How a simple lineup shift could turn a .500 Cardinals team into an 86‑win contender

At every gathering this holiday season, this is what I heard about the St. Louis Cardinals. 

"This is going to be a terrible year. The Cardinals don’t have one big-name player. If they trade Donnie, it will be hard to even find one player to root for."

"The pitching staff doesn’t have an ace, or not even a number two on a great team. They traded their closer. They are relying on a first baseman who, during his four-year career, has only started 64 games at the position. :

"The Cardinals have a ridiculous wealth of catchers, but none who will be stars this year." 

And yet, somehow, ZIPs has the Cardinals projected to be a .500 team. But what do they know, right? Quite a lot, actually. Their projection for 2025 was 79 wins, and they won 78. 

The everyday projected lineup with Donovan still here and JJ Wetherholt not named as part of the roster yet looks very average. 

 C: Pages
1B: Burleson
2B: Donovan
SS: Winn 
3B: Gorman
LF: Nootbar
CF: Scott II
RF: Walker 
DH: Herrera 

This looks like at best a .500 team. 

The Cardinals are in a strange place. This year, it’s all about playing the young guys. But at the same time, Bloom has said they won’t stop trying to win. That may take a bit of creativity and change the way the lineups are set. One way to do that, which the Cardinals have been reluctant to do in the past, is to platoon more. 

The Cardinals are a team that has only one player whose defense and offense put him far above others at his position. That would be Masyn Winn at shortstop. He also is not affected by the pitcher. He hit .251 against RHPs and .255 against LHPs. With no established stars on the team, a platoon will do two things. Get everyone playing time and put this team in a position to win more games. 

There are a few positions that are glaring. Take catcher for one. Pages will probably be the everyday catcher, assuming Herrera is not. Jimmy Crooks in his career, has hit .302 against righties and only .231 against lefties. That is also 77 points higher than Pages against righties. 

Jordan Walker hit 55 points worse against right-handed pitchers last year. Nootbar, however, hit 48 points higher against right-handers. 

If we assume Scott II is the center fielder, hit 17 points less against lefties. Nathan Church, another speedy, very good defensive outfielder, hit 30 points higher against lefties. Church hit .417 against lefties, and Scott only managed .204. That is huge. 

So if the lineup is tweaked based on who hits righties or lefties better, the lineups could look like this:

A platoon puts the young players in a position to succeed. It also increases production to a point that the ZIPS’ projected win total would increase by approximately five wins. Math is hard, but 81 wins plus 5 equals 86 wins. Last year, the Cincinnati Reds made the playoffs with just 83 wins. 

It’s the off-season. It’s OK to dream.