in college as well. I don’t know what I was thinking, starting up a dedicated Cardinals blog when the term was still fairly new to the vocabulary, but I’m very glad that I did.

I’ve gotten some really fun experiences out of this whole thing. I got press credentials to the FanFest when the All-Star Game was in St. Louis in 2009. I got to interview Ozzie Smith in the lead up to that game. The behind-the-scenes tour given to myself and two others from FOX Sports Midwest (as it was then) is still something I think about often. Just this past spring training, I got to be on a Zoom call with the Cardinals manager. That’s not to even mention the 15-year run of Blogger Days and the interactions with John Mozeliak, Bill DeWitt III, and now Chaim Bloom.

The best part, though, has been the people that I’ve met in this community. My co-hosts Allen and David are true friends that I talk to much more than when the record button is on. I think of those that went before them, of Dan Buffa, Bill Ivie, Tara then Wellman now Nichols. All of them made me better on air and helped me build the niche I have in this Cardinals fan base.

Then there are the folks that are so great to me. Kyle Reis has never met an inappropriate comment he couldn’t make, but he’s also amazing about answering my questions and pretending not to like my puns. The Talking About Birds crew of Nate and Ben that are always great about having me on their show and coming onto mine. The Twitter “feuds” I have with people like Brenden Schaeffer. If I kept listing the people that bring me joy in this space, we’d be here for another twenty paragraphs—and that’s not even including the media folks like Bernie and Jeff Jones who have been so kind to me!

And I can’t forget you. Yes, you. I have over 450 people that subscribe to this sporadic output where I open a vein and bleed all over the screen. That’s not counting the folks that come via the links that I spew out everywhere. To hear that you agree or disagree with something but that you enjoyed the read always makes my day. I appreciate those that just open the email and read, even if you don’t respond. You haven’t unsubscribed, so I must not be too terrible.

Nineteen years is a long time. There are times when I wonder if it’s worth plugging along at this. Then I write another 2500 words, jump onto another podcast, and can’t imagine ever not doing it. Here’s to another year—twenty years is sure to get me on that Cardinals Hall of Fame red ribbon committee, isn’t it?

Probably the biggest news since I wrote last was the shifting of chairs on the business side of the organization. Bill DeWitt III takes over as CEO with his dad keeping the primary owner label for all things MLB while Anuk Karunaratne moves up to BD3’s old spot of president of business operations, the equivalent of Chaim Bloom for non-baseball things.

Given the comments, it seems this was less about promotions (though I imagine increases in salary come with the titles) and more about putting the right label on work they were already doing, at least in part. I know that Karuaratne was very visible with the change to Cardinals.tv, for instance, which seems like a large part of business operations.

So it seems unlikely that anything is truly going to change. Perhaps DeWitt the younger will have a little more freedom to do some projects he’d have like to do, though his dad still is in a pretty powerful position. I doubt there’s anything huge that he wanted to push through that BDW Jr. was adamantly opposed to, but maybe we’ll see a few tweaks here and there. Honestly, a lot of what these guys do isn’t really front facing.

While it doesn’t completely rule out the DeWitt family selling at some point in the future, it does seem to indicate that’s not going to happen soon. I’ve always said that it’s very unlikely they’d sell in the elder DeWitt’s lifetime, because assets that pass in inheritance get a step-up in basis. Remember, the ownership group (of which the DeWitts are the face of, but not the entirety) paid like $150 million for the team and then sold the parking garages for $75 million. While I’m sure the accounting is more complicated, when you put that basis against a $4 billion valuation, that’s a lot of capital gains taxes you can avoid if you wait until you inherit things.

I also know that some folks find the younger DeWitt to be a bit of a cold fish and they wonder if he cares about the game or just the business of it. The first few years of the Blogger Day event, BDW3 would be in there with John Mozeliak and he always was very in touch with what the team was doing, even if he left those sort of questions to Mo for the most part. I also remember how passionate he was about the club’s history, their logos, things of that nature.

All in all, it wasn’t big news but it goes to show that things are continuing on behind the scenes. Continuity and competency are good things!

Speaking of front offices, it was quite the surprise when John Mozeliak popped up in Anaheim this weekend. Apparently he doesn’t hold a grudge from the organization outbidding him for Albert Pujols. (There have been a lot of Anaheim-St. Louis connections over the years, such as Randal Grichuk, David Freese, Fernando Salas, Peter Bourjos….and if you go back well before Mo’s time, there’s that little Bottenfield-for-Edmonds deal.)

When you hear him speak of the job, it sounds a little bit like the tables are turned and he’s going to be doing the Chaim Bloom circa 2024 role for the most part. He’ll still do the day-to-day stuff, which someone has to do, but he’s going to be doing a system-wide review, looking at where there are issues, trying to find solutions. Which sounds like a great job for a retired guy that wants to stay connected to the game. I would be very surprised if Mo is GM at the start of the next season and if he is, it’s probably because they are still reviewing and searching for someone to do it. I don’t think this is Dick Cheney leading George Bush’s search committee for a vice-president only to get the job himself.

It’s going to be interesting for Mo to work for an owner that he doesn’t have a deep relationship with and, indeed, took the job without talking to. Hopefully Anaheim (it’s easier than continually saying Los Angeles Angels) is realizing how much work they need to do and that they need smart people to do it. It’ll let Mo stretch a little bit as well, which isn’t a bad thing.

The Cardinals are currently 43-38, which means they are on pace (with the overall, not how they’ve played lately) to win 86 games, which is probably about 15 more than most people expected. They’ve never been underwater this season and can’t be until Game 87. It’s been a remarkable run though, as we talked last time, you wonder if things might be starting to trail off.

Given the rainout of the Arizona game being made up on July 23, the only days off between today and August 5th are the four games for the All-Star Break. Which isn’t nothing, of course, but that means they’ll play 14 games in 13 days on one side of it and 20 games in 20 days on the other side of it. They’ll have to travel to Wrigley, play a doubleheader at home against the Brewers, and visit Canada. It’s a true test of any team, much less one this young.

It still remains to be seen if this group is starting the downward spiral or just hitting a speed bump that any team can hit during a season. After all, the Cards are in Atlanta about to take on the Braves as I write this. The Braves looked like they were going to run away with everything a month ago, only to go 9-13 in June. While it will still be tough for the Cardinals to play them six times in the next couple of weeks, maybe they will catch them at the right time, get some wins, and get a little fire back in the belly. (Unlike the fire that is outside the belly, because summer has definitely hit the south.)

Of course, Matthew Liberatore goes today and if there’s anyone that you want to start a critical run of games….it’s probably not him. Jeff Jones notes that Ivan Herrera is going to catch him tonight instead of Pedro Pages, so we’ll see if that makes a difference but it would be a little surprising if so. I guess since people are slugging .519 against him, that probably means fewer singles and fewer chances for someone to steal a base off Herrera.

I felt like the offense had hit a wall lately, which is a fair thing to think given that they were shut out three times in June. However, the last 30 days, the numbers aren’t too bad for folks. Some of that is because they had that good series in Cincinnati at the beginning of the month and the bats were fairly strong in Kansas City as well.

The last week has been bad—the club has only two homers, one by Jose Fermin, one by Bryan Torres—and only Fermin, Lars Nootbaar, and Jordan Walker are hitting over .300 in that span and the most any of them played in that span were four games, so we’re talking small sample size. I’m interested to see how things go in Atlanta. Of course, I remember when they called Atlanta “the launching pad” so if that was still the case we’d worry about the pitching more than the hitting, but Truist Park plays around league average, so probably not going to get a boost there.

We’re going to know a lot about this team by Sunday, I think. If they hold their own against the Braves and Cubs, it’s still not going to get Chaim Bloom to invest in this year, but it might impact what he sells off at the deadline. It’s tempting to try to capitalize on a surprising team, but as Yoda tried to tell Luke, taking the quick and easy path can really mess with your future. I get that we don’t know if these guys will be this good or better in 2027, but I think we have to trust that they will be or that the talent around them will be stronger. Trying to scramble around, putting on enough band-aids that you get your foot in the October door usually doesn’t give you much success there or in the future. That doesn’t mean Bloom has to sell everything that’s not nailed down, but if there is a chance to improve down the line and create a durable era of success, he is going to take it.

Yesterday was one of those days that you’d never expect when you start putting words on the Internet and into the ether. Representative Joe Morelle, who represents the 25th district of New York (upstate—Rochester is in his district), is actually a huge Cardinals fan and has been his whole life. His staff reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in having a chat and it turned out to be a wonderful discussion. It’s very possible Representative Morelle and I would disagree on a lot of things in his professional field, but baseball has a way of bridging those gaps. I hope you’ll give it a listen and I look forward to having him on again in the future.

The regular shows are going well also. With an empty house, it was easier to do some shows and I sat in with Nate and Ben on Talking About Birds before doing Musial on Friday morning with Allen and Gateway on Sunday night with David. (David’s thinking about doing a special draft-focused episode, so be looking for that!) Allen is heading to Hawaii in a couple of weeks and for some reason doesn’t want to spend time holed up talking to me, so I’m pleased to announce the legend Bernie Miklasz will be filling in that week.

Game’s starting soon so I’ll wrap this up. Hopefully we have some fun July results to talk about next time!

Maybe.

It’s true that there are some causes for concern. The Royals came into this series 30-45, yet have had their way with both Matthew Liberatore and Michael McGreevy. When you lose 14-6 in a Kansas City stadium, you’d think it would be Arrowhead rather than Kauffman. Losing a series to a cellar-dwelling team, especially the cellar of the AL Central, is going to get people thinking extistentially.

To be fair, as Cardinals fans we’ve kinda been waiting for the shoe to drop for a long time. A team that was expected to win 70 games on the season already has 40, so we start looking to see if there is a piano suspended that’s about the crash down on our heads. The pitching staff might be the fraying rope.

It’s probably telling that there were two articles in the Post-Dispatch recently discussing the rotation status of a certain pitcher. Benjamin Hochman wrote about why the Cardinals aren’t worried about Liberatore while Lynn Worthy penned down the team’s thinking about Kyle Leahy. Given the solid work of Hunter Dobbins when he’s been in the league, you’d be forgiven for thinking the club might be going to make a move. If they aren’t, it’s another sign that they are thinking less about this year and more about the years beyond.

Leahy, at least, is coming off a strong start against the Padres. It was the second time this season he’d gone six innings and while three runs isn’t ideal in those situations, if the offense had been clicking like it has been, he might have been able to get out of there with a win. He has struck out five or more batters in five of his eight starts since the beginning of May, including 12 over the last two outings. Nobody’s confusing him with Jacob Misiorowski or anything, but it’s a step in the right direction.

We talked last time about the third time around issue for both Leahy and Liberatore. His third time through the Padres lineup started off inauspiciously when Fernando Tatis doubled in the third run of the game, but he got the next five batters out. As the articles above indicate, the club is looking less at individual game results and more about whether the general direction of things is positive.

All that being said, Leahy is at 70 innings. He threw 88 last year, which was his career high in the majors. You have to go back to 2022 to find him throwing over 100 innings, when he threw 144.2 innings (his career high) spread over Springfield and Memphis. You’d have to think they’d not like to see him go much more than, what, 110 innings this year? I know Dusty Blake said in a recent in-game interview that they are looking at pitches more than innings, but even so that’s got to be about the limit if you don’t want to run a risk.

Forty more innings at an average of five innings a game would give Leahy eight more starts. At this rate, he’d have four starts before the All-Star Break (and not fun ones either: Arizona, at Atlanta, at Wrigley, vs. Milwaukee). Teams sometimes reset their rotation at the break so it’s not terribly clear how the Cards would come out of it, but three would come before the trading deadline of August 3.

If the Cardinals want to keep Leahy in the rotation, they are probably going to have to shift to a six man rotation at some point. It wouldn’t be shocking if the Cards found some veteran pitcher around the deadline that wouldn’t cost much for the rest of the year, less for trying to stay in contention and more about giving a cushion to Leahy.

Then again, as we look to another arm in the rotation, maybe they’ll keep doing what they are doing. After all, Liberatore pitched 86 innings in 2024 and went to 151.2 in 2025. Granted, Liberatore had a little more recent experience being a starter—he threw over 125 innings between St. Louis and Memphis in 2023—so that definitely plays a role in things. I expect though, in some form or fashion, we’ll see less of Leahy in the second half.

Liberatore is a different story. There’s no physical reason to limit his outings, as we noted he threw over 150 frames last year. Yet while the Cards are looking for the improvements, the overall story isn’t a pretty one.

Libby went six innings against the Padres on May 7, allowing just one run in Petco Park. Since then, his ERA is 6.82, his xERA is 5.92, and his FIP is a more reasonable 4.68. Those numbers include his 5 1/3 scoreless innings against the Cubs, which should have brought them down some. Of course, giving up seven in 1 1/3 against the Royals Thursday night had the opposite effect.

Interestingly, though, Liberatore’s K/9 in that same span is 11.27. He’s been tagged by the longball (2.08 HR/9) but perhaps that’s a function of upping his strikeout game. The home run per fly ball rate is over 20%, so at least some of that has to be bad luck. No matter how you slice it, though, it’s been a stretch of seven starts that has folks pretty meh on his future.

Liberatore doesn’t become a free agent until after the 2030 season (assuming the CBA negotiations don’t change that) so you can see why it behooves the Cardinals to do all they can to make Libby a passible starter. On the next Cardinal team that makes a deep run in October, Liberatore is probably your 4th or 5th starter even if he does get on track. There’s value there and I’m sure the Cards are willing to bite the bullet if it means they can find it.

Of course, we’ve gotten used to Leahy and Liberatore not meeting fan expectations (though not to the extent of Thursday’s game) but I think what has folks starting to raise their personal white flags was a rough start by Michael McGreevy last night. That’s the guy that has been making sure that the struggles of those two starters doesn’t extend too far, but last night he looked more like them their their antidote.

There’s no doubt that many of us have been expecting a McGreevy crash. You look at the underlying numbers and you wonder exactly how he’s juggling everything. He’s in the bottom 4% of MLB in xBA and xSLG, and while he’s not that bad with the strikeout rate, it’s nothing to write home about either. His current expected ERA is 5.67 whereas his actual is 3.35. Last year, those two numbers were closer to equal.

That being said, the man’s been effective. Before last night, he’d had three starts of six innings, two runs. He had two bumpy outings at the end of May, but before that he had three six innings starts, two of which were no run and the other he allowed just one. He’s going to have a similar road as Leahy between now and the All-Star Break, so it might be harder to bounce back from this blowup with a run of goodness like he did after the last one. However, he was the only one to tame Minnesota and was able to put six scoreless on the Dodgers in early May, so who knows?

I’ve come a long way from our initial premise, I realize, but that’s also pretty much par for the course around here. Allen and I discussed on Musial the tougher slate of games between now and the break, which lends credence to this idea that it’s been fun but now we’re going to see the club start to slide into irrelevance, making this upcoming trade deadline less of an angst-filled one for Chaim Bloom.

I also realize that Dustin May goes Sunday, which could result in a Cardinals win. The Diamondbacks come to town for four games (hello, Nolan Arenado!) and they’ve been dealing with injuries, though it sounds like Michael Soroka might be OK after leaving last night’s game early. That series will have Andre Pallante (who has been going well) as well as McGreevy on the end of it. It’s possible that you get through the next five games winning four of them and suddenly there’s less negativity around the team. I mean, it’s not like the issues we’re talking about are new—they’ve been around all year and the team has been able to overcome them. But there is a reason why we’ve called them overacheivers as well.

It’s hard to say that this team isn’t a contender when it sits in the first wild card spot in the NL, but it’s also fair to note that come Monday, it might not be all right and they could be out of the playoff picture. If McGreevy struggles again or May winds up getting hit around, there’s going to be a lot more looking at the upcoming draft and the trade deadline than scoreboard watching.

I think this is a bit of a blip on the radar and the coming week should be pretty good for the team, but it’s hard to imagine them getting through the Braves/Cubs/Brewers/Braves gauntlet in a good position. They are seven games over .500 now so getting to the break above break-even is still reasonable, but it’s definitely not a guarantee. There’s no help coming, most likely, unless they go ahead and plug Dobbins in soon (and, with that Brewers series being five games, that’s a possibility). Even that taps all the depth available, with Quinn Matthews still not quite ready for prime time it seems.

That doesn’t mean that all is lost, for sure. Blaze Jordan has been quite a nice addition to the team. Granted, it was a low bar to clear when you are replacing Nolan Gorman (who the team is also not giving up on, but you have to figure it’s August before he returns honestly, since he’s just now getting started in the lab in Jupiter), but not only has Jordan held his own at bat but he’s been better than expected with the glove as well.

I thought it was big for Oli Marmol to let Jordan take his turn last night in a situation that wasn’t huge but still a good testing ground nonetheless. Hitting with two outs, two on, and the team down three, Jordan put together a good at bat and then singled in the two runs. It would have been an even bigger moment had the comeback continued, but even so it was great to see the kid come through and it was a symbol of what this season is all about—giving players more and more opportunities and responsibility and seeing what they do with it.

Jordan Walker still doing Jordan Walker things and will definitely be in Philadelphia one way or another next month (most likely player/manager selections—I doubt he is able to make up the ground in the fan voting). Depending on need, you could see Dustin May, Alec Burleson, or JJ Wetherholt join him. I think the Cards probably get multiple representatives this year, though it depends on how the roster matrix shakes out.

