The Cardinals have played 15 games this season, and most early statistics should come attached with a warning: your mileage may vary.
Except …
What we’re seeing from the St. Louis pitching staff seems real, and won’t change in a way that matters. This is where we can bring the old Denny Green comment out of retirement: “They are who we thought they were.”
I’m talking about an extreme shortage of strikeouts. I’m talking about sad little whiff-swing rates. I’m talking about a big, big problem.
I’m focusing on those whiff-swing rates, because that’s the main ingredient in cooking a strikeout rate. Just for the sake of clarity, the “whiff-swing” rate is based on clean swings and misses. No foul balls. No foul tips. Just a hitter swinging away without getting his bat on anything … well, except for the air.
Here are the whiff-swing rates for St. Louis starters and relievers and the staff as a whole through the first 15 games, and I’ll place the Cards’ spot in the 30-team MLB ranking next to each grouping.
Starters: 18.4%, 30th
Relievers: 21.2%, 30th
Entire staff: 18.9%, 30th
The overall MLB whiff-swing rate is going up.
The St. Louis whiff rate is going down.
The 2026 Cardinals, so far, have experienced the most significant drop in this category (minus 3.5%) from last season.
What about the overall league trend? Since Statcast began tracking every pitch in 2015, the league average whiff-swing rate has increased from around 21% to the current 24.1% level.
As trends and shifting philosophies go, the Cardinals are going against history. They’re trying to win the Kentucky Derby with a french poodle in the saddle. They’re trying to ward off a cyberattack with an old-time telegraph machine. They’re trying to fight fires with a super soaker.
The team’s 14.9% strikeout rate would be the lowest by a big-league team in a season since 2006. If the ‘26 Cards would finish with a strikeout rate of 15 percent, it would be their weakest in a full season since the early 1990s.
And there are repercussions.
Through Sunday, opponents had combined for 443 “batted-ball events” against the St. Louis pitchers. Translation: fair balls plus foul balls caught by a fielder for an out. And let’s call these events with the short-hand BBE.
The 443 is the highest number of BBE allowed by any of the 30 teams. If this early-season pace continues, the Cardinal pitchers would end up with 4,784 BBE, which would be 10 percent higher than their total in 2025, and a little over 13% higher than in 2024.
The Cardinals have given up the most hits (140) which averages 9.33 per game. They’ve also been dinged for the most singles (6.8) per game. The staff has done a good job of limiting extra-base hits; the count of 38 XBH against them is the ninth-lowest total against a staff in the majors.
What we have here is a pitching staff that’s getting pelted by singles of every variety: 51 ground-ball singles, 42 line-drive singles, eight fly-ball singles, and one bunt single. These nicks, scratches and paper cuts add up to a lot of frustration and discomfort – and a lot of base runners.
Throw in the Cardinals’ fairly high walk rate to go with all of those hits, add a few hit-by-pitches, and include the inevitable errors, and St. Louis pitchers have faced 297 batters with runners on base – the most by a National League team.
The opponent batting average against the Cardinals – .266 – is the highest against an MLB team.
With the walks being a self-created problem, on-base percentage against the Cards (.350) is the second highest in the majors and the No. 1 rate against an NL staff.
Wait; there’s more. Redbird pitchers have faced 176 batters with runners in scoring position – the highest number of RISP opportunities against NL teams. And with so many opportunities to drive in runs, opponents have scored 63 runs against STL when batting with a runner on second, or third, or both.
And to tie all of this together, Cards pitchers have been slashed for 30 singles in RISP scenarios – the most vs. an NL staff. This is revealing.
The last thing to introduce into the accounting is opponents batting average against the Cardinal pitchers on balls in play. That’s .295, the 10th highest against a major-league staff and No. 5 versus an NL staff.
And batted-ball luck is definitely a factor here. Why? This: through Sunday, the Cardinals “lead” the majors in the percentage of total pitches (20.1%) that result in a ball in play.
This is what happens when you have a pitching staff that can keep the bases relatively clean by erasing hitters with a high strikeout total – and then work out of dangerous jams with even more strikeout wallop.
Ten of the 15 pitchers used by the Cardinals this season have strikeout rates below 15 percent.
And take a look at the starters’ strikeout rates:
Andre Pallante, 10%
Kyle Leahy, 10.9%
Matthew Liberatore, 14.1%
Michael McGreevy, 16.1%
Dustin May, 17.5%
The overall MLB strikeout rate for starting pitchers through the first two-plus weeks is 22.7 percent. And 24 of the 30 teams have a starter strikeout rate of at least 20 percent.
The Cardinal starters have the lowest strikeout rate in the NL Central. The Reds (18%) aren’t significantly better, but the other teams in the division certainly are: Brewers (27.2%), Cubs (25.4%), and Pirates (23%).
The St. Louis defense remains outstanding, with the Cards leading the majors with 12 Outs Above Average. The fielders are doing everything they can to protect the Redbirds from a hail storm of base hits. But with chronically poor whiff-swing and strikeout rates, the St. Louis pitchers are putting the team at an obvious disadvantage.
The Cardinals have some big-time strikeout pitchers in development, but for now their whiff-swing and punch-out power will have to be aimed at minor-league hitters.
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.