Cardinals fans hoping for a ray of hope should try again next year, according to oddsmakers. After missing the playoffs for two straight seasons and following a particularly lackluster winter, St. Louis is projected for a paltry 76.5 wins in 2025, the fewest in the National League Central. It’s the third-lowest projected total for the team over the last three-plus decades, marking only the fourth time since 1990 the franchise’s over-under has been set at less than 80 wins for a full season.

St. Louis Cardinals 2025 odds: Projected win total

The last time the outlook was this bleak was 17 years ago, when 2008’s team was penciled in for 76 wins (they got 86). That was the lowest projection since 1991, when the team came into the season expected to win 71 games (they won 84).

So in a historical sense (and to the chagrin of ownership), 2025’s squad is right where it should be; hitting the nadir of a strange, cicada-like 17-year cycle.

The current iteration of the Cardinals would most accurately be called “transitional,” as the team has its resources split between young, somewhat promising players and cost-controlled veterans bound for the sunset. The front office has called this period a “reset,” a misleading term given the team made only one acquisition that impacted the MLB roster (a reliever) and did not trade high-value assets Nolan Arenado, Willson Contreras or closer Ryan Helsley. The roster is reset only in the sense that all the pieces have been moved back to “Go.”

Such rosters are infuriating to predict because the young players don’t yet have a reliable baseline, and veterans (read: older players) are constantly staving off the effects of age until suddenly they can’t. Worse still, the rate and significance of improvement or decline for these respective players vary wildly. Some take a step (or a step back), some make a leap (or a fall).

So let’s start with what we know.

Familiar names leading 2025 Cardinals

St. Louis’ starting pitchers are a major problem. Sonny Gray, Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz are all expected to reprise their roles in a new six-man rotation. The trio has a combined age of 104. While Gray is the ace, opposing hitters are batting better than .280 against Mikolas the last two seasons, and Matz has an injury history stretching back to 2016 that includes his elbow, shoulder and back. Since becoming a Cardinal in 2022, he has missed half of two seasons and pitched 197 1/3 innings. Erick Fedde will also be there, and though his numbers from 10 starts last season were respectable, the 32-year-old has a career ERA of 4.82 and a WHIP of 1.42. Rounding things out will be reliever-turned-starter Andre Pallante and long-promising prospect Matthew Liberatore. Both have been great at times and have struggled mightily at times, and the pair have 54 starts combined over three years.

The bullpen lacks eye-catching names on the call sheet after Helsley. With both age and inexperience in the rotation, that weakness could get plenty of exposure. Run prevention will be an issue.

Offensively, there’s the same mix of young and old. In the infield, catcher Iván Herrera, second baseman Nolan Gorman and shortstop Masyn Winn are all 24 or younger (Winn is 23). At the corners, Contreras and Arenado are a combined 65. The outfield features Jordan Walker (22), Victor Scott II (24), and Lars Nootbaar (27). Brendan Donovan (28) is the super utility man and will likely start the season at second base over Gorman.

Only two of those players were worth three or more wins last season.

Winn’s 4.9 WAR led the team despite his .730 OPS, and after him was Contreras, who posted a 3.0 but played only 84 games. That represents the highlight of the Cardinal offense, which is unchanged in 2025 save for Herrera moving to a full-time role. In fairness, the 25-year-old looked good in limited action, slashing .301/.372/.428 in 72 games. Also in fairness, he has 284 career at-bats, so the data on hand isn’t exactly prescriptive.

Last year’s offense scored 39 runs below the league average and left the most men on base in all of baseball. So run creation will also be an issue.

The hope, at least for the front office, is that 2024 was the floor from which their young players will spring to life. Walker and Gorman, touted for years, have been unable to put things together thus far despite their prodigious potential (Walker’s swing has been an object of nonstop tinkering). Scott has speed and a glove, but may not be able to hit in the show. For this to work, or at least work better than last year, all three must begin resembling the player scouts foresaw. If they don’t, it could be worse, especially if Winn and Herrera don’t continue to blossom.

As for the elders, Arenado is still a marquee name but is clearly in his twilight as a player. His 2024 OPS (.719) was 55 points less than his .774 mark the year prior, which itself was 117 points worse than in 2022. Contreras’ bat isn’t a liability, but neither is it strong enough to carry an offense of developing rookies and a dimming star. Nootbaar is every analytics guy’s favorite sleeper, but he hasn’t been able to sustain his success.

Over or under?

This is the problem when so much of a prospective win total hinges on unproven names. Early career stats vary too much and haven’t reached that predictive critical mass, so it comes down to how you feel. Do you believe these young players will get better, and how much better do you think they need to get to win more than 76 games? How close do these veterans need to be to last year’s production to fill the gap? How realistic is that performance now that they’re a year older?

You will never predict the ensuing combination of progression and regression, so your best bet is to lean on history. For one, this team (albeit with a slightly different rotation) won 83 games last season. For another, all three of the previous Cardinals teams projected to win fewer than 80 games hit the over. As mentioned earlier, the 1991 team won 84 games, 13 more than their preseason mark. The following year’s squad beat its line by five, and 2008’s team won 86 games against a 76-win prediction.

That’s not to say the Cardinals haven’t finished below 80 wins in the last 35 years. It has happened seven times and as recently as 2023. But they never have when Vegas predicted them to. The Cardinals are dangerously reliant on yet-unrealized potential, but even then, 76 wins is tough to imagine. Only eight teams had that few or fewer last season. The fact that St. Louis is predicted to be among them this season is a bit of an embarrassment, but one that seems to come around every 17 years. If that’s truly all they can muster this time, the 2025 team will be in an unenviable class all its own.

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