I always got frustrated with Anthony Rizzo, feeling like he basically stood on the plate and got plunked all the time. I wonder if other teams feel the same way about Ivan Herrera. He’s close to the plate, though I don’t feel like he crowds it the same way Rizzo did. Of course, Rizzo was a Cub, so that didn’t make me predisposed to like him much anyway. Anyway, it feels like a rare game where Herrera isn’t standing on first with a bruise, feeling like meat after being tenderized.

Lars Nootbaar has looked good in his return, adding to the lineup as well as the defense. He misplayed a ball last night, but he also beat out a double play that helped lead to that three run ninth. That said, it still makes a lot of sense for him to be in play at the trade deadline, especially if Joshua Baez keeps making strides. Even if the team is still contending, making that switch would be interesting.

As noted above, Allen and I got a new Musial in yesterday morning. Not sure if we’ll get a Gateway in this week given some circumstances, but if you are subscribed you’ll get it if we do!

Then Lars Nootbaar was activated and jet fuel got added to the ball club.

In the eight games since the return of Nootbaar (which also encompasses the return of Nathan Church and the promotion of Blaze Jordan), the Cardinals have scored 10, 6, 5, 7, 9, 4, 8, and 9 runs. In the nine game before today’s 9-6 win over Minnesota, the club was hitting .278, second in the majors (behind, of course, Milwaukee) and slugging .476, good for sixth. While it’s impossible to say whether this will continue at any level (I doubt they slug close to .500 for an extended period of time) it’s also fair to say these changes have been huge for an offense that was starting to sputter.

The addition of Nootbaar has been something that is more than the sum of its parts. Noot’s been a help, of course, with two doubles, two homers, and five walks in his short time back. However, his biggest contribution has just been lengthening the lineup. No longer can teams relax when they’ve gotten past Jordan Walker or Alec Burleson. Instead, there’s another count-working thumper that they have to deal with. That also means that the top of the lineup rolls around faster as well.

And over the last few games, you haven’t had to even wait until it came back to JJ Wetherholt to get production. Nathan Church has been an immediate upgrade over Victor Scott II and, well, it wouldn’t have taken much for Blaze Jordan to surpass Nolan Gorman’s recent production.

Add in the usage of Jose Fermin and this lineup is a lot stronger that it was a few weeks ago. Even Jimmy Crooks, who hasn’t necessarily lit the world on fire, still adds a threat dimension that Pedro Pages didn't. (That said, Pages had an excellent game this afternoon.)

Of course, when you have Burleson homering in four straight games and Walker bouncing back after a bit of a cold spell, you are going to look really strong as well. The only real sore spot is Masyn Winn, who is hitting .189 over his last 30 games, an average that not significantly different even if you cut it to his last week. However, Winn’s defense is still immaculate and if you have all these guys hitting, you can carry Winn a lot more than you could when Pages, Gorman, and Scott were also at the bottom of the lineup card.

The Cardinals have hit 16 homers over the past 11 games, which has made for a lot of excitement. There’s only one irritation. The offense hasn’t been limited to the boys with the birds on the bat.

We’ve listed how the Cardinals have scored 59 runs in their last eight games (good for a 7.4 runs per game average), it’s also worth noting that they’ve lost two of those games and a couple of others were pretty close. After today’s win that saw the Twins put up six runs (and threaten for more), the ERA over this past span is 3.98. Which actually isn’t too bad, when you think about it. The club ERA for the season is 4.13, so the last few games have actually been down a touch.

However, that shutout in CitiField (I still want to write Shea Stadium) is helping that number a bit. The ERA is 4.57 with that game removed. I don’t want to do that because that was the Dustin May game, and that’s not out of line with what he’s been doing. We’ve also seen some good results out of Andre Pallante of late, going 5.2 or more innings in four of his last five outings and allowing two or less runs in all of them. I’m not sure it’ll last, but it’s nice to see. Michael McGreevy continues to baffle both hitters and statistically minded people, but that’s seemingly just what he does.

The problem comes with Kyle Leahy and Matthew Liberatore. Leahy has gotten an out in the sixth three times this season, and twice it was just one. He went six innings against the Royals in Busch, allowing just one run, but that’s the outlier. He’s also gone less than five innings three times. Which means, basically, he’s a five inning pitcher.

Let’s take a look at the five regular starters and their OPS again as they go through the order. Everyone’s going to have the third time through penalty, but let’s see how extreme it is.

Dustin May: First time .716, second time .693, third time .689 (so no real TTO)
Michael McGreevy: .608/.656/.757
Andre Pallante: .843/.560/.636 (you can tell if he’s on real quick)
Matthew Liberatore: .724/.679/1.236 (not counting today)
Kyle Leahy: .611/.790/1.363

Those last two are pretty tough to swallow. There is no reason why either Liberatore or Leahy should face a batter for the third time. Last night, Oli Marmol tried to see if Leahy could get another inning. To give Leahy his due, he did strike out Trevor Larnach to end the fifth, the third time Leahy had seen him. Yet the 2-3-4 hitters went double (exit velocity 99.6), walk, and double (EV 103.4), evaporating the slim lead the Cardinals had.

Liberatore is in a similar situation, though as you can see he can struggle at any point in the game. Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis homered in their second look at Libby, as did Luke Keaschall. In fact, Marmol didn’t even allow Liberatore to make things worse, bringing in Matt Svanson before he could see a Twin for the third time.

It feels like the best case with both of these guys is five innings that keeps you in the game. Which they’ve done some—Leahy has five wins on the season, Liberatore three—but it can put quite a strain on the bullpen. Some of those issues reared their head last night, some may tomorrow.

It really feels like both of these guys would do better in the bullpen as a long relief option. If they are going to stay in the rotation, though, it feels like the club needs to get a long relief option on the roster. Hunter Dobbins did that for a couple of games and did a fine job, but the club sent him back to Memphis to continue being a starter. I would have preferred keeping him up here for these sort of outings—instead of starting him Thursday against the Mets (which wasn’t really needed given the off day before the series as well as the one before the Reds series) he could have come in last night in the sixth instead of trying to piecemeal things together with a small lead.

We talked about this on both podcasts this morning—more on that in a bit—and while this long reliever in the past as wound up gathering dust, that was with rotations with more veterans which would inevitably wind up with a lot of six or seven inning outings. That’s not happening here. Between Leahy and Liberatore, there’s always going to be a chance for that sort of arm to get into games.

Unlike Marc Antony, I come to praise Ryne Stanek, not bury him. There’s no doubt that last night was a terrible outing for the reliever. Allowing a tying home run to the first guy you face AND the third guy you face, plus a go-ahead homer to the fifth guy, means it’s a very bad night.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression and I think a lot of the fan base still thinks of him as the April version that was so rough. However, he’s gotten well past that.

He’s been much more effective than Riley O’Brien over that stretch. Every reliever is going to have an outing where the opposing team has their number. Last night it was Stanek’s. It was good to see him come in and be effective today, which makes it more likely that was a fluke and not a harbinger.

I also take some exception to the idea that Marmol shouldn’t have left him out there for three homers. I think that I would have made different choices than the manager did last night, starting with the sixth inning, but once Stanek had given up the lead, I think the club was a little stuck. They weren’t likely to bring in O’Brien for the eighth and ninth, JoJo Romero and likely Jason Bruihl (and not like people have a lot of confidence in the latter anyway) were unavailable, and the other options were Matt Svanson and Chris Roycroft. Svanson has looked pretty good since returning from Memphis but the powers that be may not be quite ready to put him into a one run game. As for Roycroft, we saw in today’s game how short the rope is for him. That wasn’t a situation they’d want him in.

So I think Marmol just had to ride or die with Stanek. Unfortunately, it turned into a die. That happens. The good thing is that we are frustrated by a Cardinals loss instead of inured to it because there have been so many of these kind of outings. The fact that we are carrying on like we always do is a testament to how much better 2026 has been than it has any right to be.

As you get older, you have to try new things. I’m not a Bernie Miklasz who can do four shows, two columns, and a few Twitter threads, unfortunately, but this morning I did do my first podcasting doubleheader. Saturday mornings aren’t anything new for Allen and I, as we regularly record Musial in that time slot (if not Fridays), but David was going to be indisposed tomorrow evening so, after I wrapped Musial, we dove right into Gateway. You can find the shows here (Musial, Gateway) and it might be interesting to see how my two co-hosts take the same discussion in different paths.

The Star Wars book club has moved on to the last of the Darth Bane trilogy, Dynasty of Evil. I’ve gotten probably 60-70 pages into it and I can tell it’ll be one that I read quickly. The whole story has been enjoyable and I do want to see how things conclude. I’ve also spent some more time with The First All-Star Game and it’s really interesting, and I’ve not even really gotten to the baseball yet!

If it was, the club seems to have patched the hole and started reinflating that balloon. They lost the last game in Milwaukee, but then took two of three from the Cubs, one of three from the Rangers, and swept the Reds, just finishing that off a little while ago. Now the club is riding a four game winning streak and is seven games over .500, not far from their high water mark. They get a day off and then tackle a last-place New York Mets team, a Twins team that’s underwater, a Padres team that’s underperforming, and the Royals in Kansas City before getting to reunite Nolan Arenado with Busch Stadium.

Not that you want to look too far ahead, but at the end of the Royals series the club will have played 75 games and there’s a better than even chance that they’ll be on the up side of .500 when that happens. Nothing is guaranteed in baseball, of course, but the way they are playing and the upcoming schedule definitely are in their favor.

While nothing is perfect—there’s still a lot of concern around these parts about the usage of Riley O’Brien as the closer, even when it works out occasionally—there are reasons to believe that the Cards are trending in the right direction, enough so that there could be difficult decisions for Chaim Bloom in the next few weeks.

Some will point to the fact that this time last year the club was also 35-28 and things were feeling pretty good. That team, though, was five games under .500 on May 2 and then got hot for a while before cooling back off. Obviously, this team has never been under .500 at all this season, which means this sort of play is more likely who they are. It’s also probably worth considering if this team would have finished better in 2025 had they not had the losing streak around the deadline which precipitated the selloff. After all, at the early part of July there were discussions about adding to the team. The pendulum swung at the wrong time (for a competitive finish, though not for a stronger future) and things went south quickly in the last two months.

Last year’s team also didn’t have a Jordan Walker that has figured a lot of things out, a JJ Wetherholt who isn’t looking like a rookie, and a Michael McGreevy that wasn’t defying underlying analytics regularly. (McGreevy didn’t come up to stay until July 21, bouncing up and down before that.) While Nolan Gorman continues to be a disappointment overall, for the most part this team is full of players that are playing to their level or somewhat above it. There aren’t a lot of folks that are dragging things down, even if we do have trust issues with some of the bullpen.

This club also got a shot in the arm this weekend with the return of Lars Nootbaar. Noot is looking sharp with his deformed heels now back in line with factory standard guidelines. His running has been impressive and the bat has been what we hoped it would be. It’s just three games—more like 2 1/2 since he appeared in the midst of Saturday’s contest—but he’s 3 for 10, three walks, three strikeouts, a home run, a double, three RBI. It’s an extra bat in a lineup that truly needed it. Tuesday will probably be the first time we see it at full strength—with Wetherholt, Ivan Herrera, Walker, Alec Burleson, Nootbaar, and a Masyn Winn that is still searching offensively but has his moments (and has two multi-hit games in June already). Add in the occasional contributions of Bryan Torres and Victor Scott II and this can be a fun team when it all clicks.

The Reds helped that, of course—while they slipped under .500 in this series, they’ve been trending downwards for a while and is not a team that anyone is terribly concerned about, what with their porous bullpen and their less-than-gold gloves—and it’s possible that the glow from this series is overshadowing things. We saw another struggle from Matthew Liberatore, who allowed five runs (three earned) in less than five innings. Matt Svanson has been recalled as Ryan Fernandez wound up on the IL but he has not been put in a game yet. Svanson did so well in his short time in Memphis—eight strikeouts, no runs in 5.2 innings—so maybe he’s found something. If so, the bullpen gets that much stronger. If not, hopefully there won’t be too many times they have to call his name before Fernandez returns.

We ran these numbers before, but for the Cardinals to finish with 70 wins, they have to go 35-64 the rest of the way, which is like going 57-105 over a full season. This team never was that bad, even before the breakout of Walker and the improvement of Dustin May. To finish .500, they go 46-53, a 75 win clip. That’s probably more reasonable, especially when you factor in the fact that Bloom is likely to trade off players even if the team is still in the hunt to try to bolster the future. Break even seemed like a pipe dream in March. Now it’s not exactly the floor but it’s not far from it. Even if things do spiral, this has been a successful season and one better than we could have ever imagined.

It’s still getting healthy as well. Nathan Church homered for Memphis today and while I’ve not seen any timelines, I don’t think it would be surprising if he was back on the team by the time they return home to face the Padres a week from tomorrow. What that means for the players currently on the roster is hard to say. The easiest thing, of course, would be to return Bryan Torres to Memphis. Torres did homer today, which was huge, but it also seems like whether by his own initiative or by direction from the dugout, he’s looking to bunt more often than you would think. That makes me think the organization isn’t confident in his bat. He’s doing damage on fastballs but the breaking stuff is shutting him down. Even though he can play second as well as outfield, sending him to Memphis would make some sense.

The other option, of course, is to demote Victor Scott II. Scott has struggled a lot this year, with an average under .200 and an OPS of .534. The defense has been pretty good and we’ve seen him start to steal a little more in recent days, but you have to go back to May 23rd to find a game where he got more than one hit. While his xwOBA has trended up recently, it’s still below average and his hard hit percentage is in the bottom 3% of MLB. I love me some VS2 but I can also see the argument for letting him tinker with things in Memphis for a while. I don’t imagine the team will do that—likely saying that the pitching at Triple-A isn’t conducive to some of the things he needs to work on—but when Church returns he’s probably cut into Scott’s playing time one way or another.

We should also mention Ramon Urias here, but he just hurt the other shoulder of his and won’t be back for a while. He had started his rehab assignment, but that’s on hold now and if we see him back before the end of June, I’d be surprised. That allows Nolan Gorman some breathing room, but I do wonder if we’ll see Jose Fermin take more time there. We’re seeing the Cards immediately hit for him if a lefty comes into the game, no matter the situation, and while Gorman’s glove has been strong, Fermin hits righties better than lefties (and hits lefties better than Gorman does). I don’t think Fermin will ever be the regular starting third baseman, but I could see him starting 2-3 times a week and staying in even if the handedness of the pitcher changed.

Congrats to Oli Marmol for being named to the All-Star coaching staff by Dave Roberts. Quite the honor, especially given how things have gone the last couple of years. He’ll be joined there by Jordan Walker (one way or another) and that might be all. Maybe if he keeps this up and enough pitchers drop Michael McGreevy might get a look. JJ Wetherholt has done well but there are a lot of options in the middle infield.

Allen and I got back in the groove yesterday, recording the first Musial with just the two of us in a long while. (That said, the one with us and Alex Crisafulli right before we all went to Blogger Day was a lot of fun as well.) Allen and I are considering maybe shifting how we do the podcast, maybe going the Patreon route, but nothing has been decided yet. David and I are keeping Gateway going and we’ll record a new episode of that tonight, so be on the lookout wherever you get your podcasts.

I hadn’t necessarily planned to go out to the movies again for a while, but a friend of mine invited me to join him for He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. My brother was the bigger He-Man fan when we were growing up, as he was the one that collected the toys. That said, I played with them and I’m sure watched some of the cartoons. As someone that was just acquainted with the material, shall we say, it was a lot of fun. It was goofy, a little more risqué than it probably had to be with some of its dialogue, but overall an enjoyable ride. The post-credit scenes set up a few possibilities for a sequel, so if it comes around I’m sure I’ll check that out as well. The next movie trip is probably Supergirl. (That said, I am looking forward to when The Sheep Detectives is streaming somewhere.)

I don’t think I’ve picked up a new book since we’ve talked about that, as I’m still plugging along on the many I have started. That said, I did get Nolan by Tim Brown and I’m looking forward to getting into that at some point.

My plan is to start up the Star Wars devotionals again this week. We’re picking up right before the swing across the Death Star chasm and we should have new ones twice a week from now until mid-October. That’s the goal, at least!

Saturday, the Cardinals invited us to Busch for the first Blogger and Podcasters Day of the post-Mozeliak era. While we were all relieved the event wouldn’t stop with the change in front office personnel, I think we were all interested to see what it would be like with Chaim Bloom in the chair instead.

I’m not going to necessarily go through all the questions in this writeup. Viva El Birdos has audio up from it and I know Diane at Women Who Love Cardinals Baseball always puts her legal secretary background to work and generates a transcript at some point. I’ll touch on some, most likely, but it’s the atmosphere, the vibes as it were, that we’ll really focus on.

Let me be clear—while the event Saturday was different in a lot of ways, I don’t say anything below as an implicit criticism of how things were before. The Mozeliak sessions were always great. There was just a different vibe in our first interactions with the new POBO.

For one thing, we didn’t get to see Bloom in the chair. While communications maestro Carson Shipley had set out a chair for Bloom to use, he never sat it in. The only thing he used it for was to set his water bottle down. (Which led to a humorous incident right before the questions started. Carson saw the water bottle there and thought it was someone else’s, so he moved it while Bloom was talking. However, Chaim didn’t see him and then turned around later, trying to figure out where his bottle had disappeared to.)

Just the idea that he stood the whole time brought a different energy. He moved around, focusing on one side or another depending on where the question was coming from. He was also a little more casually dressed with a polo and slacks compared to Mo’s usual sports coat look.

