There is no better microcosm of what it has been like to watch the 2026 St. Louis Cardinals than Wednesday night’s game in Pittsburgh. After a tough weekend series at Busch against the Mariners, in which they lost three exciting games by a combined four runs, the Cardinals didn’t have a baserunner for the first 6 2/3 innings of their opener in Pittsburgh before rallying for four runs in the ninth to win. Then they erupted for 11 runs on Tuesday, with the bullpen still coughing up four runs. The vibes kept going on Wednesday, as the Cardinals took a 5-1 lead into the seventh thanks to the third straight solid start from Andre Pallante. But in that seventh inning, it started getting crazy. Ryne Stanek, who is literally averaging a walk per inning in his appearances this year, walked Konnor Griffin with one out, then gave up a single to Joey Bart, threw a wild pitch and walked Oneil Cruz to load the bases. Manager Oliver Marmol pulled him for JoJo Romero, who gave up a two-run single to Nick Yorke and then walked Bryan Reynolds. But next, amazingly, he struck out Ryan O’Hearn and got Marcell Ozuna to ground out to end the inning with the Cardinals still holding a 5-3 lead. Disaster averted! |
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But only temporarily. In the eighth, George Soriano gave up a single to Nick Gonzales and walked Spencer Horwitz. Here we go again. Soriano ended up loading the bases again (with the help of an uncharacteristic Masyn Winn error), but escaped with only one run when Yorke lined out to right with runners on first and third. Whew. Then, in the ninth: Riley O’Brien gave up a single to O’Hearn and, with two outs, threw an immensely hittable pitch to Gonzales that everyone in the stadium (and definitely me at home) assumed was a walk-off homer. But then Nathan Church saved the day with a leaping catch, St. Louis had its third straight win and every Cardinals fan I know collapsed in an exhausted heap on the floor. |
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Every Cardinals game feels like that this season, doesn’t it? They fall behind and fight back, or they take a big lead and then lose it. Either way, everyone’s hearts are pounding out of their chests by the ninth inning. This tells you a lot about this year’s team and how it’s constructed, in ways both positive and negative. It is undeniable that this team has a unique ability to fight back in games that seem lost; they have 10 comeback wins, three of which have come in walk-off fashion. But it’s also undeniable that they have serious holes in their bullpen; relievers have a 5.15 ERA, fifth worst in baseball, and with the fourth-worst K/BB rate in the sport. Take out O’Brien, Gordon Graceffo and Ryan Fernandez, who have a combined 1.22 ERA in 37 innings, and the rest of the Cardinals bullpen has a 7.06 ERA in 79 innings. That’s how you blow a lot of leads. |
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But that’s also how you have a lot of very exciting games. And that is a large part of the appeal of this Cardinals team: They are playing many exciting games. So far, they’ve been winning most of them; they’re 6-2 in one-run games and 5-0 in extra-inning games. That may not last. With that bullpen walking so many batters and fanning flames so flagrantly, it would seem unlikely. But as Chaim Bloom and the rest of the Cardinals brass have made clear from the beginning, winning games isn’t necessarily the 2026 season’s top priority. |
It’s better when the Cardinals win games, obviously, but when it comes to roster decisions, the team is not going to sacrifice the future to win now. The Cardinals are not going to go out and get bullpen help; they’re going to see if what they currently have on the roster is a part of the future. That’s going to lead to some blowups. But, as we’ve seen in the last few days, blowups can also be kind of exciting. I don’t know a single Cardinals fan who wasn’t ready to run through a wall after Church’s catch on Wednesday, an ending that was a heck of a lot more fun than a breezy 5-1 victory with the Pirates going down in order from the seventh through the ninth. You’d obviously rather not give up three runs and almost blow the game. But you also want to learn how a team responds, how a player like Church (who has done more than anyone in the last week to make a case for himself moving forward) reacts in a stressful situation, how a team fights back from a deficit, how it handles games like Saturday’s against the Mariners, in which the bullpen blew a lead that the Cardinals couldn’t recover from. That weekend series was instructive. With games on 16 consecutive days and the Cardinals using eight pitchers in an 11-9 loss on Saturday, the worry was that it would send the team spiraling, short on pitching and facing a tough four-game set in Pittsburgh with an ensuing home series against the titan Dodgers. |
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But nope: The Cardinals went out and won all four games in Pittsburgh. That’s a nice thing to learn about your team, as well. Marmol has been saying all season that he has a resilient team that is relentlessly positive, which hasn’t always been the case in St. Louis the last few seasons. This season, there is mounting evidence that he is right. |
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And this is an excellent exercise for fans, too. There will be a time – perhaps sooner rather than later – that the Cardinals will be expected to contend, and that these blown leads, these unnecessarily exciting ninth innings, these nightly stresses, are not so charming – when the Cardinals are not unproven upstarts, but rather seasoned veterans who are trying to win a World Series in the present, not the future. Those games will be agonizing, and will speak to issues that will need to be fixed immediately. But now? This is a young team that will continue to have wild fluctuations; they’ve now had a three-game win streak followed by a three-game losing streak followed by a five-game win streak followed by a four-game losing streak followed by a four-game win streak. That may be a problem in 2028. But in 2026, it’s a feature, not a bug. Someday, you’ll be clawing your eyes out during a ninth inning like Wednesday’s. But today? Hey, just strap in and enjoy the ride. |
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