The Cardinals put another series victory in the bag, leaving Baltimore with two straight wins over the Orioles before departing on an aeroplane to the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex.
To me, the three-game set in Baltimore reaffirmed much of what we believe about the 2025 Cardinals.
They’re a confident team.
They’re a maturing team.
They are a highly professional – as in taking care of business – team.
It is a team that likes to rumble. It is a team that often emerges from a rumpus, a predicament – and related chaos – to compete like Tom Cruise’s character in a Mission Impossible movie.
(OK, that’s a lame metaphor but it’s early and I haven’t poured enough espresso down my gullet.)
These Cardinals are – pardon my cliche – a team that knows how to win, and it ain’t easy to do that.
And once a team learns how to win, it doesn’t always stick. Example: The Baltimore Orioles. The up-and-coming O’s emerged from a complete teardown project to post a .623 winning percentage in 2023, a .562 winning percentage in 2024 … but are 28th in the majors in winning percentage (.345) so far this season.
What the hell happened to these guys? My goodness, the Orioles have gone back in time … to their St. Louis Browns heritage!
As we witnessed Wednesday night, the 2025 Cardinals are capable of winning on a given day, even when they stink in multiple areas of the game.
Think about it.
In the third and series-deciding game, the Cardinals struck out a season-worst 16 times. All nine guys in the lineup struck out at least one time, and five had multiple strikeouts.
The fellas didn’t have a bushel of runs to show for their 12 hits and five walks because they stranded 10 runners on base.
In a rain-distracted competition – the Cardinals and Orioles were splashing in a Bird Bath – STL starter Miles Mikolas avoided drowning but couldn’t grip his curveball and allowed four runs in four messy innings. And with the way Miles has been pitching – very well – he is forgiven.
So despite the 16 strikeouts by their hitters, the many missed opportunities by their hitters, two errors by their defense, and a 9.00 ERA by their starting pitcher … a formula for disaster …
Cardinals 6, Orioles 4.
What?
“We’re playing good and I’ve been saying it for a couple of weeks now, but the boys are buzzing,” Mikolas told a media troupe after the win. “We’re having fun, we’re winning ballgames, we’re picking each other up and we’re playing good team baseball.
“Baseball can feel like an individual sport at times when you are leaning on a pitcher having a good game or leaning on a hitter that goes 4-for-4 with a big RBI game, but it’s a team sport and we’re playing really good team baseball right now.”
Mikolas added this, in comments reported by MLB.com reporter John Denton: “Our hitters are not giving up. It’s easy with the weather being like it is today to let’s get out of here and throw at-bats away. That’s not our attitude. That’s not our mentality right now. And they dug in and gave (Baltimore’s starting) pitcher a tough time until he cracked.”
The Cardinals easily could have lost this game, and this series, to an inferior opponent that has dragged to a 10-25 record since April 20.
The Cardinals could have lost the series in Crab Town because of their starting pitchers. Erick Fedde, Andre Pallante and Mikolas averaged less than five innings per start in the three games, collectively had a 6.14 ERA, and were slapped around by the Orioles for a .333 average, .380 on-base rate .500 slugging percentage and seven extra-base hits in their 14 and ⅔ innings of labor.
After losing the first game 5-2, the Redbirds were down in both the second and third games. The Cardinals trailed in 14 of the 27 innings played in this series.
The Cards blew an early 3-0 lead and trailed 4-3 Tuesday … and won, 7-4.
The St. Louis delegation fell behind 3-0 early in Wednesday’s tilt, and later trailed 4-2 … and won 6-4.
That’s two straight comeback wins, making it 14 comebacks in their 32 wins this season.
If the Cardinals have evolved into a team that finds a way to win, they competed against a sad-sack Baltimore team that usually finds ways to lose.
On a related note, the Cardinals haven’t lost a series to a truly awful team since dropping two of three in Pittsburgh from April 7-9.
The Cardinals are 11-5 in their last 16 road games and have won four consecutive series away from St. Louis.
The Redbirds are 8-1-1 in their last 10 series. And after losing three of their first four series of the 2025 season, Cardinals are 10-3-1 in their last 14 series.
This is a mentally tough team. Go ahead and try to discourage the Cardinals. Good luck with that.
But Wednesday … that win was different.
The 2023 Cardinals wouldn’t have won that type of game. I don’t think the ‘24 Cardinals win it, either.
But the 2025 Cards?
No problem.
Just go get the damn thing done.
Wet, wild, whatever.
Home, road - name the place.
Strikeouts? Then strike back.
A little slump in the starting pitching? A great bullpen will make up for it.
This is a resourceful group. And so resilient.
As Marmol relayed to me in a text message Thursday morning:
“That one was a very weird and crazy game. We were going into the fifth inning, and I was talking with a couple of coaches, and we said, ‘They’re going to find a way to win.’ ”
Yes indeed. Marmol and the coaches love their players. And the feeling is mutual.
That’s a big part of the reason why a team dismissed as a preseason non-factor – a mediocre also-ran – now has the eighth-best winning percentage (.571) in the majors. Just two seasons ago, the Cardinals were 25th in MLB with their .438 win percentage.