I’m not sure that Bloom was more transparent than Mo was, because they both had similar limitations. (It was fun for Bloom to say “ask me anything” and then the first two questions were things he couldn’t really talk about specifically.) Bloom got different questions, though, given where the state of the franchise is now versus where it was under Mo. (Mo got a lot of legacy questions last year, for instance, and the team was trying to put 2023 behind them and contend when we were there in 2024.)

Bloom got questions about process, how you balance competing with long-term planning, and things of that nature. Our friend Jake Wood asked about a couple of the front office hires of the offseason and Bloom went deep on what that meant, what those guys might bring, and things of that nature. I believe it was Andy Carroll’s son (who, IIRC, asked the first question last year) who started things off asking about how you decide which player to extend. (When Bloom left, he commented to the effect that he thought he’d go with the kid because it’d be an easy start “and then it was Misiorowski 103 right out of the gate”.)

I asked him what he’d learned in the last couple of years that he wished he’d known in Boston or Tampa Bay. While he said there have been so many things, but the focus of building programs that not only minimized injury but brought a more wholistic approach to the player was something that he’s gained a significant appreciation for in St. Louis. He talked about movement, which feels like has been an interest of the organization for a while. Google fails me now, but I want to say a number of years ago they had an artist in spring training sketching how the pitchers looked, moved, things like that. Obviously with high speed cameras and other technology that’s not something that’s helpful now, but it shows that they’ve been looking at this idea of efficiency and health in movement for a while.

There were a lot of other good questions and you’d be well served to listen to the whole audio. I liked part of his answer to Kyle Reis, who asked about the salary cap issue of the upcoming CBA negotiations. While Bloom didn’t feel able to say one way or another, he did say that the club can never make anything like that an excuse for not competing. They have to work with whatever is out there, either to overcome an obstacle or use it to be better. In response to another question (or maybe this was part of Jake’s question as well), he talked about how Cardinals pro scouts do more work than almost anyone in the league in terms of reports filed, but now the front office is working with the scouts to help them see how that information is used, which should help them improve their already good reporting.

As he wrapped up, it was time for the National Anthem. That’s happened before, either in the midst of the talk or at the end, and Mo’s stayed through it just like Chaim did. After that, though, instead of heading for the exits and his perch above the field, Bloom shook hands, took pictures, and generally talked ball with people one-on-one for a while. I think it was the third inning before he finally left—and I mean left, not was able to leave, because he seemed to truly enjoy the interactions with these engaged fans.

As first impressions go, I think Chaim Bloom was Mark McGwire, who hit a home run in his first home game as a Cardinal in 1997. I look forward to all the podcasts that will come out with analysis of the event, but I’d be surprised if anyone was disappointed. The only bad part of the day was the fact that the Cubs won 6-1 and Pete Crow-Armstrong was a large part of that win. Otherwise, 10/10, no notes.

The Cardinals have always been connected to the fanbase—like I said, we’ve been doing this event since the early days of blogging—but I think there’s been more of an emphasis placed in recent years for three reasons. One, a younger front office, people that grew up or were formed in the blogging and podcasting era. They naturally gravitate to those things in a way that older generations might have turned to newspaper, radio, or television. Two, the downturn in the team’s fortunes (and, relatedly, attendance) spurs a greater need to find a way to connect with fans. Three, the reduction of the more traditional press coverage—no Athletic writer, a part-time (no slight intended to Mr. Schaeffer, but I don’t think he’s traveling constantly) MLB.com writer, etc.—might have them wanting more outlets to get their message across.

Whatever the reason, they are definitely being more open with things. We had our talk with Oli Marmol earlier in the year and I know Chaim has been on at least one show. (He seemed to think it was mine in his answer to me, and I’m very willing to make that actually the case at some point!) Rob Cerfolio, one of the assistant general managers, has made a number of appearances on different shows. I know the club is trying to determine best practices, because you have to draw lines somewhere and not just anybody with a mic should get access to the POBO, but I do think they want to be as open with this “new media”, as it were, as much as possible. It might be interesting, in that line, if they eventually get to a sort of credentialing system, not equivalent to what the traditional media have (can you imagine the Talking About Birds guys in the same press box as Derrick Goold, for instance?) but a way of granting access to those that have put in the work in this area.

This came up a couple of times on Saturday, but the official record of Blogger Day games is 8-6. I’m not counting the 2020 Zoom call that sort of substituted for an event that year, though if you want to they lost to the Twins that year.

We’ve seen the Padres, the Brewers, the Pirates, the Phillies (twice), the Reds (four times), the Nationals, the Diamondbacks, the Rockies, the Dodgers, and now the Cubs.

The biggest win was 2022, when they beat the Reds 11-3. The worst loss was the 2013 9-0 shutout by the Pirates.

A few photos from the day:

A shot from our suite. It’s hard not to watch the TVs since they are right there!

Two of the best: Kyle Reis and Alex Crisafulli.

My Musial co-host Allen Medlock had a lot of things relating to baseball culture that he wanted to discuss with Mr. Bloom.

My goal here was to get as many of those folks attending that had filled Allen’s chair this year as a guest on Musial. From left: Mr. Medlock, Alex Crisafulli, Ben Godar, Eugene Parker, Scott Plaza, Jake Wood, myself, Nate Heininger. Kneeling: Ben Simorka, JD Hafron. We missed Kyle Reis and Josh Jacobs in this one, unfortunately!

There’s a lot of things that we should talk about regarding the actual team—roster moves and the like—but we’ll do that another time!

It would easy to mark this slump from last Tuesday, when the Cardinals shifted from an American League-heavy schedule to the thick of the NL Central. (The Cardinals played 24 of their first 46 against the AL, going 13-11 in that stretch.) However, let’s go ahead and mark it from the start of the Tarps Off era, just for fun. Not that the boisterous fans have anything to do with the slide, it’s just a convenient marker.

We wondered in the winter if the offense was strong enough and how the pitching would do. Much of April saw a remarkable offense, led by the breakout of Jordan Walker. May saw the starting pitching be effective beyond most people’s wildest expectations.

Pre-TO offense: .240/.322/.391, wOBA .319, 21.5% K rate, 9.1% BB rate, 4.63 runs/game, 1.14 HR/game, 0.70 SB/game

TO offense before tonight: .230/.309/.368, wOBA .304, 20.0% K rate, 8.7% BB rate, 3.89 runs/game, 1.22 HR/game, 0.44 SB/game

Probably because the Cardinals have been shut out three times in the last eight games, but I was surprised to see that the numbers, even in a smaller sample, really aren’t that different. Perhaps the hits aren’t sequencing the way that they were before, leading to the slight downtick in runs, but it’s not really that different overall. The strikeout rate has dropped, even with the 12 strikeouts yesterday, but they have grounded into 11 double plays in those 9 games, compared to 31 in the 43 before that. You really can’t draw anything from this, I don’t think, but it’s possible they’ve killed some rallies by putting the ball in play.

Pre-TO pitching: 4.29 ERA, 5.01 xERA, 7.27 K/9, 46.2% ground ball rate, 11.8% HR/FB

TO pitching before tonight: 3.95 ERA, 4.54 xERA, 8.49 K/9, 43.9% ground ball rate, 11.8% HR/FB

Much like the hitting, which has struck out less through this slide, the overall staff is striking out more in the last nine games. They still aren’t going to be confused for a power staff, but they’ve had a significant jump in strikeouts. In this span we’ve seen Andre Pallante strike out seven (in a loss), Matthew Liberatore strike out nine (in an extra-inning win), Dustin May fan seven (in a loss), Kyle Leahy strike out eight (in an extra-inning loss), and Liberatore get 10 in a loss.

It would be interesting, honestly, to plot each starter’s strikeouts against their runs given up. While the uptick in whiffs is nice to see, it’s also possible that they aren’t necessarily working for folks that aren’t used to those sort of results. Perhaps more pitches, a little less effectiveness in the zone, who knows. It’s all speculation but it is interesting that an increase in strikeout output hasn’t necessarily led to more wins.

Liberatore in particular has been the subject of some scrutiny. Brandon Kiley, for one, was looking at Liberatore’s splits and wondering if he was taking the next step.

It’s an interesting premise, but I look at those numbers and wonder if this just isn’t who Liberatore is, a 4.75 ERA pitcher that will see enough other things shift to never really perform at a higher level. If his BABIP goes down, his K rate might also decrease because more outs will be gotten on the ground. Maybe not, maybe you could see him hold the K percentage while getting “luckier” on BABIP.

He’s at a 21.4% K rate for the season, his career high. Of course, the walk rate at 8.9% is close to one. I would defer to people that are smarter than me but I just think this is what he is. He’ll have ups and downs but this is his mean.

I also did a quick look to see if there was anything to the idea that he has one blowup innings on the regular. A long time ago, I did similar writeups about Lance Lynn and the Lynning. (Hopefully that link works, it’s usually 50/50 to the old site.) All in all, I don’t know that there’s enough to draw any conclusions.

In his 11 starts, he has allowed all of his runs in one inning seven times, including in his last four outings. Four of those, though, were games where he allowed only one run. The other three, which were his last three, he allowed four runs in the fifth twice (which would make you think he’s either running out of room or the third time through penalty kicked in) and three in the first on Monday.

Actually, his runs are pretty well distributed of his 11 games, he’s allowed runs in the:

• 1st five times (8 runs total)

• 2nd twice (3)

• 3rd twice (2)

• 4th twice (4)

• 5th four times (11)

• 6th twice (2)

Granted, he’s only gotten to the sixth four times, another indication he’s not necessarily anything more than a mid-rotation starter. Hopefully he puts together some strong starts and we can revisit this issue, but for right now, I’m not buying the increased strikeouts will improve his results.

We started this whole thing wondering if this was just a bit of a slump for the Cardinals, just going 4-6 in ten games thrown off some by a lot of rain in Cincinnati. A rebound tomorrow, coupled with a series win against the Cubs (it’s always troublesome to face a team with a long losing streak, because you know it’s about to flip) and we’d probably feel better about things. June has the Rangers and the Reds at home, a trip to New York (Mets) and Minnesota, then back for the Pads before hopping across Missouri to face the Royals again. There should be a lot of winnable games in there if the team is truly going to be a surprise team this year.

However, we’ve also said that there were a lot of reasons to believe that regression was coming. This team never expected to be this far above .500 at any point, much less this late in the season. We’ve been waiting for the crash and if it is actually here, I don’t think we have any reason to complain about how good it has been.

Unsurprisingly, I have no answers for you. I do think we are probably in a spot where the club is going to start gradually sinking, but I don’t think we’re in for any extensive struggles right now. It helps (maybe?) that Milwaukee is planning a bullpen game tomorrow against Dustin May, who has been pretty effective since his rough start to the season. Come home, hopefully take care of some business against the Cubs, and see what happens. All we can do is enjoy the ride, no matter where it takes us.

It’s a function of being online that you don’t necessarily know why you haven’t heard from someone in a while. Perhaps they got wise and got off of social media. Perhaps you just haven’t seen a post from them in a while. Or, perhaps, it’s something else.

I only knew the man as Scott or by his Twitter handle, TexasCardsFan1. Scott was a bit of a curmudgeon and could grump with the best of them about the Cardinals, especially the last couple of years, but he was also willing to engage and talk about them with people that didn’t agree with him. We would sometimes go back and forth either in replies or in direct messages when he’d agree or disagree with something I wrote or said on a podcast. A few months ago, he left the following kind words when he pledged support if I ever turned on a paywall (which I have no plans to do).

“When I first got sober back in 2004 one of the “old timers” in the recovery community (25 years sober) pulled me aside one day & said “Scott, just relax. Wear your life like a gentle blanket. Not everything is life or death.” C70 writes & carries himself like this in our Cardinals community, and I’m proud to be a member. Thanks! TexasCardsFan1”

I thanked him for those comments on February 4th. It was our last interaction. Five days later, he passed away. The Cardinals community only found out this week when OnlyCardsFans found and shared his obituary.

The anonymous nature of most online interactions means that you can have people come and go from your life and you never even know their real name, you may have no way to find out if something has happened to them. I wish I had known sooner and I wish I could interact with him one more time. He’d have loved the Jordan Walker resurgence and he’d complain about this last week for sure. May we resume our conversations in heaven.

I got out to see The Mandalorian and Grogu this weekend with my son, continuing our tradition of watching Star Wars premieres together. My professional opinion, which means nothing, is that it is a perfectly fine movie. It’s not adding a ton to the lore, of course, but that’s what happens with a stand-alone movie.

I don’t think anyone (save the young, perhaps, as I have already heard from a friend that his son ranks this as one of his favorite movies period, not just of Star Wars) is going to set it up high, but that’s not a slam. I would probably rank it probably right below Solo on my personal rankings, but it’s well ahead of things like The Rise of Skywalker. For the hard-core fan, we do get to see Nal Hutta for the first time and more of the Hutt culture (for lack of a better word), and there’s some X-Wings, U-Wings, and Y-Wings. I’ll watch it again when it comes to Disney+, I’m sure.

The Star Wars book club is working on the second Darth Bane book, Rule of Two. I hadn’t read it before so I finished it up over the weekend. It’s quite good and I’m excited to read the final book in the trilogy, though I’ll hold off until our next meeting so I don’t get confused.

Blogger and Podcaster Day is Saturday. It used to be that we got the second-rate matchups, the Padres or the Reds or the Diamondbacks or the Pirates. Last year, however, we got the Dodgers and this year we get the Cubs, which is nice. I’ll drive up Saturday morning, go to the game, and leave out Sunday morning which doesn’t leave me time to see many people. If you happen to be at the park Saturday night, maybe we can meet up. I’m looking forward to seeing my fellow travelers in this space. I don’t know if I’ll have a question for Chaim Bloom, but I know there are going to be a lot of interesting things discussed. There will be audio out there soon after the event, I’m sure, but I’ll try to come back in this space early next week to write up my thoughts.

Started by the Stephen F. Austin club baseball team in the area for a tournament, the movement quickly spread and fired up not only the crowd but the players on the field. An encore Saturday brought the same level of excitement and while Sunday was a fizzle on the field, there were still some strong vibes above right field. All of this brings us to the question: can it last?

Over at Redbird Rants, our friend Thomas Gauvain wrote in the afterglow about six viral trends from the Cardinals’ past. While he included the “tarps off” crew as his first selection, the other five brought back some memories. The pepper grinder celebration of Lars Nootbaar that took a whole country by storm. Matt Carpenter’s salsa, an empty container of which sits on my memorabilia shelf. Memories of 2011—the rally squirrel from the playoffs, the legend of Torty Craig, and the #HappyFlight motto that got the Cards through the playoffs.

OnlyCardsFans came up with a few more on Twitter, though I don’t remember much about the Brendan Ryan mustache bit except that it was one of the Cardinals commercials back when they did fun commercials. All of these things are nice memories but they didn’t last very long.

There are two things that make the “Tarps Off” bit different, though I don’t expect that it will have any different ending than all of the others we’ve talked about, a passing fad that gets an “oh yeah!” when we remember it 10 years down the road.

The first thing that makes this different from pretty much everything else on this list is it organically came from the fan base. This was something that the fans wanted to do and it struck a nerve. Is that enough to give it staying power? I doubt it, but it has a better chance as a grassroots movement than it does by being something orchestrated by the players or the organization.

The second is that it’s not tied to a certain player. The salsa was a fun story when Matt Carpenter was hitting three home runs at Wrigley, but when he struggled it took down the “vibe fuel” of it as well. The pepper grinder might have been done by the prime minister of Japan, but when Noot’s on the injured list what good does that do anything? This sort of thing, though, can adapt. The cheers are for whoever is out there. The energy is for the whole team.

Again, this has been a lot of fun and I can’t imagine how these SFA guys are feeling. They went to a game and got a little goofy and the next thing they know they are the toast of the town, they are on TV being interviewed, they are called out by the Cardinals manager, and eventually invited into the sanctum sanctorum of the clubhouse. Pretty sure none of that was on their agenda when they left Texas a few days ago.

Let’s give Oli Marmol a lot of credit as well. It’s one thing to be excited in a press conference about the fans. It’s another to put action to words and buy out a section, giving away tickets to try to create that vibe again. He also spent a lot of time encouraging and complementing the college kids that started this whole thing, which had to mean a lot to them.

So how does this become a lasting thing, something that lasts more than this home stand? I’m not the one to say, though I think the club embracing these fans will encourage folks to keep it going for a while. I’ve seen suggestions on Twitter that the club should invite local baseball teams, whether high school, college, club, or what have you, to lead the group for a series. There are some that believe the more the club embraces it the more likely they are to squeeze the life out of it, and there’s some risk to that, though I do think the fan engagement side of the organization has been improving over the few years as well. You have to encourage but not direct.

Hearing the soccer-style chants over the broadcast made me think of those fan clubs that sport has. From what I understand, they are organized but by the fans, they have chants and cheers and bring a ton of energy to the ballpark. Could something like that take root in St. Louis? Could a group of guys start recruiting and put together a group that would have the blessing of the Cardinals but not be restrained by them? I don’t know. I think it’s possible, though I don’t think that it’ll happen.

Viral moments don’t have to last to be effective anyway. This raised the profile of the club this weekend, letting people around the country know that they actually are pretty good this year and there’s excitement around them. It’s a great moment in time, even if that’s all it is.

The Cardinals, on this off day, sit at 27-19. That means that they will go at least the first 54 games of the season without spending a day under .500. Fifty-four games is a notable mark, of course, because it is exactly 1/3rd of 162.

