After playoff elimination, Cardinals brace for top-to-bottom overhaul
It took falling behind in the bottom of the eighth inning of their 159th game for the St. Louis Cardinals to officially be eliminated from playoff contention in 2025. In some ways, that’s a testament to their slight overachievement this season. But it also raises a bigger question: How long will it be before the Cardinals are this close to the postseason again?
The loss in the third game of the series in San Francisco was also the Cardinals’ 81st of the season, guaranteeing they will not finish with a winning record. That marks the second time in three years St. Louis will finish below .500, but it’s also only the second time in 18 seasons under John Mozeliak’s stewardship of baseball operations that the club has finished with more losses than wins.
That’s an admirable and laudable stretch, but it is also one that’s coming to an end. With Chaim Bloom’s takeover of the baseball operations department imminent, winds of change are blowing through every corner of the franchise.
A typical final week of the major league season for a team out of contention often carries a sense of inevitability and waiting. That’s even more pronounced for these Cardinals, who are set to see Miles Mikolas depart in free agency while also attempting to move three other veterans with no-trade clauses and significant salaries.
Sonny Gray’s strong start in the Bay Area on Wednesday night may have been his last appearance in a Cardinals uniform, just as Willson Contreras quietly exited last week with an injury that ended his season a few days early. Nolan Arenado received a louder and more manufactured farewell during Sunday’s home finale and has been more open about his desire to join a contender, while Gray also nodded toward that possibility when speaking with reporters in San Francisco Wednesday night.
Rarely do teams choose to remain stuck in the middle of the standings, as the Cardinals find themselves now.
Moving up or down suggests a team has direction and vision, which is central to the current transition in St. Louis. Part of that change, too, is about saving money: Arenado, Gray and Contreras are the only three Cardinals set to earn more than $10 million in 2026, and all could be traded this winter.
Indeed, those three players don’t just account for a significant portion of the team’s guaranteed salaries for 2026 — they are the entirety. According to FanGraphs’ Roster Resource, excluding pending arbitration commitments, the trio is owed a combined $80 million, while the Cardinals’ projected payroll stands at $75 million. The Colorado Rockies still have a $5 million payment remaining to cover a portion of Arenado’s salary.
It’s jarring to consider both the cost and the relative inexperience of a roster composed entirely of arbitration-eligible players, and the Cardinals are highly unlikely to reach opening day with such a configuration. Presumably, they will acquire experienced players via trade out of necessity, dealing not only higher-priced veterans but also some redundant young talent as the roster’s makeover continues. Any other scenario would strain credulity.
And yet, such bounds have been stretched before. The Cardinals waited until March of this year to add a major league free agent, signing reliever Phil Maton to a modest one-year deal. A trade of Arenado, which once seemed inevitable — and was even acknowledged by Mozeliak, an extreme rarity — never materialized.
Remarkably, this is also the first season, since injury designations began being recorded in 1983, that the Cardinals have made it (so far) from opening day without putting a pitcher on the MLB injured list with an arm injury. Only John King’s back and oblique issues have kept the staff from a completely clean slate. Supposedly, that’s impossible in today’s game, yet the Cardinals have achieved it, though it’s fair to wonder how much it really mattered in the end.
Perhaps it did. Perhaps manager Oli Marmol and his staff pressed every possible button and got the best out of the roster, grinding toward the end of a season that will be remembered—if it’s remembered at all—as one in which they were theoretically in the race, but never truly felt like it.
Maybe the changes coming this winter will shock the system, sending the Cardinals down the road of the Pittsburgh Pirates, sparking panic and skepticism about when spending and true competitiveness will return to St. Louis.
What has felt like playing out the string could, in retrospect, look like the last gasps of competitive baseball for a while. There’s no good reason it must happen, and plenty of reason to hope it can be avoided. But the details remain unclear. The winds of change are blowing hard, and official elimination is simply another dramatic step up that steep climb.
