Power outage projected to continue for St. Louis Cardinals

As we finally hit February, that means we are a couple short weeks away from seeing St. Louis Cardinals players and staff wandering the mostly renovated Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium. While Cardinal National fights the cold and snow up north, the fan focus has shifted away from the offseason that was, to the season that is to be.

As we shift our view to whatever the 2026 St. Louis Cardinals are going to be, that also brings the excitement and energy of projection season! FanGraphs has its estimates but also just released Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projection for the season, and Cardinals fans may actually be in agreement with what the expectations are for St. Louis in the true first year of a rebuild. After trading away established veterans, it makes sense on the surface that it would be wise to expect a downturn, but when we look at the fine print, those losses (outside of Willson Contreras, more later) may not create a six- to seven-win regression as some betting outlets anticipate.

Cardinals are projected to finish near the bottom of the league in power again in 2026

Last season, the Cardinals again underperformed and finished 78-84, good for a fourth-place finish in the NL Central. Heading into 2026, all four other division teams have done some adding to their major league rosters, even while navigating the losses via free agency and/or trade. The Cardinals, though, have really only done the subtraction part, with Ryne Stanek and Dustin May being their notable additions. This means that a lineup that already struggled for power is going to have some work to do in that aspect yet again. The Cardinals finished second-to-last in all of baseball with 148 homers last season, a whopping 126 behind the first-place Yankees. They made up for it slightly by hitting the ninth-most doubles, but everything averaged out to a 25th-place finish in OPS.

Now that projections are live, Cardinals fans sitting in the bleachers or Big Mac Land should expect most of the souvenirs coming out of Busch Stadium to be off the bats of their opponents. Once again, the Cardinals are expected to finish second-to-last in homers but are projected to see a tiny jump from last season. An improvement would be mildly surprising, as Willson Contreras, the team's lone 20-home run hitter last season, will now be smacking line drives off the Green Monster in Boston rather than smacking the gaps in St. Louis.

So who picks up the slack? According to FanGraphs, they believe that none other than Nolan Gorman will lead the team in power with 24 homers, followed by new full-time first baseman Alec Burleson chipping in 22 round-trippers. Behind them sits expected catcher Ivan Herrera with 19, but he matched that total in just 107 games last season. Assuming Herrera stays healthy for 125-130 games, he could easily surpass that number to create a somewhat respectable middle of the order for the Cardinals.

The Cardinals were said to be searching for a righty power bat to help the lineup, especially in the outfield, but a few of those options have signed elsewhere, opting for playing time or winning over heading to St. Louis. This led to Bloom handing out an invitation for former Chicago Cubs power prospect Nelson Velazquez to come to Spring Training and attempt to put his power on display and earn at least a part-time role in the outfield to start the season.