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The St. Louis Cardinals turned over 45% of their 40-man roster at the trade deadline and in the offseason in order to turn this club around in 2024. While there are good reasons to believe the club will be competitive and playoff-bound this season, their play on the field will ultimately determine that.
What the Cardinals have not done this offseason is give anyone confidence that they can be a World Series contender this coming season. Yes, should be much more competitive, but it's quite the stretch to believe they can truly compete with the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League, even with the postseason consistently having sub-90 win teams upset the regular season juggernauts.
That doesn't mean the Cardinals can't get themselves into the conversation, but it would require some major "what ifs" to happen in order to pull it off. A strong mixture of internal improvement, offseason moves proving successful, and potentially more additions to the roster could make World Series contention more of a possibility. How likely is it that all of those things occur? Well, that remains to be seen.
If you've gotten this far and think this story is trying to convince you that the Cardinals are World Series contenders, that's not the point of this piece. The goal of this breakdown is to identify all of the things that would need to happen in order for that to be a possibility. In all likelihood, the Cardinals' best possible season is a division title and a playoff series win, but asking for more than that right now is much more like a hope and dream than it is a logical argument.
Even so, let's try and imagine a world where the Cardinals can enter that conversation this season.
In no particular order, here are the five things that would need to happen in order for the Cardinals to join the group of World Series contenders in 2024.
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