Cardinals on pace for eerily similar campaign based on last year's halfway point

At the beginning of the season, if you said that the St. Louis Cardinals would be five games over .500 and holding a Wild Card spot at the season's halfway point, we would all be ecstatic. That is exactly where the Cardinals sit through 81 games this year and while this has been an exhilarating season so far, it bears an eerie similarity to last year's disappointing team.

The second half of June was unkind to the upstart Cards but as the calendar gets ready to flip to July, fans still have a different feeling about this year than last. While the organization did not get any All-Stars voted into the Mid-Summer Classic, they have some deserving candidates that still may make the game. Jordan Walker and rookie JJ Wetherholt will hopefully be playing in Philadelphia next month before the team looks to make their postseason push seasons ahead of schedule.

The 2026 Cardinals are slightly behind pace from last season's halfway point

This year has been full of exciting moments already, causing understandable but premature calls for Chaim Bloom to add to the flawed roster. Despite last year's team being one game better than the 2026 team, the feeling around this season has brought renewed optimism even if the playoffs are not part of the picture. When comparing to this point in 2025, the Cardinals are actually a little worse across the board on both sides of the ball.

After subtracting from the roster, it made sense to expect a step back in performance and even though that is the reality, the sense is that this year is still creating positive momentum towards the future. Looking at the 81-game mark from last year, the Cardinals are one game worse in the win column and slightly behind the offensive output by measure of fWAR and wRC+. The more surprising finding, however, is that last year's starting rotation was almost twice as good as this year's despite the subtraction of veterans Miles Mikolas and Erick Fedde.

According to FanGraphs, the 2025 starting rotation was worth 7.1 fWAR through the halfway point which was good enough for 10th in baseball. That was with Sonny Gray's rotation-best ERA sitting at 3.72 with the other arms at or above the 4.00 mark. This year's rotation has two pitchers near Gray's rate from last season but the overall staff stat line is worse than 2025. So far this year, Cardinals starters have thrown fewer innings, struck out fewer hitters, walked more, and allowed more balls to leave the yard than the year previous.

These stats had been hidden by an offense that was clicking, but now that the lineup has been struggling, the pitching can no longer hide behind the power bats. Matthew Liberatore was expected to be the frontman in the rotation and while he has not missed a start, fans are beginning to wonder if the starting five is the right spot for the southpaw. Free agent addition Dustin May has been what the Cardinals expected when signing him to a deal, but with the organization's future still being priority, he could pitch his way into being more valuable to the team at the trade deadline than remaining with the Cardinals.

There were times last year that the starting rotation made it difficult for fans to want to tune into games and this season, the same is beginning to happen. Currently ranked as the 22nd-best rotation in baseball, St. Louis has seen their ERA and homers allowed increase while the strikeouts have decreased despite the rotation averaging a mile per hour more on their fastball than last season. With Dustin May likely on his way out of the starting five, things could get worse before they get better and that could cause a further tumble down the standings and a full commitment towards the rebuild.

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