Three statistics that help explain the Cardinals’ recent resurgence
The St. Louis Cardinals turned in a rare uninspired loss on Memorial Day in the game which marked the one third mark of the 2025 season.
Perhaps no number is more surprising than the 30 wins they’ve racked up in the first chunk of the season, putting them on pace for a clean 90 despite having already played arguably the toughest stretch of their schedule.
That record puts them one game outside of the playoff picture, and Baseball Reference judges them to be a little worse than a coin flip – 45.1% – to make the playoffs. FanGraphs issues a slightly harsher verdict, putting their postseason odds at 34.3%.
Still, for a team which many major prognosticators forecast to pull up the rear of the standings in the NL Central, it would be reasonable to judge them as one of baseball’s biggest surprises.
Here are three numbers which help define the bigger picture, and which outline the path for the season’s coming months:
1. Brendan Donovan – 18 doubles
While the Cardinals have made marked offensive improvements under the eye of new hitting coach Brant Brown, they’re still not providing quite the amount of home run power they would prefer. That’s partially a consequence of playing home games in Busch Stadium, but it’s also the result of personnel. Lars Nootbaar, the lead-off hitter, leads the team in homers with seven. The last full-season team leader to record 21 homers or fewer was Jhonny Peralta, who belted exactly that many in 2014.
Donovan, however, has held down the third spot in the order by delivering a near-record pace for doubles. Matt Carpenter’s 55 in 2013 are the team record, and Donovan is on pace for only one less. Indeed, he’s putting up a very similar season to Carpenter’s 2013 – when he finished fourth in MVP voting – in many respects.
Carpenter posted an .873 OPS that year, and Donovan is currently at .853. Donovan, though, is playing in a slightly tougher offensive environment; his 139 OPS+ is just a pip below Carpenter’s full-season mark that year, which was 140. Carpenter led the league in hits that year, as Donovan is doing now, though he also led the majors in runs scored. Donovan is third on his own team, behind Nootbaar and Masyn Winn, the two hitters most commonly ahead of him in the order.
By the start of May in 2013, Carpenter was ensconced as that team’s leadoff hitter, and he had Carlos Beltrán, Allen Craig, Matt Holliday and Yadier Molina behind him, each of whom had at least 80 RBI. Willson Contreras leads these Cardinals with 28, and he is the only player currently on pace to cross that threshold.
2. Matthew Liberatore – 1.3 wins above replacement
There is no shortage of numbers on Liberatore’s stat line which would comfortably fit this exercise. Being on pace for 30 starts, frankly, would be stunning enough, to say nothing of an earned run average under three and a strikeout to walk ratio of 6.38, which leads the National League. He has been a revelation, arguably the staff’s ace, and has aggressively reasserted his claim to a career projection which might otherwise have slipped through his fingers.
Being on pace for 3.9 wins above replacement by Baseball Reference’s metric, especially at his age, puts him in special territory. Since 1978, the Cardinals have only had four such seasons put up by pitchers age 25 or younger – Matt Morris in 1997 (22, 3.9), Carlos Martínez in 2015 (23, 3.9), Martínez in 2016 (24, 5.7) and Jack Flaherty in 2019 (23, 5.7).
Morris is a team Hall of Famer, Martínez flamed out of the league due to injury and his own personal failings, and Flaherty has battled through injury to become a valuable and valued veteran starter who pitched the first and last games for last season’s World Series champions.
Liberatore joining that group would not only change his individual future and fortune, but that of his team. Finding a tentpole starter around whom a rotation can be built is no small task, and a year ago, it wasn’t clear that the Cardinals had such a player in the system. Now, it seems increasingly likely that they do.
3. Victor Scott II – 102 OPS+
Scott’s 16 steals may be easier to digest, and for those who commit themselves to defensive metrics, his five defensive runs saved and seven outs above average are proof that he has gone from being a fast centerfielder to an elite centerfielder. For most people, those skills have never been in question. The question has always been whether he’d hit enough to stay on the field.
The Cardinals have planted Scott at the bottom of the lineup and allowed him to steer into the things he does well. That includes bunting, perhaps at a frequency that is more than optimal. His 19 RBI, from someone hitting primarily eighth and ninth, trails Donovan, in the middle of the order, by only three. He’s grounded into only one double play, and that is the only of his career to date. His .719 OPS features a gap of less than 30 points between his on base percentage and slugging, but if a single is always at risk of being two bases, the doubles matter somewhat less.
Scott doesn’t need to be even a league average hitter – 100 OPS+ – to be a positive contributor. He does enough with his legs and glove to assure that even at 85 or so, a team will benefit from having him in center. That the Cardinals have gotten the contributions they have – especially since the Scott of a year ago looked utterly overmatched in many or most plate appearances – is hugely to their benefit, and is a demonstration that Scott is prepared to seize his spot for the better part of the next decade.
This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