If the Cardinals play like the 75 win team that some people thought they were the rest of the way, they’ll wind up with 81 wins. To only win 70, they’d have to play at a 60-win clip. While anything can happen, especially since the strategy at the deadline is not yet set in stone, it feels very likely that the Cardinals are going to beat almost every projection people had of them this winter.

It also feels like they are doing this by being more than the sum of their parts. The team ERA is 17th at 4.12, which is a pretty respectable mark for the fact that they are dead last in pitching strikeouts (three behind Arizona, who has played one fewer game). They are 22nd in WHIP, 22nd in home runs allowed.

If you are looking for positives, the starters are 10th in the league in ERA at 3.88 and they aren’t last in strikeouts (third to last, but it’s something). The team ERA has dropped from 4.76 after the last game in April to that 4.12 mark now, which means it is trending in the right direction. We saw a remarkable start out of Andre Pallante yesterday, even though he lost, and Michael McGreevy continues to astound me.

While there are issues in the bullpen—Matt Svanson has had three outings in a row where he’s not been charged with a run but you still don’t trust him when he comes in, much like Ryne Stanek who has had a pretty good May (12.79 K/9, though still a 5.68 BB/9) before his last couple of outings—all in all, you feel like this team is constantly fighting and, more often than not, they come up with exactly what they need, whether it’s a diving catch, a key hit, or a big strikeout.

It feels like Chaim Bloom and company are prioritizing stability and consistency when it comes to the roster. At this point last year the Cardinals had already made 34 changes to the roster. Granted, the early rains meant a lot of double headers so eight of those were a 27th man coming up, then going down. There was the move of Zack Thompson from the 15 day IL to the 60. Nolan Gorman, Ivan Herrera, and Masyn Winn had been injured. But there was also:

• Chris Roycroft swapped with Roddery Munoz

• Munoz swapped with Matt Svanson

• Ryan Fernandez swapped with Riley O’Brien

• Thomas Saggese swapped with Jose Barrero

• O’Brien and Svanson swapped with Roycroft and Munoz

• Munoz swapped with Michael McGreevy

• McGreevy swapped with Gordon Graceffo

It was that roster churn that we were so used to, most notably at the back of the bullpen as arms would come and go depending on need and performance. This year, there have been a total of 16 roster moves. Matt Pushard and Ramon Urias going on the injured list account for three of them. Jared Shuster being brought up and DFAd count for four of them. They made moves around Hunter Dobbins’s fill-in start. Honestly, the only “churn” like moves were when Shuster was called up the first time, sending down Roycroft, and the Fernandez for Shuster move that used Dobbins as a middle man. It’s been quiet, it’s been steady, and it’s hard not to believe that has something to do with the over performance of the team. Knowing that you aren’t going to Memphis if things get bad in one outing or even two allows you the freedom to work on things and the confidence that the team believes in you.

Does that mean that there doesn’t need to be improvements? Of course not. The catching situation is going to come to a head pretty soon. The fact that was highlighted this weekend, that Ivan Herrera hasn’t thrown out a baserunner since 2024 was an interesting one. Granted, if your option is him or Pedro Pages, you probably still take Herrera behind the plate and deal with the liability. (Pages does tend to do something great offensively just about the time we all give up on him, then slip back into obscurity.) However, with Jimmy Crooks not only hitting well at Memphis but starting to cut down on the strikeouts, how long can you keep him down on the farm?

There’s also the impending return of Lars Nootbaar. The clock started ticking on his rehab Thursday when he was sent to Palm Beach. They’ll ease him back some (though he was 3-4 with a homer in his first two games down there) but he’ll have to be activated by June 3 or 4. If he were to return today, it would feel like we’d see Cesar Prieto, who got into his first game in nine days yesterday when Masyn Winn left with a leg issue, returned to Memphis. The more meaningful thing would be that I believe Nootbaar would push Nathan Church to center and Victor Scott II to the bench, at least for a majority of games. I keep hoping that the offense will click for Vic, because he’s a lot of fun, but it’s still lacking. Church hasn’t set the world on fire, but he’s got a little more threat to his bat at the moment.

Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be a real clear option for anyone else. Dobbins would come up if there was a need, but the starters are healthy and going well enough. Ryan Fernandez has been doing all right in Memphis, but do you trust that to translate to the bigs after his recent struggles? I’m sure he’d get the call if there was a need, but I don’t think they’ll do a lot of maneuvering to get him up here, especially since much of that bullpen is locked down due to contracts, lack of options, etc.

(And yes, there’s always the desire for Joshua Baez, but given that one outfielder is coming already, there’s not space for another.)

The Cards are going to roll with what they have. Thankfully, that’s not a bad group to roll with.

Since the last post, I finally finished We Sacrifice Everything to Baseball. I really recommend it to anyone that enjoys a good underdog story. Michael Clair paints the pictures very well and got to know the Czech team, which shows in the book. I’m going to have him on Conversations at some point soon to talk about it, I hope.

I don’t think I started anything new, though on Star Wars Day I did do a lot of reading of the book that came out a number of years ago, Jedi: Battle Scars. It’s set between the two Jedi Survivor games (neither of which I have played) so I’m learning the characters but it’s been pretty fun so far.

Blogger and Podcaster Day is next Saturday. It’s going to be a quick trip in for me—I’ll get to St. Louis a couple of hours before gates open and then leave out early on Sunday morning—but I always look forward to seeing my compatriots in the field and getting a chance to go to the game as well as hear from the folks in charge. This will be the first time Chaim Bloom has been in the room with us so I look forward to seeing how that goes. It’s also a Cubs game, which is pretty fun. There will be a lot of writeups and commentary after that on various sites, but I’ll try to give my two cents when I return.

After last night’s win based on Michael McGreevy’s conjuring up Bud Smith memories and Fernando Tatis continuing the family tradition by being referenced close by the words “grand slam”, the Cardinals sit 23-15, eight games clear of .500 after 38 games. They have never been under .500 at any point this season. So let’s see where they were at the last few years at the same mile marker.

The 2025 Cardinals did start out 3-0, so depending how technical you want to be perhaps that counts as a “hot start”. However, it didn’t last very long. The Cardinals slipped under .500 for the first time after game 9 and, at this point in the season, were an even 19-19 as they hit the midpoint of what would be a nine game winning streak. They did not reach eight games over .500 until a win in Texas in game 57. They would reach their season high of nine games over on June 29, which makes it even more remarkable that they were selling just a month later. Winning five of your next 17 will do that.

What about 2024? That season, they were under .500 from the get go, losing the opening game to the Dodgers. In fact, they didn’t get over .500 until game 9 after beating the Marlins. At the 38 game mark, they sat at 15-23, the inverse of where we see the team now. Of course, game 40 that year was the Mother’s Day win that set them on a strong winning month. Even with that, though, they never got six games over .500, even though they finished the season in positive territory.

We tend to not want to talk about 2023, for good reason. They also lost the opener, so they were under .500 after Day 1. The only time they were over .500 was after game 3, when they were 2-1. After 38 games they were 13-25 on their way to a completely disastrous season.

So when was the last time the Cardinals were this good or better after 38 games? Not their last playoff year of 2022 (they were 20-18). In 2021, they had this exact record after Jack Flaherty (with help from Alex Reyes) shut down the Brewers. You have to go back to 2015 to find a Cardinals team with a better record at this point, as that team, after a 14-inning loss to the Mets, were 25-13. (Let’s remember some guys: Sam Tuivailala got the loss in that one.)

Of course, this doesn’t get into what teams they played and how strong/weak they are, but after 38 games you probably have had a strong mix no matter what the year. After going so long without facing a team over .500, the Cards are now 9-2 against such squads. Only the Nationals and Pirates have more wins against such teams and they’ve both had many more opportunities, as the Pirates are 10-9 and the Nats 10-13.

I felt like this part of the schedule was going to tell us a lot about the team. As you know, it’s a stretch of 17 games without a day off (well, it was supposed to be, but the rain at least gave them a bit of a break) and they were playing teams that either were successful this season or were supposed to be successful. I think even if they’d run this gauntlet 8-9 (assuming they’d played all the games) we’d have been pretty impressed.

Instead, they are going to be at the worst 9-7 through this run of Seattle, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and San Diego. You wouldn’t expect a team that is supposed to be learning, growing, developing to be able to do that. Yet here we are.

I think, given the expectations of the team in general but the pitching staff in particular, we’re always going to be looking for the other shoe to drop, for the team to hit their ceiling, for the momentum to run out. The rest of the month has a lot of divisional games in it, as after the Athletics and Royals they face all four of the other NL Central teams back-to-back, culminating in the Cubs series at the end of the month. (Blogger and Podcaster Day is the Saturday night of that series, which should be exciting.) If we’re still talking about a team 8-10 games over .500 at that point, you start thinking this is who they are. A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

So let’s talk about the fact that, to watch this series, you had to have ESPN, Apple TV, FOX, and Cardinals.tv.

On the one hand, I get the consternation. There should be some way that, if you purchase Cardinals.tv, you get to watch the games that are on these sort of national broadcasts as well. I don’t have ESPN and I’ve not been able to get my digital antenna to pick up FOX, so I’ll miss half of the series. (If it wasn’t for an early season deal pairing Apple and Peacock, I would be missing more.) I understand the reasoning about being on platforms like this, which will hopefully draw some casual eyeballs, but it’s frustrating for those of us that want to watch every night.

That being said, I still remember growing up when the only time here in Arkansas you could watch the Cardinals was if they happened to be on the NBC Game of the Week. Even when things like FOX Sports Net (as it was originally called) started covering most of the games, you still didn’t see every game. So while the various options are frustrating, it’s almost like complaining that your wallet is too small for your fifties and your diamond shoes are too tight. We get probably 85% of a season through one provider and we can keep track of the other games on GameDay or social media if we want. I’d like it to be better, but I’m not going to be terribly worked up about it until there are a larger percentage of games in these silos.

I will say that the broadcast team for Apple is OK but the graphics and presentation is really nice. That’s the other thing about seeing it on different platforms, you get some variety in voices and looks. The Peacock presentation is excellent, Apple was good, and hopefully the others had their high points as well.

I mentioned in the last (non Star Wars) post that I was getting a chance to go up and see the Razorbacks play baseball. It was an enjoyable afternoon. The Hogs got down early to Northeastern Louisiana, trailing 2-0 after a couple of frames, but they chipped away and tied it in the middle of the game, then put up some runs late to win it. A cool day, good company (my kids and my daughter’s boyfriend), and a Hogs win. Can’t beat it.

The book reading really hasn’t changed much as I’m continuing to work on the ones that I’ve mentioned. It’s been a busy couple of weeks so I’ve not really sat down and read much, though maybe I’ll be able to do that this afternoon. (I’d say as I wait for tonight’s game, but I won’t be able to watch that one so….) The Star Wars book club meets this week and after that, I’ll get into book 2 of the Darth Bane trilogy, Rule of Two. While this is an older Legends book, I never read it or its sequel, so I’m excited to get the chance to do that.

Did finish watching Maul - Shadow Lord. You really can’t go wrong with Star Wars Animation and this continued the winning trend. As I mentioned before, it was a slow burn—something I expected to happen fairly early didn’t occur until the closing minutes—but the buildup has been incredible and the last two episodes were especially intense. Now just two weeks away from The Mandalorian and Grogu!

Had a fun conversation last week with Richard McGill on Musial. If you aren’t reading his Substack, you can subscribe to it over here. Last night, I talked with Tyler Gettinger mainly about the minor leagues and the players that are coming up. You can listen to that right here. Mr. Medlock’s Tulsa Hale team has concluded their season and he’ll be back in the saddle as soon as next week. There are still three more guests to go as well: Eugene Tucker from the excellent Portion Under Busch, J.D. Hafron from the Locked On Cardinals podcast, and our dear friend Alex Crisafulli, who will join us right before we all head to St. Louis for the blogger event. And, of course, David and I are still doing Gateway—he was poking around on some reasons for Michael McGreevy’s success and I’m sure we’ll get to those Sunday evening.

Yesterday, over at Jeff Jones’s subscription site Words About Birds (a site at which, for the next two days, you can get the rest of the season for a conveniently priced $19.77), he posted a discussion he had with Cardinals pitcher Michael McGreevy about the franchise that was being celebrated. It was an interesting discussion and one that I would have liked to have been a part of. So I’ll insert myself into it now, somewhat like Photoshopping a person into a picture.

Where we all agree: The Rise of Skywalker goes at the bottom of the pile. There are moments in TROS that are interesting and fun. I would have watched a whole movie of Rey, Finn, and Poe going on some sort of adventure because the chemistry there was a lot of fun. I wish we’d seen more of Ben Solo, because even the little bit we got was intriguing. I could imagine Adam Driver playing him as a sardonic good guy, taking some personality from Han.

Overall, though, it was a mess and the signature reason why doing three movies without having a firm overarching plan from the beginning was terrible. I can understand why you wouldn’t have all three movies directed by the same guy—that’s a decade or more of someone’s life—but the major story beats should have been fleshed out before The Force Awakens was ever even titled.

Where Jeff and I agree: The Last Jedi is good, the best of the sequels, but there are understandable arguments against it. I have never been as surprised by a Star Wars movie as I was TLJ. I honestly wasn’t sure how some beats were going to go when I was watching it for the first time. I understand the arguments against the Luke Skywalker arc and I admit, seeing him as a legendary Jedi for longer than we did would have been pleasing.

However, he ran away, like his Masters did, and everyone that says “he saw the good in Vader” tends to forget that if the Emperor doesn’t have an own goal and snap Luke out of his fury, Vader might have lost more than just a hand. I can believe it would cross his mind to try to strike down an evil before it became a threat, just like it is believable he’d not go through with it.

Plus, we’ve never see anything like his Force projection and he basically played the ultimate troll on Kylo Ren, so that’s fun.

We partially agree on Attack of the Clones. Most of the Padme/Anakin stuff is rough and it’s what sinks AOTC to the bottom of the prequel pile. However, Obi-Wan playing detective and the battle of Geneosis are a lot of fun and some of AOTC got redeemed in the excellent The Clone Wars animated series.

Where Michael and I agree: Maul - Shadow Lord has been outstanding. I’ve not gotten to the finale that came out yesterday, but I’m very excited to get a chance to watch it, maybe after the game tonight. Sam Witwer is so great at bringing depth and intrigue to what we all thought was a silent, one-note character back in 1999.

Also, that The Phantom Menace is an interesting choice for Best Prequel Trilogy. I do the years have been kind to it and it is better when it doesn’t have all the pressure of “Star Wars returning” around it. I don’t mind the political drama around it at all and it’s helpful showing how Palpatine worked his way through legitimate channels. There’s enough awkward performances and cringy dialogue (and, in fairness, both of those are in almost every Star Wars movie) that it wouldn’t be my first choice.

Where we all agree: Derrick Goold is completely wrong on Revenge of the Sith. I’m sure Derrick has some well-thought-out reasons and he does have a kid at USC film school, but ROTS is, if not great, the closest thing the Prequel Trilogy has. The opening scene is breathtaking, with the Jedi starfighters swooping into the Battle of Coruscant, and the Mustafar fight is both intense and heartbreaking. I enjoyed Yoda battling the Emperor and the fight on Utapau as well, and Order 66 is legendary. It’s not anywhere close to perfect, but it is definitely not bad.

Also, both Jeff and Michael need to get on Andor. I liked Season 2 a little more than Season 1 because of the variety, breaking it up over a number of years. I should go back and watch the entire run again. Of course, I say that about all the Disney+ stuff. It’s harder to do that than when there were just three movies.

Also, it would be interesting to hear their thought on the upcoming The Mandalorian and Grogu. The closer it gets, the more interested I get in it. Just 2 1/2 more weeks to go!

Michael and Jeff both gave their rankings of the various movies. (Both of them left out The Clone Wars movie, but I think that’s fair since it was basically just three TCW episodes stitched together to be released in theaters.) I’ll leave theirs behind the paywall (though I will say I was surprised at Jeff’s second one) but here’s mine as of today, subject to change without notice. The originals get an edge because I’ve seen them 100s of times over my life, versus a handful for the newer stuff. Also, all Star Wars is good and I’d watch any of these, even TROS, at any time.

The Empire Strikes Back
A New Hope
Return of the Jedi
Revenge of the Sith
Rogue One
The Last Jedi
Solo
The Force Awakens
The Phantom Menace
Attack of the Clones
The Rise of Skywalker

We’ve seen it—for better or worse—a number of times in the past few days. Saturday against the Mariners was a back-and-forth affair but even when Seattle heartbreakingly took the lead in the top of the ninth, St. Louis still countered with a walk to lead off the bottom of the ninth. It didn’t turn into anything, but it wasn’t an easy 1-2-3 to wrap it up. (It was a 1-2-3 since Nathan Church hit into a double play, but you know what I mean.)

Or take Monday night against the Pirates, when the club spent much of the evening trying to avoid being the first team to have a combined perfect game thrown against them. They broke that up with an infield single from speedster Alec Burleson, but went into the ninth down two having just two hits and Pittsburgh having faced just one over the minimum. A lot of years, that would been a quick frame and the Pirates would take game one. Instead, the Cardinals put up four hits, including back-to-back homers from Pedro Pages and local boy JJ Wetherholt to tie it up, to go with two walks and swing that game from a two-run loss to a two-run win.

In the first 29 games, there have been very few times when the team has come out completely flat. Here’s a breakdown of how games have ended:

This lines up with how we feel about this team, doesn’t it? They aren’t going to blow people out—12 of their 16 wins are two runs or less—but they’ve done a good job of not letting others blow them out as well. Three of those four big losses (the 5+ group) came in three consecutive days against the Red Sox and Guardians. One of those, of course, was a close game until the ninth when Matt Svanson served up batting practice.

