Good day to ya.
Update as of Thursday evening: only 28 days remaining until the St. Louis Cardinals open the 2026 regular season with a home game against Tampa Bay on March 26.
Today’s Spring Training Question of the Day: The 2025 Cardinals suffered from a glaring shortage of power, a flaw that often starved their offense. And if that happens again in 2026, how can the STL offense compensate to push across more runs?
This is a terrific question!
There’s no way to paint over this – not that I want to – but the Cardinals had a sorry, sorry offense in 2025. I mean, how can you score a lot of runs when just about every area of your offense is subpar? I ain’t lying. I ain’t exaggerating.
Here’s where the 2025 Redbirds ranked among the 30 MLB teams in a range of meaningful categories, and I’ll include some riffing on a few of these points.
Did they get a lot of runners on base? Not really. Not the 2025 Cardinals. They were 20th in hits, 25th in walks, 19th in times reaching base.
Did the power department produce enough juice? Umm, no. (Make that hell, no. But we both knew that already.) The ‘25 Cards were 27th in slugging percentage, 27th in total bases, 28th in extra-base hits, and 29th in home runs. That’s … light.
Were the Cardinals effective at “manufacturing” runs? No, I’m afraid not. Not in a way that really mattered. Their sacrifice-bunt efforts were admirable; the fellers ranked seventh in the majors with 25 sac bunts. They also reached first base nine times on bunt hits when trying to sacrifice. Their failures when trying to sacrifice were limited. So, there you go; I’m happy to provide something positive here. But did the Birds have a thriving manufacturing plant? Were they demons at scratching opponents into submission with a plethora of annoying small-ball cuts?
Did the Cardinals peck away like crazed opportunists and do the little things that drive the enemy crazy and also get Chip Caray and Brad Thompson so highly aroused in the booth? That would be a “no.”
Other than the sac bunts, the small-ball attack was pretty lame. This team snatched only 89 bases, ranking 11th in the NL. The Cards ranked 10th in the NL by plating runners only 14 percent of the time on a batter’s actions. They were 13th in the NL in the percentage of driving in a runner from third base with less than two outs. They were 12th in advancing a runner from second base with no out. And the Redbirds were last in the NL in productive-outs percentage (26.9%).
And perhaps worst of all … the Cardinals sabotaged themselves. As we mentioned, the Redbirds were able to get runners over at a decent rate as bunting practitioners – only to blow themselves up in too many ways. They failed to notch enough hits, especially extra-base hits, with men on base or runners in scoring position. Their OPS in both categories ranked in the bottom 10 in MLB.
Lost in translation: The boys got their signals crossed too many times – or something like that. The Cardinals lost 53 runners on the bases last season; that was the fifth-highest count in the majors. Were they overly aggressive? Or just … shall we say … unwise? Eight were chopped down on pickoffs, also fifth-most. You just can’t have that many dead-bird incidents.
On top of that, the Cardinals had the eighth-worst percentage in the majors at hitting into ground-ball double plays. Their at-bats with men on base weren’t always the smartest.
In the aftermath of this forensics report, what can the Cardinals do in 2026 to improve in all phases of their offense?
1) Trade for Nick Kurtz or Junior Caminero? Wouldn’t that be nice? Yeah. But that isn’t an option because the A’s and Rays would laugh at Chaim Bloom for calling to see if the sluggers were available. And I don't think the Mariners are shopping Cal Raleigh.
2) Hope that Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman combine for, say, 50 home runs in 2026? Not impossible … but not probable.
3) Hope that the newer, smarter and modernized front-office operation can raise the collective baseball IQ of everyone in uniform? Yes. Now we’re talking.
4) Get back to the George Kissell Way of instruction, instruction and instruction. And drills, drills, drills. Good news: the Cardinals opened a teaching camp in Jupiter. Keep going until opening day. Manager Oli Marmol finally had the opportunity to run an on-field classroom because he has a young team and doesn’t have to put up with crabby veterans who want to get to the golf course.
5) Don’t try to be something that you’re not. The Cardinals don’t have enough athleticism to go with the 1980s Coleman-McGee-Ozzie style of track-and-field ball. So what’s the point of having so many of your people snuffed out on the basepaths?
6) For gosh sake, do Chip and Brad a favor and actually do some real manufacturing. You do that by playing sharp and alert situational baseball. Moving a runner over or getting a dude in from third base with fewer than two outs shouldn’t be as difficult as splitting the damn atom. The situational awareness must improve dramatically.
7) The Cardinals were a good two-strike hitting team in 2025. Shouldn’t that poise and intelligent approach spread to other areas of performance? The Cardinals were one of the most aggressive teams in the majors last year at hitting to the opposite field. There’s a lot of merit in that, but only to a point. The Cardinals had seven opposite-field home runs last season, the fewest in the majors. And their .381 slugging percentage when going oppo was a courtesy shown to opposing pitchers.
8) When a hittable pitch appears on the radar, then pull, pull, pull. The 2025 Cardinals hit 73 percent of their taters and slugged .661 on pull shots.
9) Marmol and Victor Scott might want to ease up on the attempts to bunt for a hit in 2026. Scott II had seven bunt singles last season – fourth most in the NL. Scott also had 10 sacrifice bunts. But those were just partial results. Scott went 7 for 23 when trying to bunt for a base hit last year; he made too many outs that way. And while that .304 average on bunt-hit attempts may look good, well, it isn’t. For context consider this: the overall MLB batting average last season when hitters attempted to push a bunt for a single was .482. That was 182 points higher than Scott’s .304 average. Scott has been working overtime to improve his bunting skills in 2026. I wish him well. But would it be possible for Scott to improve his hitting instead of his bunting? I’d like to see him bat .304 just through a normal swing of the bat.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
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 – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.