This is an impressive, and unexpected, rise from the 2023 ashes. The comeback from 2023 began with a winning record (83-79) in 2024 and has only gotten stronger. That 91-loss season of ‘23 is a distant memory now.
Since the start of last season the Cardinals are 12 games over. 500. Which is a nice response to being 20 games under .500 in 2023.
The Cardinals can’t afford to let up, and we don’t have to tell them that.
The Cardinals have a 22-9 record in their last 31 games, a 20-7 record since April 30, an 18-7 (.720) ledger in May, and an MLB-best 18-5 mark (.783) since May 4.
This extreme success was necessary for the Cards to overcome a 10-15 start. And this molten-lava hot streak has given them a chance to contend for the postseason.
There can be no letdown.
Not with the Cubs fattening their record by going 12-3 in a 15-game feast on a soft-serve schedule that included six games against the Marlins and a total of nine versus the White Sox, Reds and Rockies.
The Cardinals can’t loiter at a time when the rival Brewers have quietly won eight of their last 11 games to move above .500 (29-28) for only the second time since April 24.
The Cardinals know this. And with each passing week, this team has shown that it also knows how to handle just about every challenge put in front of them.
BIRD BYTES
1. The Cardinals’ bullpen was paramount in the two straight wins over the O’s. Six different relievers were called on during the 48-hour period. Steven Matz, Phil Maton, Jo Jo Romero, Kyle Leahy, John King and Ryan Helsley combined for 8 and ⅓ innings of scoreless relief. In the first game of the series, rookie relievers Gordon Graceffo got some work and pitched well. So for the entire three-game stay in Baltimore, the St. Louis bullpen provided 11 and ⅓ innings of shutout relief.
2. The Cardinals have the second-best bullpen ERA (2.53) in MLB since April 25 and are No. 3 with a 2.90 bullpen ERA in May. Since April 25, the Cardinals have converted 11 of 13 save opportunities (84.6%) and lead the majors with 26 holds.
3. My favorite bullpen stat: since Marmol and pitching coach Dusty Blake put their reorganized bullpen in place on April 25 – minus Ryan Fernandez – the Cards are 18-0 when leading a game through six innings, 21-0 when leading after seven innings, and 22-0 when holding the lead through eight innings.
4. Jordan Walker, hello! In his last 13 games Walker is 12 for 36 (.333) with four extra-base hits, 11 RBIs and a .533 average with runners in scoring position. Walker had big hits for the Cardinals in both of their wins at Baltimore.
5. At a season-best eight games above .500 at 32-24, FanGraphs gives the Cardinals a 42.9 percent shot of making the postseason. That’s their highest playoff probability of the season to date.
6. The projection model of the esteemed analyst Clay Davenport gives the Cardinals a 76.5 percent crack of making the playoffs. Based on the formula that Davenport uses to tell us what a team’s record should be based on several factors including run differential and schedule strength, his system tells us the Cardinals deserve to have a 34-22 record right now. (Actually 33.7 to 22.3, but I rounded it off and you get the point.)
7. Lars Nootbaar, Masyn Winn: in the two straight wins over the O’s, the Nootbaar and Winn combined for 11 hits in 19 at-bats (.579) with three doubles, a homer, five RBIs, and six runs scored. They also went a combined 3 for 3 with runners in scoring position. That’s an awesome output from the No. 1 and No. 2 hitters in the lineup.
8. The 1-2-3 hot spots: In Wednesday’s 6-4 victory Nootbaar, Winn and No. 3 hitter Brendan Donovan combined to go 9 for 15 (.600) with three doubles, a homer, three RBIs and six runs scored.
9. That’s a Masyn Winner: The Cards’ classy shortstop went 4 for 5 Wednesday. For the season he’s batting .278 with a .438 slug and .795 OPS. That’s special considering his cold start to the season. In his last 30 games, Winn has batted .309 with a .376 on-base percentage, .500 slug – and has eight doubles, five homers, 15 RBIs and 25 runs scored. All-Star?
10. Brend-Da-Man Donovan: He had three hits including the go-ahead two-run homer that put the Cardinals in the lead for good. With another great game, Donovan now leads the NL with 69 hits, is third with a .335 batting average, and is fifth in on-base percentage (.395). Per wRC+, Donovan is 47 percent above league average offensively – which is 10th best in the National League.
STAT OF THE DAY
The Cardinals won Wednesday despite striking out 16 times in the game. That’s a rare achievement. During the expansion era, which began in 1961, the Cardinals have struck out 16 times or more in only 31 games. Their record in those games: 9 and 22. Which means that, before Wednesday, the Cardinals were 8-22 when striking out 16-plus times in a contest. The last time it happened was June 14, 2023. The Cards struck out 17 times in a 8-5 loss to the Giants.
Thanks for reading …
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting. You can access all of his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on SportsHubSTL, catch him weekdays on the “Gashouse Gang” or “Redbird Rush Hour” on KMOX (104.1-FM and 1120-AM, and he is a regular guest of “Cardinal Territory” video show hosted by the fantastic Katie Woo of The Athletic.