Again, I don’t want to put too much emphasis on this. It’s a month of games and, more importantly, the first month. All the players are fresher, the season doesn’t feel long yet, and sometimes you can fool some folks out of the game. Currently they are playing like an 89-win team, which would likely get them into the playoffs except that the rest of the NL Central is also playing like that. I don’t know that we revisit our preseason predictions just yet, unless of course you had them winning under 70 games. That one feels a little less likely now. They’d have to go 54-79 the rest of the way (which is like playing as a 65-win team overall) to hit the 70 mark.

That’s not impossible, especially after a July sell-off, but that doesn’t feel like what we’ve seen out of this team, does it? What I’ve seen from this team is more focus and drive than in the past. Maybe it’s early, sure, but it’s also a lot of young players that know their spot isn’t secure. Call it youngry or whatever, but that sort of attitude can build on itself. I’m not saying that the veterans that are no longer there were some sort of drag on the environment, because I don’t believe that to be the case, but freeing up opportunities that aren’t necessarily set in stone has seemed to bring out the best in a lot of folks.

For instance, let’s look at Nathan Church. It’s such a shame that the Cardinals lost on Saturday because that could have been “the Nathan Church game” for years to come. Hitting two home runs and stealing one as well? That’s Willie McGee in the World Series stuff.

Church has been on a heater of late, hitting .341 with an OPS of 1.036 since the last game against the Guardians. I’ve thought that Church would be a fourth outfielder at best and I don’t know if I’d revisit that yet, but he’s definitely had a stronger year overall than I would have thought. There’s still a lot of blue on his Baseball Savant page, but there’s some light red in there as well and not just in the fielding department. Three of his homers have come off of fastballs, though he’s had a better run of success overall against the breaking stuff. He’s pulling the ball in the air much more often than last year, which is giving him some of this success. With the tough run of teams over the next couple of weeks, it’s going to be interesting to see if he can keep this going or if better pitching might send him into a bit of a tailspin.

While I don’t know that Church is the center fielder of the future, I do think that between his run and the struggles of Victor Scott II that Church has earned significantly more playing time in center, especially if this keeps up until the return of Lars Nootbaar at the end of May. I really want to see VS2 succeed, but recently he’s looked overwhelmed at the plate. He did get a home run last night, which is a good thing, but even with that in the last two weeks he’s hitting .071. The guy that stole two bases on Opening Day has three on the season. He’s struck out in basically a quarter of his plate appearances. We’re a long way from his success against the Rays to start the season.

Now, we’re a month away from Nootbaar’s return. Thomas Saggese and Jose Fermin haven’t done anything to warrant regular playing time, though Fermin’s been a nice bat off the bench. (Saggese, on the other hand, might be walking in Memphis when the Noot is again loose.) So most nights it is going to be Church, Scott, and Jordan Walker in the outfield. A lot of things can happen in a month, as we well know.

There were a number of players signed this winter that, while Chaim Bloom probably hoped they would help the Cardinals, he was expecting more that they’d go out and make their case that they should be traded at the deadline. Let’s look at some of these guys and see how that’s stacking up so far.

The main one, of course, is Dustin May. May got off to a rough start, giving up six runs in both of his first two starts, but since then has settled in. His last four starts, he’s gone 3-0 with a 1.93 ERA and a 3.04 FIP. The strikeouts aren’t really there—his K/9 is less than six in those games—but otherwise he’s at least looking like a player that could be in demand in July. I’m sure there will be a few more blowups along the way, but I think this one is going to work out the way Bloom and company expected.

Ryne Stanek, maybe not as much. Yes, at the deadline everyone seems to want veteran arms and no matter what else you say about Stanek, he is a veteran arm, but the command has been so rocky that it’s hard to imagine a contender wanting to take on that risk. His walk rate is at 16.7% this season—to put that in perspective, the highest walk rate of someone that has enough innings to qualify for the FanGraphs leaderboard is Luis Severino of the Athletics, who has a 15.3% mark. He’s given up seven earned runs in high leverage situations, which means nobody is going to want him as a late inning guy. The strikeouts are there (28.3% rate) but that rate isn’t high enough to offset everything else that’s in the portfolio.

Justin Bruihl has a similar look. Anecdotally, you look at last night. The Cards were up 11-3 when he took over for the eighth. In that situation, you want to see someone throw strikes, get outs, and not make this dramatic in any way, shape, or form. Bruihl immediately gave up a hit to Oneil Cruz, which, OK, make them hit their way on, etc. After an out, though, he walked Bryan Reynolds, gave up a hard single to Ryan O’Hearn, and after a passed ball gave up another base knock to Nick Gonzales before being bailed out with a Masyn Winn double play.

Bruihl did throw strikes, for the most part—15 of his 25 pitches were in the zone—but his stuff is hittable enough that throwing strikes alone isn’t going to do it. That being said, Bruihl has at least had some solid outings of late. His last outing was a perfect inning against the Mariners (though did allow an inherited runner to score), before that was a scoreless frame (albeit with two walks) earlier in the Seattle series, and then he went 1.2 scoreless against the Marlins the time before that (stranding the inherited runner).

You hate to judge a reliever by ERA, of course, but he’s got a 5.87 ERA and a 5.80 FIP, so it’s not like he’s been too unlucky. He’s actually got a good BABIP, it’s just the walks that are really getting to him. Eleven in 15.1 innings isn’t good for anyone, much less the pitcher that’s been used the most out of the bullpen. Bruihl is a lefty, so that and a pulse probably means someone will call around July 31, but it’d be a surprise if anything that comes back in return ever has an impact.

The only other signing that will be a free agent at the end of the year was Ramon Urias. Urias has been a tolerable bench bat, with two home runs in 59 plate appearances. Signed to be an insurance policy for Nolan Gorman, the increase in Gorman’s defensive game has made that less of an issue. (Gorman’s bat still is iffy, but Urias isn’t going to top him there.) A veteran who can provide some defense and a little pop might get you a little something at the deadline and it seems unlikely Urias is going to do a lot to change his market between now and then.

The old saying is that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of fight in the dog. It feels to me that this team is a bit like a chihuahua. It’s not going to win based on talent, but it might be tenacious enough to surprise you. (I have two of them at home, both of which have a lot of bark but not that much bite.)

There are going to be rough days but I think, by and large, this team is going to put out a good effort and that effort is going to be enough to keep them in ballgames or, like last night, flip ballgames on their heads. Of course, as we said last time, the pitching might make sure that ballgames flip the other way, but it’s going to be interesting nonetheless!

Getting a chance to write this morning because I’ve taken the day off. Here in a bit I’m heading up to Fayetteville to watch the Razorbacks play, courtesy of a high school friend of mine who has season tickets to Baum Stadium. Both of my kids and my daughter’s boyfriend are up there, of course, and they’ll be joining me, so it should be a fun afternoon!

Haven’t had a chance to watch this week’s Maul: Shadow Lord yet, but I’m excited to do so. The show has been a slow burn but it’s been really well done in my opinion. Now that the Inquisitors have shown up and tangled with Maul, it feels like things will be ramping up. Just one more week after this one, as the show’s first season wraps on Star Wars Day.

Book reading continues. I’ve made it farther into We Sacrifice Everything for Baseball and it’s still quite enjoyable. In the last couple of weeks I’ve started a couple of others on my Kindle. Most of you know Rob Friedman, who goes by PitchingNinja online. He put out a book recently called Unhittable, talking about the scientific gains that have been made in the pitching realm. I’m not terribly far into it, but it’s very interesting to see how things have progressed over the last few years. He was just talking about Nolan Ryan and Tom House and I remember when some of those things, like Ryan and the other Rangers throwing footballs to keep loose, were happening.

The other one is in a different field altogether. Last Branch Standing by Sarah Isgur is a detailed look at the Supreme Court. She digs into the judges that are on the court now, some of the traditions and history of the Court, and how the Court works and does so in a breezy and fun style. It doesn’t feel like an overly political book (at least so far, and I’m about a quarter of the way through), and I believe there are insights for all sides in this one.

Over in the podcasting world, David Jones and I have gone from a Sunday show after the Cards sweep to a Sunday show after the Cards were swept. We liked the former better. Gateway is still coming at you most Sundays, though occasionally our life schedule shifts it a bit.

The guests continue on Musial, though Allen Medlock informs me that this is the last week of the season for the Nathan Hale Drillers and they have regionals next week. Since the last post, I’ve chatted with MLB.com writer Josh Jacobs and Viva El Birdos podcast host Jake Wood. This week, former podcaster Richard McGill joins me to talk about the team and how his empty nest is going.

I also had a chance to record a couple of Conversations with C70 in the last couple of weeks. First, I talked to Alys from the Guardians fan base, then had a good conversation with Jim, who follows the Pirates. If you like it when Alex Crisafulli and I get together (and he’s coming on Musial at the end of the month), you’ll like that last one.

Also, if you’ve made it this far, I’d love to do a mailbag post in the future, though Dayn Perry usually gives you all the answers you need. But if you have a question—baseball, Star Wars, or anything else—drop it in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.

Still, it’s an off day and, with Tax Day behind this accountant, it’s nice to spend a little time tippy-tapping on the keyboard about a team that is continuing to beat expectations. While there are still a lot of warning lights, it’s also worth noting that the Cardinals are 10-8, which would put them on pace for 92 wins.

They aren’t going to win 92, not with a run differential of -17 which is third worst in the National League. (Though it should be pointed out that one of the teams worse is the Phillies, who were a pick to win the East, so all of this is still in the small sample size arena.) That run differential took a big hit in three games this weekend and, honestly, even if this team wound up around .500, they’d probably have a significant negative differential. This isn’t a team that you see winning a game 9-3 very often but you can sure see them losing games like that.

For instance, the biggest win the Cards have right now is a 6-1 W over Washington. Their second biggest is 3-0 over the Mets. In their 10 wins, they have averaged winning by 1.9 runs, which really feels like that’s how they’ll win their games this year. They’ll get just enough offense and hold on by the skin of their teeth if the bullpen is on that night. If things go south, though, it gets ugly. They’ve averaged losing by 4.5 runs, if my quick math is right.

So at that rate they could win 5 games, lose two, and basically break even on the run differential. I’d be fine with a lot of 5-2 stretches where they got outscored, wouldn’t you? I don’t think it’s sustainable, of course, but it’s fair to remember that run differential isn’t necessarily the be all and end all. They won the series against the Guardians and the Rays while being outscored overall.

That said, it’s also fair to say that they were a bit fortunate over this last series. If Maysn Winn’s ball in the bottom of the 9th in the second game doesn’t find a rock, that game goes to the Guards and at best they are a .500 team now. However, even if they have gotten some breaks here and there, they’ve taken advantage of them. It feels like over the last couple of years Winn’s single would have been followed up by a strikeout or groundout by the next batter. Instead, Yohel Pozo doubles in the gap, Winn comes around to score, and the game goes into extra innings where they hold off Cleveland and win it in the bottom of the tenth.

Does it say anything about this team that they are 4-0 in extra innings and 5-0 in one run games? Probably says that if the pitching is on, they have a chance. If the pitching isn’t, the offense can’t make it close. (Occasional comebacks not withstanding.) The early results also say when that train gets rolling, either positively or negatively, things pile up quickly.

Jordan Walker, however, still seems to be the real deal. He hasn’t hit a home run every day since we spoke last, it just feels like it. Three homers and a .360/.385/.760 line over six games? Yeah, that’ll do, especially when coupled with the hot start.

There was some concern that he was doing a significant amount of his damage against lefties early on. Now, though, he has five homers against right-handers, three against lefties while hitting .368 against the portsiders and .300 against the more dominant side. Limited success in high leverage spots, but he’s also only got six plate appearances in that category.

There’s also a confidence that he seems to project when you see him at the plate. In the past, there was a bit of an overwhelmed/lost/uncertain vibe around him. Maybe it’s the same look and I interpret it differently after eight homers, but I don’t think that’s the case. Ray Kinsella, in the movie Field of Dreams, says that Terence Mann once wrote “there comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place and the universe opens itself up for a few seconds to show you what’s possible.” Perhaps Walker had some tumblers open for him as well.

I don’t know that we can say the same for Nolan Gorman, though maybe there are a few slightly positive things. He’s currently at 0.1 fWAR, which is better than his -0.2 fWAR he had for the past season. He’s showing up on some of the defensive leaderboards, which is a long way from the issues he had last year when he took over for Nolan Arenado. He’s not doing anything against lefties, of course, but he is hitting .227 against righties which is up from .201 last year and .204 the year before. Small victories, right?

There’s still a ton of blue on his Baseball Savant page, though. It’s slightly better than last year, but that’s such a low bar to clear. His expected batting average is in the bottom 5% of the league instead of the bottom 1%. His strikeout rate is at 30%, which is the best of his career and somewhat manageable, but things like barrel rate and exit velocity are at career lows. He’s got to be hitting 35 homers or so for the rest of his offensive game to be palatable. That’s not at all where he’s at right now—he’s on pace for around 20, which would be the second-most in his career, but it still probably wouldn’t have him at 1 fWAR.

You have to keep him out there, of course. For one, it’s two weeks (granted, on top of two rough years) and this season is all about figuring things out. Two, he could have an awakening like Walker did and start looking like a true major leaguer. Three, well, it’s not like he’s blocking anyone. Ramon Urias has been a nice bench bat but this isn’t Cardinal Prospect Ramon Urias anymore. The Cards are going to ride Gorman all year and then evaluate where he took them. That said, it’s hard to imagine a result that has Gorman as a Cardinal in 2027, in all honesty.

Dustin May has had two pretty good outings in a row, at least in comparison to his first two starts. His ERA, which sat at 15.95 at one point, is down to 6.98. Still high, but on the right path. While he has struck out four in six innings in both starts, hopefully that’s just a start toward at least a 1:1 ratio in those categories.

The velocity is there—he hit 99 last time out—but the command is still a little iffy as shown by the plot of his pitches in the game against Cleveland. Still, he only has one total walk in those two games, so he’s been able to get swings when he needs them.

I’m not any sort of analyst, but it feels like we’re getting closer to seeing the Dustin May that most of us expected, even if it’s not the 90th percentile version we dreamed about. It looks like the slider still needs work but I trust that Dusty Blake and the rest of the pitching coaches will continue to tinker with him. The idea that he was going to be the best of the starters is still probably the most likely scenario given the rest of the rotation.

The Cardinals play in Houston tomorrow night. The Astros are 8-11 and have been dealing with a slew of pitching injuries. While the cozy dimensions might not be great for Kyle Leahy, Andre Pallante, and Matthew Liberatore, the offense should be able to be a little stronger. There’s a pretty decent chance that they come out of there still on the plus side of .500.

Then they go to Miami to play—gasp—a National League team. Only a third of the games they have played so far have been against teams in their own league, which is just another terrible aspect of this “balanced schedule” malarkey. (OK, so other people like it, but I don’t.) The Marlins currently are 9-10 and face Milwaukee this weekend. That should be an interesting test of the team, as Michael McGreevy, May, and Leahy will be on the mound against an offense that’s been a little more productive (in the runs category) than the Redbirds.

If the club can even just split those six games, they’d head back to Busch to welcome back Brendan Donovan and his new Mariners teammates. Seattle hasn’t been as expected yet, but they’ll be dangerous anyway.

It’s going to be fun to see how long the club can stay in positive territory with their record. It probably won’t finish up that way but we can enjoy the moments as they come, can’t we?

The book pile is going in the wrong direction. This week I got a copy of The First All-Star Game which will be out in June. Written by Randall Sullivan, it looks like an incredible telling of how the All-Star Game came to be, including the political and social climate around it. I haven’t, unsurprisingly, been able to do more than look over the cover, but I think this one should be a lot of fun for anyone that’s into baseball history.

I’m about 70 pages into We Sacrifice Everything To Baseball and it continues to be a great read about the Czech baseball team. I’m also working through Darth Bane: Path of Destruction so I won’t be trying to scramble to be ready for book club next month. While that’s now a Legends book, there’s not really been anything in current canon that contradicts it and I wonder if we’ll ever see some of those days told on screen.

Enjoyed my chat with Rich Bray last week on Musial. If you haven’t gotten a copy of The Trades That Made the Cardinals yet, you should get on that. I need to make time to get more of that book read and now that tax season is over with, maybe I can. I think Saturday afternoon might have a lot of reading in it, actually. After I get done writing this, I’ll be getting prepared to record this week’s episode with new MLB.com writer (and Dealin’ the Cards member) Josh Jacobs. We should have a lot to talk about!

Also, if you missed it, the Cardinals Off Day guys returned to the airwaves today. It’s in my queue so I haven’t gotten to it yet, but it’s always good to see a new episode drop.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

The 12th game of 2024 was a 3-0 shutout started by Sonny Gray, ended by Ryan Helsley, and bringing the club to 6-6. While being cautious after ‘23’s debacle, there was a bit of cautious optimism that things were going to be all right. While they did finish over .500, it still wasn’t anything to write home about when it was done.

Last year, the Cardinals dropped a 2-1, 13 inning marathon to the Pirates in Game 12, setting them again at a 5-7 record and, while there were some better days ahead in the near future, it was the second trade deadline of three which had players going out instead of players coming in.

So just by that standard, 7-5 after 12 games is pretty remarkable. You have to go back to 2022, when they were 8-4, to find a better record at this mark. However, this is a remarkably short period, two weeks out of six months. We have even gotten 10% of the season done yet. So how much of this can we trust and how much is a mirage?

