On May 11, 2025, Mother’s Day was honored this past Sunday across the MLB. While players stepped in the box adorning pink cleats, bats, and gloves to pay tribute to their mothers, Sunday also served as the official quarter mark of the 2025 regular season as most teams played their 41st game of the year.
While perhaps premature to start scoreboard watching for the postseason, the rust of the offseason has faded and the frost of April has melted away for May to heat up across the league. A fourth into the season, it’s a great milestone for teams to reflect and see what kind of team they really are. Where are their strengths? What areas are they lacking? What is their identity?
For the St. Louis Cardinals, a team who had become a laughingstock for not spending a dime over the off-season, they’re still trying to piece together what kind of identity they have. 22-19 in their first 41 games, The Cardinals rest in near perfect mediocrity. It’s a mixed bag of good and bad marbles that shuffle the harsh realities of a team who ignored the free agency race this off-season, but include a handful of golden marbles like an early breakout for Brendon Donovan (.318) and an offense capable of toppling the goliaths of the National League like Paul Skenes, Aaron Nola, and Zack Wheeler. But somewhere in that bag of marbles are the puzzle pieces that may give hope to a team with a growingly skeptical fanbase.
What’s working? A surprising offense.
“There’s a time to hit and a time to slug,” Brant Brown, Cardinals hitting coach said repeatedly during spring training. Brown has emphasized his philosophy throughout the early 2025 season and it has proven to be effective. ‘A time to hit and a time to slug’ is all about situational hitting, especially with two strikes or two outs. The philosophy emphasizes putting the ball in play over attempting to handicap a ball 500 feet with two strikes when a flyball could score the go-ahead run. The Cards are 5th in the MLB in batting avg. (.259) and boast patience at the plate with a .336 OBP, which is 3rd in the league. They’re also 5th in the MLB in least strikeouts this year, a complete coin flip from the 2024 by this time last year, where they were 17th in the same category.
In the forty game stretch, the Cardinals are not a powerhouse of a team. Brant Brown’s hitting approach brings that to life; although the home runs will come, you can single a team to death with good situational hitting. Utility man Brendon Donovan has emerged as 2025’s most consistent Cardinal, racking up 48 hits and 19 RBIs through 40 games. Centerfielder Victor Scott II has been a pleasant and welcome surprise to the bottom of the lineup hitting .288 with .355 OBP. Along with his healthy offensive presence is his flashy glove in centerfield which has locked down a no-fly-zone all season. Along with the razzle-dazzle of young shortstop Masyn Winn and the veteran glove of third-baseman Nolan Arenado on the infield, the Cardinals defensive game has been both effective and exciting to watch.
So, what’s the problem? The Cardinals seem to only display these excellent attributes at home. 15-6 at Busch, The Redbirds look like a team ready to dig deep into the playoff run, despite the falling number of fans at the ballpark. Their performance on the road is their Achilles heel. When the Cards perform the road, the number of quality starts plummets, the good at-bats disappear, and bullpen seems to forget how to finish games. Before Sunday, the Cardinals were 6-13 on the road marking only a .233 average compared to their .288 average at Busch. On the road, the pitching staff hangs a 5.12 ERA, which is 28th in the MLB.
For things to flip on the road, a little more help in the batter’s box may do the job. It’s been another sluggish start second baseman Nolan Gorman (.171/.281) and right fielder Jordan Walker (.180/252), two young Cardinal’s trying to make their mark. But things aren’t as bleak as it seems.
For such a young team, the veterans in Nolan Arenado and Wilson Contreras are necessary to teach their young Cardinal fowl by setting an example. Converted catcher to first-baseman Wilson Contreras has done exactly that in this first quarter of the year. Starting the year at 1st base and hitting with under .100 the first three weeks of the year, things looked bleak for the former Cub catcher. But by some violent refusal to yield to the unforgiving difficulty of the game, Contreras proved to the struggling young Cardinals it’s possible to turn a weak start around. In his last 15 games, Contreras has been a force in the batter’s box, hitting magnum .357 and .481 OBP with 4 homers and 14 RBI’s.
But this is all part of the mixed bag of marbles that make up the Cardinals for what they are. In the grand scheme of things, they are mediocre. But there is a tinge of hope. At the time of this writing, the Cardinals have won nine straight games and seem to be putting together the pieces to build their identity from a young, wide-eyed team. This winning stretch may be the start of not just a winning team, but a franchise who has started to remember who they are.
I'm a writer trying to make his mark in the baseball journalism world. I graduated with a journalism degree from Union University where I pitched four years of D2 baseball.
