The Cardinals have gotten hot once again and given us all hope. They’ve won five in a row and have surged back to .500. It should be noted that these successes have mainly been at home, while on the road, they can’t seem to win a series.
I’m noticing a weird pattern with the Cardinals. For a few games, they’ll get super hot and be clicking on all cylinders. Then they slump for a few games and fall below .500. But they’re going back and forth between surging to .500 and dropping several games below.
But we have to enjoy the successes while they last, and I’m going to choose to do that. But this Cardinals team is actually reminding me of a particular team from the recent past.
The 2022 Orioles came out of nowhere after a 110-loss season in 2021. They got off to a slow start but suddenly started making some noise. They weren’t a great team by any means, but they were kind of a sleeper.
In fact, their run started in St. Louis in May. They were a couple games under .500, better than expected but not a team that you thought was going to be a contender. Then they took two out of three from the Cardinals and all of the sudden climbed back into the race.
They were sellers at the trade deadline, not unlike the 2016 Yankees. But similarly to that Yankees team, they stayed afloat after the deadline. In the end, they finished 83-79 and were only three games back of the third Wild Card.
Sorry to be Captain Buzzkill here, but I do still expect the Cardinals to sell at this year’s deadline and believe that is the best path forward to set themselves up for 2026. But like the Orioles and Yankees proved, selling doesn’t necessarily mean you’re throwing away the season. It just means you have an eye towards the future.
The Orioles certainly did. They traded away players on expiring contracts such as Trey Mancini and beefed up their farm system. They also cleared the way for players like Gunnar Henderson.
That’s what the Cardinals need to do. It’s still going to be hard to trade Nolan Arenado, and honestly, I don’t think they’ll be able to this year. But by trading a couple of pitchers like Ryan Helsley, Phil Maton, Steven Matz, Erick Fedde, and possibly even Miles Mikolas, they’ll have spots on the roster cleared for other promising pitchers such as Gordon Graceffo and Michael McGreevy. And who knows? Perhaps Quinn Mathews will get a chance late in the year.
While the Orioles are struggling now, this set them up for the next two seasons as they reached the postseason in both years. I still hope to see the Cardinals win as many games as possible, but I also want them to focus more on the future than trying to contend this year.
I believe the Orioles are the blueprint for what the Cardinals should do this year at the deadline. We even saw the Tigers take a similar approach last year, and they ended up making it to the playoffs, so we’ll see how things shake out.