The St. Louis Cardinals’ season ended in October terms on Friday night at Busch Stadium, even with eight games still on the schedule.
Washington routed the Cardinals 9-1, dropping St. Louis to 75-79 and mathematically eliminating the club from National League postseason contention. It is the fourth consecutive year the Cardinals will miss October, the franchise’s longest such streak since the 1990s.
Cade Cavalli worked five scoreless innings for the Nationals. Kyle Leahy lasted only three innings and was charged with six earned runs. Washington scored three times in the first and four more in the third. Dylan Crews hit a two-run homer. CJ Abrams collected an RBI single and later joined the 30-30 club. James Wood added an RBI double. St. Louis committed three errors and did not score until the eighth, when Iván Herrera grounded out to bring in a run.
The result was not a surprise given the late-season fade, but it still closed a door the club had kept slightly ajar longer than many expected. St. Louis spent time above .500 earlier in the year before settling into a familiar late-summer slide.
What remains is a narrower, historically loaded race against the calendar.
The Cardinals need to go 6-2 over their final eight games to finish 81-81. Anything less than that leaves them with a losing record for a second consecutive full season after going 78-84 in 2025. Consecutive losing campaigns in complete seasons have not happened in St. Louis since 1958 (72-82) and 1959 (71-83). That 67-year gap is the second-longest span of its kind among franchises in the four major North American sports leagues, excluding seasons shortened by war, work stoppages, or COVID.
The Montréal Canadiens hold the record at 80 years between consecutive full losing seasons (1938-39 through 1941-42, then again in 2021-22 and 2022-23). The Los Angeles Dodgers own the second-longest active streak; their last pair of losing seasons came in 1986-87, 39 years ago.
Those numbers do not change the immediate picture. The Cardinals still have two more home games against Washington this weekend, then road series against Pittsburgh and division-champion Milwaukee. A 6-2 finish would at least spare the franchise a milestone it has avoided for two generations. A lesser close would add a rare statistical stain to a fourth straight winter without playoff baseball.
The 2026 season is not over. The part that mattered most already is.
