When it comes to the St. Louis Cardinals, these birds have no quit in them

If there is one thing other than winning that will get a fanbase to rally behind a team, it's a club that never gives up. A team that constantly puts pressure on its opponent and won't stop giving their all until the final out has been made.

That is this St. Louis Cardinals team.

When the Redbirds go down in a contest, there's never hope lost in that dugout. They pick up their bats, put on their helmets, and go back to war at the plate. While the bullpen was leaky at best to begin the year, for the last month of baseball, they've been trusted to go into games and shut offenses down when they need to get back into a game.

Saturday's series clinching victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks was yet another example of that.

With the game tied 1-1 going into the bottom of the seventh inning, the Cardinals got a rally going with the bottom of their lineup, culminating in a two-RBI double by Jordan Walker and then an RBI groundout from Yohel Pozo to give the Cardinals a 4-1 lead going into the eighth inning.

Unfortunately, their league best defense crumbled that inning, resulting in four Arizona runs to give them a 5-4 lead and the air seemingly sucked out of Busch Stadium. I was getting direct messages from writers who cover other teams about Walker's blunder in right field. It was the kind of inning that usually kills a team's chances of winning a ballgame.

Instead, the Cardinals got right back to business, with the bottom of their lineup producing once again. Arenado drove in Ivan Herrera on an RBI groundout, and then Walker once again gave the Cardinals the lead with a line drive single to score Alec Burleson and give the Cardinals a 6-5 lead.

Even as the ninth inning got too eventful for any of our likings, the Cardinals defense then rebounded, with Nolan Arenado saving the day, preventing a run from scoring with his diving stop, and recording the second out of the inning before Ryan Helsley struckout Eugenio Suarez to secure the victory.

The 2025 St. Louis Cardinals can never be counted out in any contest.

Let me just give you a few stats that show how the Cardinals have embodied that mentality this season.

• The Cardinals' offense has scored the eighth most runs in baseball during the seventh inning or later in a game
• They have the fourth-best batting average, the second-best on-base percentage, the tenth-best slugging percentage, and the ninth-best on-base plus slugging percentage of any offense in baseball when trailing in a game.
• This is especially true of Ivan Herrera, Alec Burleson, Willson Contreras, and Brendan Donovan, who all boast an OPS north of .830 when trailing in a game.
• Since April 25th (when the club optioned Ryan Fernandez to Memphis), the Cardinals' bullpen has a 3.16 ERA in the seventh inning or later of games, the seventh-best mark in all of baseball.

These Cardinals do not give up.

Now, there is a bit of a wart in their resume, something they'll need to improve upon as the season goes on if they want to maintain that "never give up" feeling in a meaningful way. While the offense still produces when they are down, when the game is late and close (8th inning or later, the score is within two runs in either direction), the offense ranks in the bottom third of baseball in most of those same categories. Part of that seems to be weighed down by the fact that they are a middle-of-the-pack offense in baseball once they have a lead, but part of having "no quit" in a team is not letting off the gas when you have the opportunity to put a team away.

If this Cardinals team continues to fight the way it has to begin the 2025 season, not only will they remain in the playoff hunt all summer long, but you'll see Busch Stadium continue to fill back up as fans clamor to see this exciting ballclub.