Friday, April 17

The St. Louis Cardinals are on a 90-win pace. We are only 18 games into the season, but still: Who saw that coming? This was a team that is, quite publicly, more dedicated to the future than the present, one that is the first year of what is expected to be a projected reconstruction process under new president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom. The 2026 season is not supposed to matter. And yet: A 90-win pace! 

Now, you won’t find many -- including within the Cardinals organization -- who think this 90-win pace is going to continue, or who are even going to necessarily prioritize trying to make it continue. But it is still a lot more fun watching your team play every other club when they win more games than they lose. And that is what the Cardinals have done so far. How have they pulled it off? And is it sustainable?

Here are five keys to the Cardinals success so far … and whether they can keep it up. 

Being entrepreneurial on the basepaths 

Baseball Savant shows that the Cardinals, statistically, haven’t been particularly noteworthy on the basepaths, with only one baserunning run added so far. Though the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold noted that Baseball Reference’s “bases added” statistic has them much higher. But when you watch these games, it’s undeniable that the Cardinals are trying stuff they haven’t tried in the past. This was exemplified in Wednesday’s win over the Guardians, which featured four stolen bases (including one from catcher Pedro Pagés, his first in two years), a tie-breaking sacrifice fly and several extra bases snatched when least expected -- including an Alec Burleson swipe of second on a throw that, while it didn’t end up mattering, spoke to the Cardinals’ increased aggression.

• Cards are embracing small ball early on, and it's working

“We had to do a lot of the little things,” manager Oliver Marmol said. 

Repeatable? This is a clear obvious difference from past Cardinals teams, and it sure looks like it’s an organizational priority moving forward. 

They’re walking more than they ever have 

Walks are up around baseball this year, which might be connected to ABS, but they're really up with the Cardinals. The team has an 11.2 percent walk rate, a dramatic increase over their 7.9 percent walk rate last year (and 7.8 mark in 2024). And you can see the change up and down the lineup. Iván Herrera only has one home run so far and is batting .194, but he is tied for the Major League lead in walks (18); he has more than doubled his walk rate from last year, from 9.5 percent to 21.7.

Not everyone’s increase is as pronounced as Herrera's, but other players with increases include Burleson (7.1 percent to 13.8), Masyn Wynn (6.3 to 15.3), Thomas Saggese (5.4 to 8.5) and Jordan Walker (7.3 to 8.0). And that’s not even accounting for rookie leadoff man JJ Wetherholt, who has a 14.6 percent walk rate. The Cardinals do not have much power in their lineup, so they have to give themselves as many chances to score as possible. Right now, they’re making every at-bat a grinding battle. 

Repeatable? The walk rate probably won’t stay this high unless the Cardinals start hitting with more authority; eventually, teams will just challenge them. But plate appearances are a lot tougher for opposing pitchers than they have been lately. 

Jordan Walker 

Walker is one of the best stories in baseball this year, a once-top-five prospect who had gotten progressively worse each year of his career, to the point that he was one of the six worst players in baseball last year, according to Fangraphs. This year? Fangraphs has him as one of the top six. Walker is doing everything he needed to do to fix his swing, from hitting the ball in the air to not chasing pitches out of the zone to, frankly, just looking like someone who enjoys playing baseball again -- something Cardinals fans (understandably) saw little of in 2025. He has already surpassed his home run total from last year and is in the midst of an 11-game hitting streak; he is tied for the MLB lead in both homers (eight) and total bases (49). The Cardinals did not require him being this to bring him back into their plans moving forward; they just needed him to be better. But they will, you know, happily take this too. 

Repeatable? No matter how much his body may resemble Aaron Judge’s, Walker won’t keep hitting like the projected future Hall of Famer. But a 35-homer season -- something no one would have even fathomed three weeks ago -- sure seems like the bare minimum by the end of 2026 now. When do the Cardinals start thinking about an extension?  

The rotation is overcoming its lack of strikeouts 

The Cardinals have the lowest K/9 rate in all of the Majors, and it’s not particularly close: They’re striking out 6.09 batters per nine innings, more than one strikeout less than the 29th team (7.54), and their strikeout rate is even worse: They strike out 15.4 percent of batters, a full 3 percent below 29th-place Washington (18.7).

The primary issue is the rotation, which has only one pitcher (Dustin May) striking out more than 5.1 batters per nine innings. The bullpen is slightly better thanks to Riley O’Brien (9.6 K/9) and Ryne Stanek (11 K/9, albeit with an 8.59 ERA), but there’s no question: This team is not missing bats. The rotation is getting away with it so far because of its walk rate (Michael McGreevy has just three walks in 21 2/3 innings) and a solid defense. 

Repeatable? Key phrase there: So far. The Cardinals need more swing-and-miss arms. There seem to be more of those in the minors than in the majors. 
 

They’re winning all their coin-flip games
The Cardinals (minus-17) currently have the third-worst run differential in the National League, ahead of only, uh, the Phillies (minus-25) and the Giants (minus-24). So how do the Cards have a winning record? They’re 5-0 in one-run games and 4-0 in extra inning games. Some of this can be attributed to the Cardinals playing cleaner baseball than they have in the past; one of their wins over Cleveland came directly from the Guardians making huge mistakes that the Cards didn’t. But some of it, alas, is luck. 

Repeatable: If the Cardinals stay undefeated in one-run games, they’re winning the World Series. But that is, um, not going to happen. 

It's fair to say, this is not a 90-win team. But this team is better, and more resilient, than many thought. It is already a step forward. Which is, after all, what this year is supposed to be all about. 

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