Let’s start with the hottest name and the hottest bat. Jordan Walker is on fire, looking much more like the first round draft pick that he is than the washed up prospect that he was. After today’s game, the third in a row where he’s gone yard, he has a .295/.367/.682 line and more than half of his hits have gone for extra bases. And then there is this:

I don’t think even the most optimistic Walker fan would have thought he would be leading—OK, fine, tied for the lead—the league in home runs at any point. If that wasn’t exciting enough, there’s his Baseball Savant page.

So. Much. Red. It’s remarkable for anyone, but especially for one that struggled so much last year. For instance, look at the differences in a few categories between 2025 and 2026.

(The colors are just to differentiate, they mean nothing in particular.)

Now, even if Walker is for real, he’s not likely to keep this sort of run going. However, it feels very much like he’s figured some things out. He already has a home run against an offspeed pitch, which he didn’t do all of last season, and is hitting .600 on those few pitches that he’s seen. (Everything still is in the small sample size galaxy.)

With his home run today, he tied his total in 2024. He’s one shy of his total in 2025. At the rate he’s going, he’ll beat the total for those two combined by the end of May.

I don’t have all the fancy tools, but if you just base it on home runs, there’s a stretch at the end of August/beginning of September 2023 where he hit four homers in 12 games (again, not the five he’s done this season). In that run, he slashed .378/.400/.711 in 50 PA, a handful more than he has right now. It would be interesting to compare some of the underlying things in that stretch and this one—he’s walking more in this one, for instance, which probably means it has a better chance of continuing.

The eye test says he’s different. The stats say he’s different. The metrics say he’s different. It’s hard to trust someone that gets so good like someone flipped on a switch, but that does happen in baseball. If you ask me, I’d rate the Walker breakout as a true treasure.

Michael McGreevy won the game today, throwing six scoreless innings at the Nationals. That was his second such outing on the young season, throwing hitless innings in his first start against the Rays, and his baseball card numbers are 1-1 with a 2.16 ERA. Put that with some of his work last year and it’s easy to think that he’s putting his first-round-draft-pick pedigree to work as well.

There’s an account over on Bluesky that puts out a graphic of each starting pitcher after their outing, using the metrics and results to paint a picture of the start. Here’s the one for McGreevy from today.

McGreevy’s hitting his spots, which admittedly is his game, but his stuff isn’t impressing anyone. He’s barely touching 90 and he’s not striking anyone out. If this was the mid-80s (which, ironically, is where many of his offerings reside), I’d think he’d be a strong candidate for an All-Star Game. The game has changed, however.

The rest of the rotation is kinda in the same boat. We’ve seen good results—everyone save Dustin May has a win and three of the five ERAs are under 3.50—but it doesn’t feel sustainable in the least. The good thing is that Richard Fitts and Hunter Dobbins are going to be ready to step in should things start to unravel and bring with them, most likely, more swing and miss. Dobbins is currently on a rehab assignment, so by the end of the month the Cardinals will have to find a place for him (or option him directly to Memphis, that’s true).

I don’t feel like we’ve seen anything in the first dozen games that make me feel any different about the starting rotation. Well, except May’s struggles, because I thought he might be the strong point among the starters and he has definitely not been. A little bad luck but a whole lot more hard contact and ugly innings. The velocity is still there, but he’s not able to strike out a lot of guys with it. He’s not this bad—his xERA is less than half his actual ERA—and it has only been two starts, but right now it’s hard to see how he recaptures that excitement we had when he was signed.

All in all, the rotation’s shiny, but I think it’s still fool’s gold.

Let’s look at the team as a whole. 7-5, one game behind the Reds and the Brewers for the Central lead, tied with the Pirates and a game up on the Cubs. That last stirs up some feelings.

That being said, the delta of results isn’t huge. The Dodgers are the best team in baseball at 9-3, the Mariners the worst at 4-9. Lose a series and you can fall 10 spots relative to the league.

This team, though, has a certain je ne sais quoi about it. Too many times over the last few years, we’d see a Cardinals team get down two or three runs and feel like the game is over, even though there were sluggers like Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, and Willson Contreras on the team. The offense would seem lifeless and deficits loomed larger than they should.

In 2026, though, even though the talent level of the hitters is lesser (or at least the experience level is), dadgumit if they don’t find ways to put together remarkable rallies. Opening Day is the template, of course, scoring eight runs after the Rays scored six. Then there is last night, when the Cards got down three, then took the lead on a checks notes Nathan Church—is this right—home run. Yes, they were playing the Nationals, a team with an actual gas can in the bullpen (may not be true), but it was still something.

To slightly modify something my Gateway co-host said, this team is capable of coming back from three or more runs down. They are also capable of letting the other team come back from said gap. It feels like the Cards are going to play a lot of one run games that weren’t one run games in the fifth or sixth inning.

If I had to say whether this record is true treasure or fool’s gold, I’d go with the latter. I think that they’ve got a lot of fight in them and I think they might wind up better than we expect, but it still doesn’t quite feel like this is a .500 team. However, if you are talking about the style of play, the fight in the team, I believe that’s a true treasure. I think they’ll surprise some good teams this year and they can play above their heads and still finish under .500.

We’ve run on long enough so I don’t want to get into the bullpen too deeply, but while I don’t think they are as bad as what we’ve seen so far, there’s still some work to be done. If you can turn a game over to Riley O’Brien, hopefully through George Soriano and possibly Gordon Graceffo, you feel OK about it. I think Matt Svanson will come around, though his start has been a bit concerning. It’s almost a staple of baseball to have the rookie that was underrated come up and dominate, only to not have it the next season. I think it’s also possible we’ll see folks like Andre Pallante and Kyle Leahy shift back to the bullpen if Fitts and Dobbins come up, giving a few longer inning options out there and raising the floor of the squad as well. We’ll say the current bullpen results are fool’s gold, but it’s more debatable and depends on the player.

All in all, it’s been a pretty fun start to the season. Let’s hope the fun continues for a while. Who would have guessed that, when Sonny Gray and Willson Contreras came back to Busch, they’d come in with the last place team instead of facing one? (There’s an argument to be made that Contreras has had some sort of monkey’s paw wish to his career. His first year he wins the World Series with the Cubs, then they slowly slide into also-ran territory while the dynasty never develops. He moves to St. Louis and they have one of their worst seasons in a century and are noncompetitive while he wears the birds on the bat. Then he gets traded to Boston, who expects to contend for a title, only for them to faceplant out of the gate. If I were Willson (who was a great Cardinal, don’t get me wrong), I’d start wondering if it was me.

So this is the stack of books next to my recliner that I am either wanting to read or have gotten a chance to start. That’s the Prospect Guide from Brian Walton and Kyle Reis on top, but the stack is less about order and more about being there. This doesn’t count the Kindle, which has intriguing books like The Last Kings of Hollywood on it that I am excited about, and it doesn’t count the Star Wars book club book, as we will be discussing Darth Plagueis tomorrow before starting the first book in the Darth Bane trilogy. It was good to revisit Plagueis and I’m interested in our discussion tomorrow night. You could keep some of this, but the appearance of Plagueis at the end of The Acolyte messes with a few things.

Anyway, I started on We Sacrifice Everything to Baseball today during my lunch hour and just a few pages in, I can tell it is going to be an outstanding read. Who doesn’t like an underdog story? I’m very interested to see how things unfold with this group of Czech players.

You’ll see on that stack a copy of The Trades That Made the Cardinals. I’ve taken a glance at this as well, as the author Rich Bray will be on Musial this week, and it looks like a fun piece of work as well. It’s not a ranking of the best trades or worst trades in the history of the club but it rather tells the story of the organization’s history through the lens of 10 trades. I look forward to talking with Rich on Friday night about how he went about writing the book and what he learned in the process.

Speaking of the podcast, Musial has been a lot of fun the last couple of weeks. Nate and Ben from Talking About Birds came by and we talked about the opener and drew so many wild conclusions from it. Then last week we went heavy into the minors with High Lord of the Prospects Kyle Reis, who negotiated that title into his MLB.com writing contract. You can sign up for Kyle’s newsletter here and as a bonus it appears you get Will Leitch as well, so that’s doubly awesome.

Also, if you want Cardinals writing in your inbox, Jeff Jones has started a subscription site to supplement his regular writing over at the Belleville News-Democrat. I have found the posts to be uniformly fun to read and Jeff has put out a lot more of them than I expected. It feels like it has been daily, though it probably hasn’t been quite that. The yearly price deal has expired, but it’s still just $6.18 a month and trust me, that’s quite the bargain. Given that The Athletic still doesn’t have a writer and that Kyle and Will are just writing once a week for MLB, you should give this a look if you are wanting to increase your Cardinals coverage.

Shifting gears, had a chance to watch the first two episodes of Maul - Shadow Lord this evening and it feels like it’s going to be a very worthy addition to Star Wars animation, which comes with a high standard. Only Star Wars Resistance hasn’t hit the mark and I wonder if they’ll at some point try to rehabilitate those characters. There were some interesting folks in there, it just wasn’t the person that was the main guy.

Anyway, Maul starts out strong, some great lightsaber wielding, and a few callbacks while not being overwhelming. Visually, it’s stunning, and it’s laying the foundation for an interesting show. Two episodes a week means it’s not a terribly slow drip, but I was wanting Ep 3 as soon as I finished the second one for this week.

If you’ve made it this far, let’s try out the new (at least to me) poll feature, shall we?

Today, today was surely something. Some random thoughts about the first day of the 2026 Cardinals season.

• Let’s talk about the broadcast a little bit. This was the first real test of Cardinals.tv and it passed the test. The graphics were great—the scorebug was sharp and the intros/outros were good. It was a very professional production and even though it was occasionally mentioned that it was “brought to you by bet365” it wasn’t quite as ubiquitous as the Bally’s/FanDuel product placement.

• Dani Wexelman was very good as the host of the pre-game show. It’s the old meme of “I wasn’t familiar with your game” but while I knew her name, I don’t think I’d seen her on anything save maybe one of the spring training games. She’s a solid pro and a definite positive for the company. I think she’ll cover Alexa Datt’s absence very well.

• Also in that vein, it was good to see Jim Hayes back doing what he does so well. From talking to JJ Wetherholt’s parents to bantering with Al Hrabosky and Mark McGwire, it just wouldn’t be a broadcast without the Cat getting the interviews and bringing a different angle to the game.

• The pregame ceremonies were, of course, top notch. The Clydesdales were as majestic as always and it was a real treat to see so many former Cardinals at the park. It took a while to get through everyone, but getting to see Ray Lankford, Scott Rolen, Jason Isringhausen, and others makes the day special. We see some of them throughout the year (and Ozzie is, of course, everywhere) but getting them all together is such a treat.

• The video marking the 20th anniversary of the stadium was impeccable. Set to Adam Wainwright’s anthem of playing for the Cardinals, “Time to Fly”, there were some amazing moments that were brought back to mind, from the beginning to the present day. It was a great walk down memory lane.

• The only problem was that I wasn’t at all prepared for the images of the players that have passed on. Seeing Oscar Taveras, Josh Hancock, and the legends like Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Lou Brock that have left us in the last 20 years was a tear-forming moment when I was least expecting it.

• As the players went through the line, one person stood out. Chaim Bloom had a huge grin on his face as every player went through the handshake line. After two years hiding behind the scenes, he had to be having a ball being out in the open in that whole atmosphere.

• While it probably didn’t make quite the impact on former Cardinal Ryan Vilade over on the Tampa Bay side, I do wonder if players like Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan, while being happy in their new spots, sorta missed everything that goes along with being a Cardinal on Opening Day.

• JJ Wetherholt had a strong first at bat and officially added his name to the list of people that have played Major League Baseball when he flew out. His second at bat was even better, with the ball clearing the wall and landing on Freese’s Lawn. To homer in your first game is incredible, but to get a curtain call as well? St. Louis is already in JJ’s pocket.

• Jordan Walker seemed to be a bit of a different player out there. He got tested a lot on defense and passed each test. He had a couple of remarkably strong throws from the outfield as well. At the plate, his first two balls were hit to third, but the last two were in the air and his well. His double might have been a little misplayed by the center fielder but it was still good to see lift.

• While Chip Carey and Brad Thompson weren’t too hard on the ears, I continue to cringe every time Chip decides to say RISP as an word instead of an acronym.

• While it was good to see Wetherholt homer, it did remind me of the last Cardinal middle infield prospect that homered for his first hit. I hope Wetherholt’s career winds up better than Paul DeJong’s, though Pauly D’s career isn’t anything to sneeze at.

• Nathan Church made a sensational grab that kept the 1-0 lead intact (for another batter) and he had three hits to go along with it. If there is a competition for left field, Church is making sure that he’s the frontrunner. I haven’t been completely on board with him, but there’s no doubt he did well last year and the winter comparisons of his work ethic to Brendan Donovan’s is a point in his favor.

• Matthew Liberatore looked strong for the first four innings but tired in the fifth. The ball that Church caught probably should have been a homer, the next pitch was one, and two more batters reached before he finished the inning. He never seemed to have a good feel for his curve ball, at least not that I saw, but he worked through things. It also had to be odd to start a game with temps in the 90s without working up to it. Florida has been warm but not necessarily that warm.

• There’s going to be a lot of talk about the bullpen because of the six-run sixth, but very few of those balls were high percentage hits. The first one against Matt Svanson was a solid single, as was the single against Justin Bruihl, but two of the singles had xBA of .270 and .240 and another had an exit velocity of less than the interstate speed limit (at least, here in Arkansas). It was death by a thousand paper cuts and while you can’t hold the ‘pen blameless, that wasn’t “give up six runs bad” pitching.

• To see this team turn around and immediately score eight in response was incredible and may (drawing conclusions from one game is folly) say something about this squad. They may not have the experience that some other teams have and they may still be developing their talent, but it feels like they are a team that works hard and will put together a professional approach. The results aren’t always going to be there (though it was nice to see them today!) but if they are putting this kind of approach out there regularly, the results may start to show earlier than we think.

• What a day for Alec Burleson. He gets the first base hit of the season, singles to start the big sixth inning, then caps it all off with a no-doubt home run that had the whole stadium fired up. Then he spears a line drive that ends the eighth inning threat, flashing leather like Paul Goldschmidt used to do. It was quite the day for the Burly man and if there are more of those coming, it’ll be a lot of fun to watch.

• Give some love to Nolan Gorman as well. Gorman struck out in the first, but in the sixth he singled in Burleson and Masyn Winn, who had reached to start the frame. If he strikes out there, that whole inning unfolds quite differently.

• The seventh through the ninth wasn’t easy, of course. In the ninth, Ryne Stanek walked the bases loaded before getting out of it by striking out former Cardinal Richie Palacios. That means Stanek is truly a Cardinals closer because it’s not a real save unless the tying run comes to the plate.

• At the end of the first full day of baseball, the Cardinals are in the first place in the NL Central and the Cubs are in last place of the NL Central. You can’t beat that for the first day of the season!

(OK, that was supposed to be a quick look. Maybe by my standards it counts. Musial Friday night with Nate and Ben, Gateway likely Sunday. Talk with you then.)

“Trust the process” became a catchphrase surrounding the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA in the 2010s. It went from motto with import to mocking scorn as the need for trust lasted longer than some wanted. It feels like this is going to be a phrase around the Cardinals for the next couple of years and we are getting a real taste of it right now.

When Chaim Bloom and Oli Marmol and their respective staffs set the Opening Day roster, one name was conspicuous by its absence. Even though Nelson Velazquez led the team in average, hits, and home runs in the spring, his ticket was punched for Memphis instead of the big city. Velazquez’s spring, plus the notable need for right handed power, would have seemed to easily have him on the 26-man roster. So why did the powers that be decide not to bring him north?

There’s been a lot of talk of “the path of least resistance” from fans conditioned to see that in every front office move. It’s probably true that, had Velazquez already been on the 40-man roster, he might have gotten a trip north. However, I don’t think that’s a guarantee, because I think Bloom thinks about these things differently than John Mozeliak did.

Remember that Bloom laid down a bit of a mission statement in his first press conference as President of Baseball Operations. “We are not where we need to be. We’re not where our fans expect us to be…..but to get where we want to go we can’t take short cuts and we won’t…. When we have to choose between short-term gratification and our bigger goal of contending consistently, we will choose the long term. We will make moves with that ultimate goal in mind because simply put that’s where this organization needs to be.”

I think that’s a key phrase to keep in mind as we “trust the process”. Would Velazquez help the Cardinals win a few more games in April? Maybe. However, there are a lot of reasons why that sort of move might foul up a longer-term strategy.

First off, we have spent a lot of time over the last two years especially talking about how a team can’t be beholden to spring training stats. It was a hot spring training that got the front office all fired up about Jordan Walker, setting off a chain of events that still hasn’t resolved itself positively. It was a hot spring that got the front office thinking that Victor Scott II would be a big upgrade over Michael Siani when Dylan Carlson went down, only to have to reverse course a few weeks later.

Spring training stats have to mean nothing. Yes, Velazquez had a great few weeks, but it was still just 42 at bats. That’s basically 10 days in the bigs. The poster boy for hot St. Louis starts, Bo Hart, went 23-50 in his first 10 games in the majors with six extra-base hits. As we know, that didn’t last long.

If Velazquez had a strong major league track record, maybe that would have tipped the scales. While it’s true that his 31 career home runs would rank highly in comparison to the rest of the roster, he didn’t play in the majors at all in 2025 and he struggled in 2024 with the Royals. This very well may be a new and improved Velazquez, but it almost feels like the same argument we were using with Joshua Baez. Let’s see how real it is before bringing him up to the majors.

