The Cardinals’ five worst moments of 2025
It’s never a sign of a good night at the ballpark when it becomes immediately clear that a game has turned into one that’s going to make a year-end list like this.
The St. Louis Cardinals had a few of those in 2025, some of which were literally historic even as they happened rapidly. Others defined the path of the season, even if that wasn’t clear at the time. Some were just out-and-out drubbings.
Together they comprise the five worst on-field games for the Cardinals in 2025:
5. Francisco Lindor and the Mets walk off the Redbirds– April 18
After starting the season with a sweep at home, the Cardinals still had some wind at their backs – even with an early tumble down to .500 – as they arrived in New York for a four-game set.
A blustery spring weekend and a rowdy home crowd packed Citi Field for all four games, which the Mets would sweep, and the Cardinals talked openly throughout the weekend about the feel of the environment and how it deviated from their norm.
The second of the four games was perhaps the most painful. A back-and-forth game saw the teams tied in the bottom of the eighth when Luis Torrens tagged Phil Maton for an RBI double immediately after a pickoff.
Brendan Donovan homered to tie the game in the top of the ninth, but with both teams’ bullpens zapped, the Cardinals had no better option than to turn things over to Ryan Fernandez in the bottom of the ninth.
Lindor took only three pitches to take Fernandez deep into the Queens night, sending the stadium into a frenzy and giving voice to serious concerns about Fernandez’s start to the season.
4. Starting a Season-Ending Sweep With a Blowout – Sept. 26
The Cardinals were mathematically eliminated from playoff contention before arriving at Wrigley Field for their final series of the season, and the Chicago Cubs could all but back into home field advantage in the wild card round.
With little to play for between them, the clubs still put up a compelling series in two of the three games. The first, a 12-1 Chicago romp, was decidedly more dreary.
Miles Mikolas was ambushed by three homers in the first five innings (more on this later) and Chris Roycroft and Gordon Graceffo absorbed a thrashing in the game’s back third, combining to allow eight runs in two innings.
It was an ugly game made uglier by its broader symbolism, and the echo of similar circumstances from earlier in the season gave the entire affair a surreal feeling.
3. The Cardinals Hand It To Milwaukee with Masyn Winn out – Sept. 13
Winn’s troublesome right knee reached a breaking point the prior day, with the team announcing he would sit out the season’s final two weeks in preparation for knee surgery.
His frustration and disappointment were palpable, but it looked early like the Cardinals would offer a stout defense of their shortstop. They took a 6-1 lead into the bottom of the sixth and a 7-4 lead into the bottom of the ninth, and were set up cleanly for a win that could have kept them a day longer in the playoff race.
Riley O’Brien and JoJo Romero flourished in the back end of the bullpen after Ryan Helsley was traded, with one notable exception – this game. They combined to allow five runs and record just three outs, barely escaping the ninth with the game tied.
After the Cardinals loaded the bases with no one out in the top of the tenth, they mustered only one run. It took just three hitters for Milwaukee to come up with two RBI hits to take the game in the bottom of the 10th.
2. Blown Out In Boston On a Big Stage – April 6
The seasonal joys of playing spring baseball in Boston knocked out the second game of a three-game set, pushing a doubleheader to a soggy Sunday.
In the first of two games, Iván Herrera suffered a non-contact knee injury while running the bases that the team, at the time, was concerned could’ve ended his season. On top of that, the injury meant Pedro Pagés had to catch all but two innings of a double header in which the first game went to extras.
Spirits were already sufficiently dampened before Mikolas took the hill for Sunday Night Baseball and was promptly taken for a ride. In one of the worst starts in franchise history, he allowed eight earned runs on 11 hits in just 2 ⅔ innings pitched, seeing his full repertoire battered around the ballpark.
Graceffo was called up as an extra arm for the doubleheader and was dragged into eating innings accordingly; the Red Sox similarly feasted, tagging him for six earned in three innings.
1. Fireworks on the Fourth – July 4
The enduring memory of the 11-3 loss at the Friendly Confines – one of the enduring memories of the season – is of a Cubs official updating the counter of home runs that have clanged off the right field Wrigley scoreboard, and then having to add a live update to that number as Michael Busch followed Pete Crow-Armstrong too closely to get the words out.
Mikolas allowed a club-record six homers that day and a mind-boggling nine in just two starts at Wrigley in 2025; it seems appropriate that both starts were included on this list.
Busch blasted three homers and drove in five runs and somehow did not have his best home game against the Cardinals, augmenting that with his near cycle in September.
The infield around the horn at the end of the game was composed of Yohel Pozo, José Fermín, Garrett Hampson and Thomas Saggese. That’s a sure sign of something going either very wrong or very right; it wasn’t the latter.
