St. Louis Cardinals worst lineup of all-time by WAR

It is well documented by this point that the season the St. Louis Cardinals are currently having is without question one of the worst seasons they have had in recent memory. It isn't just their record which currently sits at 15 games below .500 a week into August. It isn't just the record because every franchise has rough seasons. It is that the expectation was that the Cardinals would be a clear playoff contender coming into the season and they have been anything but that in 2023.

Some of it has been a roster construction problem that many saw coming a mile away as there just wasn't a proper focus on the starting rotation. Some of it has been underperformance from some key players at the worst possible time. The rest of it, well, has been plain crummy luck as the Cardinals have underperformed their expected W-L record by a full five games.

However, one does wonder how much worse it could have been. For help there, we look back into the annals of Cardinals history for some of the worst position players to ever play in a St. Louis uniform.

Here is the Cardinals' all-time worst lineup by WAR

For the sake of clarity, here are the qualifications. First and foremost, this list is going strictly by Baseball-Reference's WAR measure. This isn't a value judgment as to which WAR calculation is better, but an acknowledgment that B-Ref's database is really powerful and easy to search for this sort of thing. Also, the WAR accumulated by each player is only the WAR they earned while playing for St. Louis.

Finally, to filter out guys that only played for a little while in the big leagues, only players that put up 1,000 or more plate appearances are eligible and they had to play 50% of the time or more at each given position. The goal is to find lineup staples that truly stunk it up, not just to identify a bunch of bad one-and-dones. Without further delay, let's take a look at the all-time worst Cardinals lineup by WAR.