⚾ Baseball Bytes: Cardinal Rules

St. Louis finds its groove again by leaning into player development. Plus, an iconic ‘90s Atlanta Brave returns for the Futures Game, and Aaron Judge hits his most improbable home run.

Welcome to Baseball Bytes^¹ — a column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

⚾ The “Cardinals Way” Flies Again

Brendan Donovan of the St. Louis Cardinals hits a single in the third inning against the Cincinnati Reds on April 30, 2025. (Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

Just two years ago, the St. Louis Cardinals suffered through something almost unimaginable for a franchise so defined by its winning consistency: a losing season. It was their first sub-.500 campaign since 2007 — a stunning fall from grace that I called “the rarest of sights” in modern baseball: a bad Cardinals team. Starting out at 10-24 through 35 games, St. Louis ended up posting their most losses in a season since 1990, despite mostly running it back with a core that had posted 93 wins the year before.

Attempting to build the bridge to a new franchise era, it seemed like St. Louis might be rebuilding for a little while. Even the road back above .500 in 2024, for instance, was steady but unremarkable — they finished a respectable 83-79, but missed the playoffs again with many less-established players taking on larger roles. That always needed to happen to move forward, and it was set to intensify even more in 2025 with franchise icon Paul Goldschmidt leaving via free agency last offseason.

But flying in the face of modest preseason projections — as well as a mediocre 14-17 record in April — the Cardinals have taken off with the league’s co-second-best record (13-5) in May heading into Wednesday’s action. That gives them a 27-22 record on the 2025 season, and a 46 percent playoff probability according to my Elo model. It’s not quite a total return to their previous powerhouse perch, but it’s a meaningful step forward — one driven, most importantly, by improved production from the club’s once-flagging pipeline of homegrown talent.