I also wonder if they expect Lars Nootbaar back somewhat quickly. It would be a bit of a surprise, since Nootbaar didn’t play at all in the spring and just Tuesday started taking batting practice. Once he comes back, though, that could create a roster jam if Velazquez was here, especially if he was struggling. This allows the club to see Nathan Church and Thomas Saggese, knowing that they can go to Memphis if they are scuffling when the Noot is ready to be loose.

The short-term play is Velazquez to the majors. As you saw in my roster configurations, I expected him to come up and I don’t think it would have been a bad choice had they gone that way. However, the more I think about it, the more I think this fits into Bloom’s worldview.

Other than that, the roster was a bit anti-climatic. We still don’t know how JJ Wetherholt is getting on there, we just know he’s there. (If it’s not Nootbaar to the 60-day IL, which feels a little unlikely depending on the results of today’s BP) then it may be someone like Patron Pitcher Nick Raquet or Cesar Prieto. Both got into the game last night—Prieto was the starting shortstop—but that might have been more of a last hurrah than any sort of true sign they were sticking around. I will say that Ryan Fernandez still isn’t looking great, but he feels like a guy they probably still want to try to work with before waving the white flag.

We’ve talked about the bullpen before, but it feels like it is going to be very static this year. It feels like we’ll see a lot more multi-inning outings, which will help keep pitchers from going too often. We saw Chris Roycroft get four outs on Sunday, for instance. Reliever usage should be something that is interesting to watch. Maybe not as much in the early going, when every week has an off day, but as the season progresses knowing that there’s not much option for roster church could make for some decisions that fans will have fun debating. After the spring they had I’m very interested to see if George Soriano and Matthew Pushard can keep it up when the bell rings.

Dayn Perry’s got a great writeup of the roster, so you should check that out (and subscribe if you haven’t already). We’ve got one more day of waiting and then it all kicks off tomorrow.

Many of you might be too young to remember when the first pitch of every MLB season was in Cincinnati, honoring the city’s legacy of having the first professional team. Even when they went to a game-before-Opening-Day in 1994, the Reds were at home in Riverfront Stadium, taking on Ray Lankford and the Cardinals.

Now, tradition hardly matters to the folks making out the schedule. If it were me, the crown jewels of the sport—the Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals, Dodgers—along with the Reds would always open their season at home. I know there are reasons that teams might not want to do that, but it feels right to have the season start in places that have a deep history.

Nobody does Opening Day better than St. Louis, though Cincinnati does give it a good run. The Clydesdales, the red jacket legends, the packed stadium—it’s going to be electric, I’m sure. I’ve never been to an Opening Day (and honestly can’t imagine I’d ever get to one) but even just watching it on TV it’s a treat.

This year, the 2006 team that won the World Series will be honored by having David Eckstein throw out a first pitch to Gary Bennett, while the 1996 team that went to the NLCS, got a 3-1 lead, then suddenly were replaced by space aliens will be represented by Brian Jordan (helping keep him the public mind while he’s in that Hall of Fame voting) pitching to Tom Pagnozzi.

It’s different, of course, with those upper-tier Hall of Famers gone. While the list of Cardinals legends that will be there is remarkable, they don’t have quite the cache of Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Lou Brock. Ozzie Smith is still there, adding that flair, and we’ll be seeing Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina in the future (Yadi will be there tomorrow, though not with a jacket yet), but it’s different. Those losses still reverberate a bit.

I have taken off work before to watch the game, though I’m not sure I’ll be doing that this year. For those that are going, I hope it’s a wonderful day and you get a Redbird winner out of the deal!

So I have a significant problem. I was looking at my Kindle after I bought yet more books and realized I had close to 50 books on there that were either unread or in stages of being read. That’s not counting the physical books on my arm table that need to be gone through as well. The Star Wars book club is doing Darth Plagueis this month, so that’s got to get a re-read. My friend Jim Yeager has written two books on Arkansas baseball and I’ve read the first while the second has been started for a while as I dip in and out of it. Great books, I just haven’t dedicated the time to finishing the newest one.

And what did I have my wife bring home tonight from her job at the local bookstore? Project Hail Mary. I’ve heard too many people talking about the book and the movie and I figured I should find out for myself. So either I’ll start on it and won’t be able to put it down or it will be one that I keep meaning to start and will still be sitting here a year later.

Tax season is thinking about winding down, at least I hope it is. There are still returns to be done but we can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Only 22 more days!

Had a fun time talking to the Cardinals Off Day guys last week on Musial and I look forward to their pre-season show, which I guess will be dropping today. Might already be out by time you read this, which means you need to go hunt it out. Looking forward to being on Talking About Birds (recording tonight, dropping tomorrow) and returning the favor on Musial Friday night. There was no Gateway this past weekend and we may have complications recording this weekend, but we’ll see what we can do.

Catcher (3): Ivan Herrera, Pedro Pages, Yohel Pozo

Herrera is supposed to be back behind the plate on Tuesday, I believe, but that means there are only seven more games before the bell sounds on Opening Day, including the game in Springfield. I’d guess, at most, Herrera catches four of those games unless there has been news to the contrary. It’s going to be a while before Herrera is the “regular” catcher, though he’ll be behind the plate regularly and the early off days (every Thursday until the end of April) will help him get some rest as well. Pozo’s got a chance to prove his worth until Herrera can show he’ll catch more than 50% of the time.

Infield (5): Alec Burleson, Nolan Gorman, Ramon Urias, JJ Wetherholt, Masyn Winn

Utility (1): Jose Fermin

With Urias getting back on the field this week, it doesn’t feel like he’ll be a IL candidate to start the season, though that’s still a possibility. It’s also not likely they are going to just outright cut him even though they’ve not seen much of him. Gorman has done better this spring than expected, but we have to 1) wait to see if that holds and 2) still need insurance at third anyway.

The interesting thing, of course, is how do they get Wetherholt onto the 40-man since it is full and he needs a spot. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see them return Matthew Pushard to the Marlins and free up a spot that way. Pushard hasn’t had a ton of success this spring, but he does have seven strikeouts to two walks in his 5.2 innings. Let’s assume that, since they are developing talent this season, they keep him. (It’s also possible that they work out a trade for his rights so he could go to Memphis, but that isn’t terribly likely.)

My guess here is that Cesar Prieto, who has already been demoted and doesn’t have a clear path to the big leagues, probably gets the short stick. It’s very possible he’d clear waivers and wind up in Memphis, but hopefully someone that has a potential need would grab him.

You’ll note no Thomas Saggese. After listening to Oli Marmol Friday about how to deal with people coming back from the WBC and Italy’s deeper run (and less use of Sags) than expected, I believe they’ll send him to Memphis for at least a couple of weeks to let him get back into regular rhythm.

Outfield (4): Nathan Church, Victor Scott II, Nelson Velazquez, Jordan Walker

We’re going to talk about spring stats even though we shouldn’t talk about spring stats. Church has been one of the more consistent hitters in the spring and he always felt like at least the backup to VS2. Now he may have played himself into a lot of time in left field as well, at least in the early going.

Velazquez has been the big threat of camp. He leads the team in home runs and hits (and is third in at bats, which plays a part), and has an OPS closing in on 1.200. Given the need for right-handed power, putting him on the roster makes sense.

But how? Like Wetherholt, a 40-man spot needs to be cleared for him. Given the fact that Lars Nootbaar still hasn’t even really started baseball activities (or at least not many of them), I’m wondering if they don’t put him on the 60-day IL to start the season and create that 40-man spot that way. You’d have to think that Noot needs at least a week or more in the minors on a rehab assignment, so it depends on how close he really is to being in game shape and cleared for those kind of situations. Alternatively, someone like Tekoah Roby, who might be in a similar situation, could go on there. Otherwise, it’s probably someone like Nick Raquet, Patron Pitcher of the Blog, who would get the ax.

There’s a lot of talk about Jordan Walker starting in the minors, which is an understandable thought. However, similarly it seems like there’s not much good that can come of it. He’ll either crush not-ready-for-prime-time pitching and then struggle again on a callup or struggle there and really cause problems. With the demotion of Joshua Baez, a move that is wise and helps avoid some of the “fall in love in spring” issues that might have detoured Walker’s career, there’s not a clear replacement either. Hopefully these couple of days in the hitting lab will help and I wonder if that might be something that they do a lot of during the season, giving him extra days here and there to work with the coaches, video, etc. to try to keep him on track.

Starting pitchers (5): Kyle Leahy, Matthew Liberatore, Dustin May, Michael McGreevy, Andre Pallante

Richard Fitts is making this still a discussion, but given the fact that the Cards aren’t going to go with a six man rotation early in the season, it’s hard to see how any of these guys fall out. I’ve been notoriously skeptical about the transition of Leahy to the rotation, but he’s shown enough in spring and the powers that be are very interested in seeing if this will work. Pallante is looking much more like the pitcher we saw in 2024 than the one we saw in 2025. Throw in all your spring caveats, because that’s fair, but it’s at least something and given everything, he’s going to get the chance to prove it’s a real change or show that it’s not.

There’s a real chance we’re going to be really fired up about Dustin May, especially in the early going. I’m excited to get to see him pitch.

Relievers (8): Justin Bruhil, Riley O’Brien, Matt Pushard, JoJo Romero, Chris Roycroft, George Soriano, Ryne Stanek, Matt Svanson

With Gordon Graceffo having options, I feel like they’ll run this to start. It’s just as likely, though, that they flip him and Roycroft. Marmol had some good things to say about Roycroft but that doesn’t mean that he’s on the roster. The six scoreless innings this spring, with six strikeouts, for Roycroft while Graceffo has only had two innings might have more weight. Either way, they’ll both find plenty of travel time between Memphis and St. Louis.

I still believe they keep Soriano after making the deal to bring him in, especially with the spring he is having. Pushard, the numbers would indicate that he’s still worth keeping around and this winter has been all about talent acquisition. Until push comes to shove, I think they keep him.

Of course, that does mean that there’s only two, maybe three spots (if Svanson doesn’t look like the guy we saw last year) that have any flexibility. There won’t be a lot of churn in the bullpen this year, I don’t think. There’s just going to be a lot of opportunities to find out what these guys are made of.

At the end of January, I had a goal to reach 350 subscribers by Opening Day. We reached that about a week or so ago, which made me pretty happy. Then Friday’s post happened and suddenly we are now over 420. My thanks to all of you that are clicked the subscribe button over the last couple of days. I hope that, now that you’ve gotten a real post from me rather than the excellent info from Oli Marmol, that you won’t actually unsubscribe, but I would understand if so.

While I do miss talking it over with my good friend Allen Medlock each week on Musial, it’s been a lot of fun getting to talk with the great run of guests that have been on since January. The last couple were fellow Substacker Dayn Perry, who you should be reading already, and Fangraphs writer Ben Clemens, who started off our run of Bens with style. Both of those guys are Cardinals fans that have jobs that have them focusing on all 30 teams, so it’s a bit of an outsider view on the team, which is good to have. This coming week we have the Cardinals Off Day crew (Ben, Ben, and Dan, so it’ll at least be even up with names) and the week after the Talking About Birds guys will have me on the day before Opening Day and then they’ll join me the day after. Gateway continues to roll along, as David and I just finished recording this week’s show.

Also, mainly for the new folks that haven’t seen me mention this regularly, the Lenten Star Wars devotionals are still coming out daily. We’re just over halfway to Easter!

The reading pile continues to grow. I’m making slow but steady progress on the Prospect Guide from Brian Walton and Kyle Reis, not because of the writing but because I haven’t just sat down and plowed through it. What I have read is wonderful.

Joe Sheehan recommended The Gods of New York in his newsletter recently, so I downloaded that and the author’s previous work, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning. Both look very interesting but I haven’t actually cracked them open yet. They join like about 40 other unread books on my Kindle. I really need to set aside like a week to do nothing but read.

Not really watching any shows right now. With tax season and everything else, there’s not just a lot of time in the day. I started Poker Face and it was pretty interesting, so I hope to get back to it maybe after April 15.

We are just over three weeks away from the first episodes of Maul: Shadow Lord, the next Star Wars Animation offering. That should be a lot of fun, because Sam Witwer really does a great job with Maul and it will be interesting to see them fill in a few of the years between his loss to Darth Sidious in The Clone Wars and his cameo in Solo.

We’re also about two months from The Mandalorian and Grogu and the newest trailers make that look more like a movie and less like TV characters on a biggers screen. If nothing else, it will be good to go back to the theater for Star Wars again.

So when I got an invite to a Zoom call, I wouldn’t have batted an eye except for one thing. This one wasn’t from MLB, it was from the Cardinals. As most of you know, communication with the Cardinals isn’t unprecedented—we’ve been doing the annual Blogger Day (now Blogger/Podcaster Day) since 2011 and there have been opportunities to cover Winter Warmup for almost that long—but something like this was new. What was even more remarkable was that the guest of honor was going to be none other than Cardinals manager Oli Marmol.

Similar rules were in place here. No audio or video recording (audio recording is allowed at Blogger Day but here it might have been difficult to separate the two) but anything discussed could be disseminated. (Since I have the email, call it direct written consent by the St. Louis Cardinals.) The meeting was held at 1:00 PM this afternoon with the idea that it would go 30 minutes. It ran a little longer and if Marmol had his way, we might have gone a couple of hours.

I tried to take notes while we went through this conversation, but one of the reasons I wanted to hurry and write this post was that hopefully I could make a little more sense of my notes instead of forgetting what I meant. If anything seems wrong, it’s likely my interpretation of what Marmol was saying. Also, I’ll not identify anyone that was on the call—I think the club kept it small because of the limited time available and not everyone could be a part of it. There are two exceptions. One has already said he was on it (and it would a surprise if he wasn’t) and the other—well, the context of his question makes it pretty clear who it was, especially to people that are also fans of my podcasts.

Let’s get into it.

Before we even got into the questions, Marmol had an opening statement, which was not surprising. Oli said that he wanted to do this conversation because he wanted people like us, who are representing the Cardinals brand in a way, to have more direct access to what is going on and why things are being done the way they are done. Having better information allows us to have better arguments and discussions which makes for the fans that read or listen to us to understand the organization better. While I doubt Oli has listened to any of the podcasts and I can tell you that he’s not a subscriber to the Substack (though that could change, Oli! Hit that button above!), he still is aware of the nontraditional media and what kind of following some of the folks on that call have.

The first question dealt with how he would be balancing developing pitching arms this season while still being as competitive as possible. Marmol said that he thought the way they handled Matthew Liberatore last year is probably a good template for what they’ll be doing this year. He didn’t want pitchers looking over their shoulders, worrying that a bad start would lead to demotion. He said that instead of a demotion, when the guys go do a bullpen between starts and really work on what went wrong, it goes so much better. When their mind shifts from thinking they are being evaluated to knowing they are being developed, it lifts a lot off of them.

In relation to this, he said he really wanted to see Kyle Leahy this year with this kind of mindset. He said that Leahy was a guy with a deep preparedness and strong mental focus, mentioning him in the same breath as Adam Wainwright when it came to those characteristics.

Next, the focus shifted to Nolan Gorman. The questioner noted that his walk rate and strikeout rate were better this spring, even though the counting stats haven’t been there. Marmol said that he doesn’t really look at counting stats at any time but especially not in spring. It’s about the process and the approach. In Gorman’s case, they slowed his bat speed down some so that he could start making more contact. As he gets more comfortable with that approach, they’ll ramp him back up to hopefully get more speed while keeping the contact, which is what they feel like they are seeing in spring. Oli did point out that you can get fooled in spring, though you try to avoid it.

My question was next and I asked how he was going to be able to balance development with the idea of trying to win every day. For instance, Player X might give you a 90% chance to win but the club needs to see what Player Y can do in those situations. Oli said, “With this” and reached off screen for a bottle of tequila, which immediately got Kyle Reis’s attention. (IYKYK) He said it was going to be more about developing winning habits. He mentioned that he’d dealt with this when he managed in the minors. Setting up the framework, getting people to play the game with a winning approach, might not win you today’s game but it will show up down the line.

He also said that we’d find out about people. The mindset had to be about winning today and not worrying about a timeline of 2028 or 2029. So you don’t change your approach, you just start laying that foundation and when it clicks, it clicks.

The next question was about Packy Naughton, which would have been music to my ears had he not given up the #70 last year. (Currently he’s at #71 in camp after his other number was given away.) Marmol said that Naughton was one of his favorite stories in camp. He’s been through so much and he does everything you want from a pitcher. The man has no fear and that can be contagious to the rest of the bullpen.

That wasn’t to say that Naughton was going to go north with the team. Marmol pointed out again that he’s missed a lot of time and while he could be a real weapon, that might not be on Opening Day. They need to work out a plan to see how things should look going forward. I took from that that it’s possible they’ll let Naughton start at Memphis and get back into full strength there before a promotion, but Marmol really couldn’t say enough good things about Naughton.

The viability of the six man rotation came up next. Marmol said that it did work for them last year. He was honest as he said there was no AAA depth last year so they knew pitchers had to stay healthy because there wasn’t anyone to take their place. So there is value in the six man, but when you look at the schedule the first five Thursdays are off days, which means that with a six man rotation everyone is pitching once a week. That’s not ideal. He pointed out that we talk a lot about injuries from someone pitching too much, such as a reliever going back-to-back days, but jumping into it after pitching too little is a real risk as well.

