Cardinals' inability to sustain positive results doomed their 2025 season

The St. Louis Cardinals are in the final month of what appears to be another season of missing the playoffs, and at the end of the season, they will be saying goodbye to long-time employee John Mozeliak. Even with the expectations of a transition season, the Cardinals still found opportunities throughout the year to make fans believe in their chances, but their overall inability to be consistent on both sides of the ball doomed their playoff odds.

The Cardinals have had one winning month during the 2025 season.

To get out ahead of it, the Cardinals technically had two winning months if you include March, where the team went 3-1 and had us all believing they were ready for their 12th World Series trophy. Because of the small sample size, I added their March record to their April games, and they were still sitting at 14-17 before the calendar turned to May.

April was expected to be a real test of a month to show what this team was made out to be, especially after an offseason of inactivity returned much of the same player group for this season. The Cardinals had seven potential playoff competitors on their schedule this month, and when looped in with the weather, they had to also play two doubleheaders in the month. Offensively, the Cardinals were middle of the pack, but the pitching questions the team refused to address in the offseason started to show up. The staff's 4.34 ERA and .254 batting average against were 21st in baseball and ranked last in MLB for K/9, setting the stage for problems we would see for most of the summer.

Even with the struggles, the team did not feel like it needed to replace any of their pitchers and kept trotting out the same guys every five days, and the month of May made the organization look like geniuses. The lower strikeout numbers remained, but the staff improved in their ability to allow baserunners and only allowed 20 homers for the month. As the offense struggled to hit home runs, their situational hitting improved and put up above-average numbers with the bats. All of this combined for a 19-8 record in May, tops in baseball, and put St. Louis just two games behind for the NL Central lead.

Unfortunately, the pitching regressed back to their April numbers, and the hitters also hit a cold spell to fall below league average in June. While the team ended with a 14-14 record for the month, this included a six-game losing streak AND a five-game winning streak, further pointing to the team's inability to be consistent. The .500 month, then, had good and bad moments, but what happened on June 30 seemed to seal the Cardinals' fate for the rest of the season.

After a convincing three-game sweep of the Guardians, the Cardinals welcomed the lowly Pirates into town with the opportunity for St. Louis to really scare the division leaders and become legitimate playoff contenders near the halfway point of the season. On June 30, though, the downfall began, as the Cardinals were swept by Andrew Heaney (who has since been DFA'd) and the Pirates, as the Cardinals' struggles against lefty pitchers were on full display. One loss, so what? Well, the Cardinals not only lost the next two games, but were shut out for the entire series against Pittsburgh, now falling to five games behind in the division with the Cubs next on the schedule. The Cardinals would lose that series against Chicago and finished the month of July with six losing streaks of at least two games against one winning streak that lasted just two games. They ended July with an 8-16 record, worst in the NL, and were now 10 games behind in the Central after a series loss to the Marlins.

As the dog days of summer approached, fans were fatigued from the roller coaster and hoped to find something to be excited about to end the year as Mozeliak rode off into the sunset. Unfortunately, much of the same continued in August. The Cardinals won series against the Cubs and Dodgers before losing two out of three to the miserable Rockies, which led to a three-game sweep at the hands of the Yankees. The month closed out with the team's sixth series win since June but ended with the Cardinals staring at a 17-game deficit in the division and more than a handful of games out of the final Wild Card spot.

With the season all but over, fans had one last glimmer of hope as rosters expanded in September, but the team decided to do the bare minimum with those spots. Even though they called up top-20 prospects Jimmy Crooks III and Cesar Prieto, neither was expected to take on a major role despite the lost season. While Crooks and Prieto sat on the big league roster, top prospect JJ Wetherholt and former minor league pitcher of the year Quinn Mathews remain in Memphis while the Cardinals' major league players limp to the finish line.

As September mercifully arrives, a look back at the season sees the St. Louis Cardinals totaling just seven winning streaks of at least three games, but also shows an equal number of losing streaks of three games or more. Without any go-to guys in the rotation to end a losing streak or any offensive powerhouse players that can carry a team with one swing of the bat, the Cardinals' season was doomed from the get-go.