In a tight but weak NL Central, will Cardinals make a move?
It’s a quirk of Major League Baseball’s scheduling that the powers that be lump March and April together as a singular month for purposes of record keeping, even in a year like this one when the season begins unseasonably early.
With the page officially turned and May having arrived, it’s striking how much the National League Central is living up to preseason expectations – the Chicago Cubs on top, but not pulling away; the Pittsburgh Pirates on bottom; everyone else mired in the mushy middle.
It’s this dilemma that’s likely to plague the St. Louis Cardinals throughout this season and any others which they deem necessary to lump in with their efforts to scramble back to being the organization they want to be. When the rules require the provision of a playoff spot to one of several mediocre teams, it’s difficult not to be tempted to do the bare minimum to rise above that unimpressive crop.
This is the same spot the Cardinals found themselves in last year with the trade deadline approaching.
At the start of play on July 29, the day they executed a three-team deal with the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers which netted them Erick Fedde and Tommy Pham for Tommy Edman, the Cardinals were 54-51, six games back of the Milwaukee Brewers for the top spot in the NL Central.
Even with three open spots available in the Wild Card race – one of which the Cardinals held for most of the summer – the division was long gone. St. Louis didn’t approach the division lead by any amount less than three games after the middle of April, and they spent the summer convincing themselves that they earned a shot at taking a shot, and they acted at the deadline accordingly.
That’s hard to criticize, even with hindsight. Coming off a dreadful 2023 season, it was incumbent on the team and its leadership to attempt to invigorate the market and prove that a fluke terrible season would stay a fluke. In some ways, the dye for buying at the deadline was cast in the winter; teams who are planning to concede the season don’t generally invest in a bevy of one-year deals to fortify a starting rotation.
That is where the 2025 Cardinals most clearly diverge from their immediate predecessors.
Even before last season was over, those in charge of the franchise’s direction had made the decision that it was time to turn the team over to a new generation. Much of the winter’s messaging, while attempting to avoid expressing a desire to tear things down to the studs, was centered around that same goal. Conveniently, it also is significantly cheaper to run a franchise on its shoestrings. That was also welcome to hear in some corners of the team’s highest executive suites.
Despite all of the randomness which accompanies baseball every day, there is some ability for those in charge to shape events and narratives in a way which suits their preferences. The 2024 Cardinals were boxed in to doing their best to compete down the stretch in part because they were built to be that team. The 2025 Cardinals have, from the first day of the offseason or even before, been built to sink or swim under their own power.
When the team talks about providing runway and opportunity to young players, that’s more or less what they’re revealing. If these Cardinals, having now figured out that winning on the road more than twice in a month is ideal, are able to go on a sustained run, it will be because homegrown hitters find a groove and power them in a way that cannot be denied. Time is not running out for any of those young players to assert themselves, because there is no relevant deadline to their success.
To be sure, the deadline will still matter. Ryan Helsley’s upcoming trade is a fait accompli. Fedde is not too far off from the same inevitability; neither is Phil Maton, the team’s sole major league free agent signing this winter.
In much the same way the prior offseason’s moves turned over the front office’s cards for the 2024 team, the same will hold true in 2025. This is a team that was designed to sell at the deadline, and so they will.
That’s still nearly three months away, and despite being in fourth place entering play Thursday, the Cardinals finished the first month only four games back of the Chicago Cubs. Cincinnati never quite seems to figure out where all their talent actually fits on the field, and the Brewers look for once like a team whose magic is dwindling, rather than being on the brink of restoration.
The lane for a push will exist, should the Cardinals choose to aggressively pursue it.
If they do, that pursuit will be led by Masyn Winn and Jordan Walker and Victor Scott II and Matthew Liberatore. The Cardinals will not prevent young players from winning, and would be thrilled if they seized their own opportunity. They simply will not be creating a new one from outside, no matter how the games line up.
