2024 Season Preview: St. Louis Cardinals
To put it lightly, 2023 was a disaster for the St. Louis Cardinals. The club lost 90+ games for the first time in more than three decades (1990) and finished dead last in the NL Central. The only team in the National League with fewer wins than St. Louis? The Colorado Rockies. For a team that is the model of consistency, it was a weird, aberrant, and plain-no-fun season. Hell, it was the first time the Cardinals finished under .500 since 2007, and their worst campaign by winning percentage since the strike-shortened 1994-1995 seasons.
After a busy offseason, the Cardinals are hoping to get back to their winning ways. Was it enough to right the ship? Or is this a veteran-laden team going nowhere fast? Was 2023 a blip, or is the long dynasty of quality baseball in St. Louis now suddenly and unceremoniously over?
Where were they in 2023?
A 71-91 season in a pretty mediocre division is hard to comprehend for an organization that has done so much winning over the years.
As a whole, the lineup wasn’t too bad. A team 104 wRC+ was good enough for 13th in the majors. The defense was really poor, but being 16th in position player fWAR shouldn’t doom you to 90-plus losses. But, the concern for me comes with the age and decline of stars Paul Goldschmidt (36 this season) and Nolan Arenado (33), who both turned in arguably the worst seasons of their storied careers. (Arenado had a definitively worse rookie year.) Both were on a Hall of Fame trajectory — was this the beginning of the end, or will they bounce back in 2024? It might ultimately decide how far this team can go.
Outside of Goldschmidt and Arenado, there was quite a bit to like. Willson Contreras (127 wRC+) hit very well during his first season in St. Louis, leaving all mention of the neverending drama associated with his duties as a catcher aside. Top prospect Jordan Walker was a disaster defensively in the outfield, but a 116 wRC+ at age 21 gives plenty to dream on. Second baseman Nolan Gorman also impressed offensively with a 118 wRC+ in his age 23 season, as did 26-year olds Lars Nootbaar (118 wRC+) and Brendan Donovan (118 wRC+).
So, if the offense was mostly fine, how did the team implode? Well, the pitching staff was this team’s ultimate downfall... except it wasn’t that bad, either. They rated 19th in fWAR in MLB. But, this team still had a big run prevention problem, because: (1) the group had the lowest strikeout rate of anyone who doesn’t pitch in Coors Field; and (2) the defense, as mentioned, was quite poor. Put those together and despite a barely-bottom-10 FIP-, the park-adjusted ERA was putrid. Things got uglier in the second half following trades of pending free agents Jordan Montgomery and Jack Flaherty to greener pastures, but honestly, this was a team that went 10-19 to start the year and then somehow had an 8-15 June, so there wasn’t much further to fall even after the departures.
Nor was this really a case of supreme bad luck. The Cardinals’ 2023 season wasn’t anything like the Padres, who somehow turned in a top-10 season by BaseRuns and yet finished barely above .500 in the standings. The Cardinals’ Pythagorean expectation and BaseRuns record were within three games of their actual record, and even their WAR-wins, at 80 wins, were still below .500.
What did they do in the offseason?
So, given all that, the Cardinals went and added roughly 500 innings of starting pitching in free agency. It remains to be seen if those will be good innings, but there is certainly some depth here. It also remains to be seen if they can play good enough defense to not make the pitching look way worse than it is, but defense is definitely stable season to season.
Sonny Gray — who I am surprised the Braves didn’t pursue more aggressively this winter — was the big fish in the group, landing a three-year, $75 million pact to pair with Miles Mikolas at the top of the rotation. Lance Lynn, now 36, has been durable throughout the past decade, although St. Louis is taking a gamble on his atrocious 2023 not becoming the norm, with an ERA and FIP upwards of 5.00. Kyle Gibson, also 36, was added to provide innings in the middle of the rotation and should be a fine option every fifth day. Gibson has made 29+ starts in all but one full season since 2017.
Gray, Mikolas, Gibson and Lynn is hardly sexy, but it should be reliable. It seems the Cardinals are going with the floor-over-ceiling approach for 2024 after a tumultuous 2023.
Where are they hoping to go?
While the NL Central may have more depth than in prior years, with the Reds showing signs of life and the Pirates not being disastrous, it looks open for the taking if a few things break right.
As of this writing, FanGraphs projects 84 wins for the Cardinals, two more than the Cubs, three more than the Brewers, and four more than the Reds. The Cardinals do have the highest division odds, and a result, playoff odds slightly above 50 percent but this is pretty much a toss-up at this point. Ultimately, this looks like a race that could feature three or four teams deep into August and September, even if it’s very possible that none of those teams will be good.
But the Cardinals could be good! Or at least, Cardinals-esque. Both the position player crew and the rotation should be at least adequate, and they’re devoid of black holes, at least on paper.
Braves 2023 Head to Head
The Braves took four of six from the Cardinals last year, including a very early season sweep in St. Louis.
The two clubs will square off six times once again in 2024, with the Braves traveling to Busch Stadium in late June before the Cardinals return the favor the week after the All-Star Break.