Marmol was asked if there were other players that had made large strides this off-season that surprised him. He thought about it for a while and said that he really liked where Maysn Winn’s offensive approach is at. Last year, as Winn admitted, he was swinging for the fences all the time. Now he has a better idea of what the situation requires. He also lauded how hard and effectively Winn is practicing. He thinks that we’ll really see it as the season gets going more than what we’ve seen in Jupiter.

From there, we moved on to Victor Scott II, as the questioner pointed out that he was hitting the ball harder. Marmol had a lot of praise for VS2, saying he could be more than a soft hitter that used his speed. He’ll close the gap on what can do quickly, including finding more consistency. Marmol also said he and many others had some really great off-season communication with the team, working hard and planning approaches.

Oli was asked who might be the next relief arm that would surprise people. He looked through a list and debated a bit. He said he liked Ryne Stanek out there and he mentioned another name that I missed. Then he brought up Chris Roycroft. He said last year the game was just too fast for Roycroft and you could see it, that he had trouble even fielding the position. He’s put a lot of work in and the game is coming to him slower now. He’s more in control of what he’s doing and Oli thinks we’ll see some good results out of him in 2026.

One of the prospect guys in the chat asked about prospects that had impressed. Oli said, “Baez was fun to watch, wasn’t he?” He said that Joshua Baez not only had great talent and skills but a remarkable demeanor. Marmol said that a lot of young guys may project calm but you can tell that they are still a bundle of nerves. Baez truly was that kind of collected, knows what he is doing individual. Oli then highlighted Luis Gastelum, whose name he mispronounced a couple of times before appealing to one of the other staff that was on the call. “I never get it right,” he said, but he reintegrated that the changeup is real.

That led right into the next question about how you reintegrate guys that have gone off to the World Baseball Classic when they return. He said that you look at the workload they had in the WBC and see if they need more innings or at bats to get ready or if they should maybe be a little more gentle with them. Thomas Saggese, he noted, would need more at bats. He said each case is different and that’s what he likes about what the staff is doing. All the different training plans, off-season work, etc. has been tailored to the individual. Nothing is cookie cutter or one size fits all.

The next question came from my Meet Me at Musial co-host Allen Medlock, who was actually out at the Tulsa Hale baseball field getting ready for a 4 PM game. He had some of his players with him and he asked Oli if he had any inspirational words for them. Oli said that, while he could do some words, he wasn’t a big inspirational speaker. He was more about honest conversations that led to some changes, either personally or professionally. He said that there are only 30 managerial jobs, so if he needs to be motivated there’s something wrong, and the same with the players. Motivation should come from inside, from knowing that you want to stay in the bigs. He said you should never look back and say that you didn’t do the work to succeed.

The next-to-last question was about two players. As Jordan Walker’s name was mentioned, Marmol quickly (and jokingly) said that he had to leave now. Even with him sticking around, Oli took the second part first, talking about how good Nelson Velazquez has been this spring. He impacts the ball in a way that there’s more room for error when he hits the ball for good things to happen. He’s been making adjustments and Marmol really likes what he sees.

Walker, he admitted, keeps them up at night. They are committed to having him figure this thing out while he is still a Cardinal. He indicated that they are in a spot in their relationship and openness that he wished they could have gotten to sooner. They continue to work on seeing how he could create real change, not just saying there’s change and then a few months later we’re back to the same spot. Marmol admitted that it could be a while before they get to a spot where they feel real good about it “or I might feel good about it three hours from now.” There is a responsibility for him and the staff to unlock the potential that Walker has and he has the responsibility to then carry that into games regularly. He said that Walker would take a couple days off and work in the hitting lab as he admitted that things just haven’t gone well this spring.

At this point Carson Shipley, the communication and public relations manager that set this up, indicated that we’d gone past the 30 minutes expected. He tried to wrap things up but Oli asked if everyone was good or if there were more questions. There was one final one about what the communication between the front office and the dugout was like, especially when it came to real time strategy.

Marmol said that if you didn’t like something that happened on the field, you could be mad at one guy, as he pointed to himself. He knows that there was this narrative that he was brought in as a puppet for the front office, but they’ve never dictated any on-the-field decisions. They provide tons of information, they discuss things with him, but the final responsibility is his. It’s an evolving relationship, especially with the transition from John Mozeliak to Chaim Bloom, and it will continue to evolve as time goes on.

As for game decisions, he says that usually before the game, he, Daniel Descalso, and Dusty Blake (among others, I would guess) get together and sort of plan out how they think things could go and what happens when it all goes wrong. They work through some ideas and scenarios, talking about who to use and who is available. After the game, they have feedback on the decisions. Sometimes they are decisions that worked in the game but the feedback is, “That’s a bad call—it worked this time, but it won’t work regularly.” Sometimes you get positive feedback about something that went sideways. They are always challenging each other and trying to make the best decisions possible.

As he closed, he reiterated how important it was for us to have as much of this kind of information as possible. St. Louis has never gone through this sort of rebuild before and now, more than ever, there needs to be some transparency. He also noted, as thumbs up and heart reactions floated through the end of the Zoom call, that “if we do this in July all those will be middle fingers”.

So general takeaways. One, I think it’s really likely we see Nelson Velazquez on the Opening Day roster. Two, Jordan Walker isn’t fixed yet and we shouldn’t think that the club thinks he is. Three, it really feels like they have the right manager in place for this era of Cardinals baseball. He appears to have the solid approach of getting the winning habits down and worrying about the results later. I think it’s going to be really fascinating to see how he manages this season. I hope that he’ll get a chance to explain some decisions either with the traditional media or with us. Heck, maybe he’ll start his own Substack!

Tonight’s Musial has Ben Clemens from FanGraphs, so be sure to check that out when it gets posted. David and I should be discussing things on Gateway this Sunday. We’ve run on enough here we’ll save the books and Star Wars talk for another time!

It’s also Lent, and for the past 10 Lents, I’ve been writing regular devotions for my Star Wars Devotionals site. So that writing, which I enjoy and is hopefully valuable to others, comes first. Add into that my occasional paid devotional writing and finding the time to write about things is difficult.

However, my afternoon is free (and, since we’re in the midst of a week-long blackout of Cardinals games, that won’t be a distraction) and there’s been some news, so let’s chat about some things, shall we?

The Cardinals announced this morning that they had come to terms with Oli Marmol on a two-year extension. As you probably know, Marmol was heading into the end of his contract and past Cardinal policy has been to not let their manager be forced to deal with lame duck status. With all the changes that have been made in policy makers lately, it was unclear if that was still the case.

Yet the more things change, the more they stay the same. Oli got the job when Mike Shildt left after the 2021 season in the famous “philosophical differences” battle. (Granted, we heard some personality issues when Shildt left San Diego, but you wonder if he was ringing the development alarm bell at a time when the front office didn’t want to hear it. I’m sure Bernie Miklasz has written/videoed about it, so I’ll need to hunt that up, but it seems like that was at least a speculated reason.) Oli was given a three year contract at that time, which would have taken him through the 2024 season, but on March 15 of that year, he was given a two year extension that covered 2025 and 2026. Now, going into that last year, he’s getting a two year deal on March 1 that will cover 2027 and 2028.

Adding on to Marmol’s contract was truly a no-brainer. Scott Plaza and I actually tackled that issue a bit on Friday’s Meet Me at Musial, expressing surprise that the deal hadn’t already been done. (Appreciate Chaim Bloom being a listener, I guess!) Honestly, no matter who the Cardinals manager was, the only way you’d get fired the next couple of years was if you weren’t on the same page with the front office on how to develop and use players (or off the field stuff, but we’ll grant that caveat and move on). It’s not going to be based on wins-and-losses, decisions made during the games. They aren’t worried about tactics, they are worried about growth.

Which is right in Marmol’s wheelhouse. He spent six years in the minors after his playing days, five years managing. He was known throughout the system as a development guy, one of the new school that took some metrics and analytics and knew what to do with them. Putting him in charge of a team that is going to be growing and learning is absolutely the right move. A man who knows the Cardinal Way but also understands how it can be adapted to help this new group of players. It’s a situation that is so right for him that I’m really surprised they didn’t give him a longer deal, though the contract does have a team option for 2029, so there’s a good chance he’ll be here that long.

In my mind, Marmol has done a fine job as manager. I continue to think that if Ryan Helsley’s fingers were fine in 2022, that team might have made a run. They’d have at least gotten out of the first round, I feel confident on that. The bottom did fall out the last three years (though even with a similar team around him all three years, he managed a plus-.500 record in the middle of it) but that was systemic, as we know. It’s hard to see how any other manager could have gotten more out of the team. His bullpen decisions have usually been solid, he’s got less of a “his guys” mentality than some former managers. He’s done a fine job and I’m good with him returning.

The truth of it is, and this is no revelation of course, but the era of the manager being the focus of the team is gone. There are no more Tony LaRussas, no Tommy LaSordas or Jim Leylands. There are some managers more famous than others—Dave Roberts, Craig Counsell—but even then they aren’t the reason their team wins. Counsell left Milwaukee and they got better, going by wins and losses, and Counsell’s replacement Pat Murphy has won the Manager of the Year title both years.

Baseball decision making has merged the front office and the managerial seat in a way that wasn’t there even 15 years ago when TLR was winding down in St. Louis. (How is that Game 6 turns 15 this fall? It’s outrageous is what it is.) The person that has the manager title really doesn’t matter a whole lot because it’s a philosophy that runs from the top through the clubhouse. The best teams are going to get someone that understands that philosophy and can enhance it. Look at the current managers and hardly anyone stands out. The Giants went and got someone from the college ranks and it may very well work out. (Man, those AZ/SF games where Torey Lovullo and Tony Vitello face off will be fun for the announcers.) Walt Weiss failed in Colorado but gets a chance with a much better Braves team in part because he’s been a part of their system.

I’m not saying baseball managers don’t matter, because I think the idea that the game is being run from the POBO’s office is overblown. It’s possible that a manager could make the difference in 2-3 games, give or take, and that could be the difference between October playing baseball or October playing golf. Right now, for this team, Oli Marmol makes the most sense. It’s possible he will when the team is ready to contend as well, but we’ll figure that out when we come to it.

Marmol currently sits 12th on the all time Cardinals managerial win list, though his career record is just two games over .500. That being said, the two right ahead of him on the list were sub-.500 Cardinal managers and they are both in the Hall of Fame. The Yankees did all right for Joe Torre and Miller Huggins, didn’t they? In fact, of the 11 names ahead of Marmol, only two (Eddie Dyer at 9 and Mike Matheny at 5) aren’t Hall of Famers.

Marmol will pass Huggins in April or early May (13 behind) and Torre soon after (26 behind). Next year he’ll probably get to seventh, passing Dyer, Branch Rickey, and Frankie Frisch. Assuming 150 wins over 2026 and 2027 (which, given the CBA/lockout possibilities, might not be doable), that’ll put him at 475 wins. A full 2028, especially with a team that should be starting to come into its own, might get him past Charlie Comiskey and in sight of Matheny. The ifs start piling up here so we’ll stop, but it’s very likely Marmol is only topped by very few when it comes to managerial wins whenever he is done.

The Cardinals announced their ballot for the 2026 class of the team’s Hall of Fame this weekend. Four players—holdovers Brian Jordan and George Hendrick, plus a couple of fairly known newcomers—will be eligible to be selected by fans, with voting to run until April 17. Is there any drama, any real debate here? Do we really have to pick between Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina? Will really only one of these absolute legends get in?

Short answer: No. Long answer: Definitely no.

Exhibit A in this case is the press release relating to the announcement of the ballot. I’ve been fortunate enough to be on the Cards’ PR distribution list for a while now and things that are regular events tend to have the same sort of boilerplate language. Names and dates change, maybe a different quote, but it’s roughly the same to year to year.

For instance, this is the opening of the 2025 press release:

And this is the opening of this year’s release:

Notice some differences? In 2025, the Cards made a point of saying that one player would be chosen from the ballot, then one by the Red Ribbon Committee (still campaigning for the Cards to add me to that, maybe next year when the blogging career turns 20), and one by the owners. In 2026, none of that is in there. No hard limit on players from the ballot, no suggestion of how the class is going to be made up.

There’s a non-zero chance that the entire class is going to be Albert and Yadi. It would be incredible if they bent the rules and added Adam Wainwright into the mix. On the one hand, it would be incredible and fitting and it would also free up the 2027 ballot to be actually competitive. On the other hand, they might like the buzz having Waino on the ballot next year would bring.

If you had to choose between Albert and Yadi, I think you have to go with Yadi since he played his whole career in St. Louis and was such a huge influence on the organization. Pujols is Pujols, of course, and he’s got the better Cooperstown case (though both should be there as well, perhaps going in together!) but the extra years of Molina has to be the tiebreaker.

I like to track the HOF and wrote about some of the ballot quirks a few years ago. To update, if Pujols and Molina get in this season, that means that 12 of the 26 people elected by the fans will have gotten in their first time on the ballot, a number that will probably increase assuming Wainwright is on next year’s ballot and Matt Carpenter is on the one after. Of course, that includes David Freese, who was elected but then declined the honor.

It was interesting that Steve Carlton came off the list this year. It’s the third time he’s missed time, originally going on in 2015, returning in 2017, then back in 2020 through last year. He’s the person that’s been on the ballot the longest that hasn’t gotten in now that Matt Morris (nine tries) and Edgar Renteria (10) have broken through.

I would love to see how the ballot gets made up and decided on. Lee Smith was on there three out of four years but hasn’t been since 2021. Joaquin Andujar only has one appearance, in 2023. Those two, Carlton, and the holdovers this year are the only players that have shown up on a ballot but never been elected.

The Cardinals Hall of Fame is a fun thing to talk about. I’ve been through it once (and I actually went through it before it was a thing, as they had a display down at the Clinton Library a year or so before they opened the Hall) and I should visit again. I am sure induction weekend will be a lot of fun (and the most attended few days of the summer) and that both Albert and Yadi will be making speeches.

It’s been a couple of weeks since we looked at the roster. Not much has changed, but it’s worth taking another look. Let’s see if we can do it in a few less words as well, though that’s never been my strong suit.

Catchers (3): Ivan Herrera, Pedro Pages, Yohel Pozo

Herrera has gotten behind the plate without incident, putting him on track to start at catcher more often and earlier than expected. We’re listing Pozo here but he might see more time as a backup first baseman, honestly.

Infield (5): Alec Burleson, Nolan Gorman, Ramon Urias, JJ Wetherholt, Masyn Winn

Outfield (3): Nathan Church, Victor Scott II, Jordan Walker

Utility (2): Jose Fermin, Thomas Saggese

The signing of Urias has changed the picture a little bit. We’re hearing more and more about Fermin and Saggese playing the outfield as well as backing up the infield, to the point I listed them as utility because I wasn’t sure the most fitting area for them to be listed.

Urias was an interesting signing and one that seems to be a warning shot to Nolan Gorman. Gorman will still get the bulk of the playing time, but will it be as a regular starter with Urias popping in occasionally, or as the heavy part of the platoon where he basically never sees a lefty? Gorman has hit righties and lefties about the same in his career, though neither of the numbers are good. I could imagine that he’d get the right-handers, Urias mainly gets the lefties. It won’t be exclusive or anything, but I expect that’s their thinking if they got an infielder for the bat instead of an outfielder as expected.

That outfield is going to be a thing, isn’t it?

Starting Pitchers (5): Kyle Leahy, Matthew Liberatore, Dustin May, Michael McGreevy, Andre Pallante

I don’t think that this is settled by any means. We’ve seen good velocity out of Richard Fitts in his limited time this summer and, besides, any pitcher that wishes he had Yoda as his Pitchcom voice is a guy I’m going to advocate for. It feels like he’d be the only guy that could muscle his way into this, though. There’s not been a lot of different folks starting games so far this spring.

Relief Pitchers (8): Ryan Fernandez, Gordon Graceffo, Packy Naughton, Matthew Pushard, JoJo Romero, George Soriano, Ryne Stanek, Matt Svanson

A lot of fluctuation going to be going on here, I would think. It might be telling that Naughton has thrown in three games already this spring, tied with a number of others for the most in camp. Naughton’s also thrown three scoreless innings with four strikeouts. Given his track record, it feels like he’s likely to get the nod even if they have to add him to the 40-man roster. It’s not an insurmountable hurdle.

I’m still thinking Soriano gets a longer look than just a few spring weeks. I do think, though, that Justin Bruihl might get let go and Graceffo might get a look, especially since he has two option years left and there’s not much flexibility with this group.

Random and assorted:

—I’m about 50 pages in on the Prospect Guide put out by Brian Walton and Kyle Reis from The Cardinal Nation. Brian and I talked about it some during his appearance on Musial and it’s definitely been informative and I’m just now getting to the prospect writeups! If you have the extra cash, get yourself a copy of this. I’ve enjoyed the physical version but the PDF is cheaper!

—Stepped out of my comfort zone and led the singing today at church. If you want to see what that looks like, here you go.

—Hard to believe we have made it to March. Yesterday I was finally able to get most everything Christmas into our home shed. That’s better than last year, when the yard items actually just stayed outside around the shed. I can’t get anything out of there, mind you, but it’s covered!

—It is a little sad that there’s a whole week without televised Cardinal baseball. Not that I get to watch much in the middle of the day this time of year anyway, but having it on Saturday and Sunday would be nice. I get the Cards cut back, especially since they didn’t know until recently how this broadcast season was going to go, but I am a little surprised we’ve not been able to see opponent broadcasts in this span.

—Gateway to Baseball Heaven tonight, where we’ll talk about Marmol more I’m sure. Next week’s guest on Musial is fellow Substacker Dayn Perry, which is always a treat.