Cardinals By The Numbers: Mid-Season 2026

Cardinals By The Numbers: Mid-Season

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so a mid-season update is perfect. Especially in a season where we expected the worst from the Cardinals and aren’t getting that.

The team is sitting at 50-45 after 95 games. They’ve scored 429 runs and have allowed 423, for a differential of +6. The team has been over .500 for the full season, which very few would have predicted back in March.

It’s also amazing to realize they have the exact same record as this point last year; the team ended up caving in the 2nd half, so hopefully history will not repeat itself. Last year’s team was not as good as this one, so fingers crossed.

They have gotten close a few time to dipping below the winning mark, but have managed to hover just above it for most of the season. The splits aren’t great though.

	Home			Road
W	L	Pct	W	L	Pct
26	26	.500	24	19	.558

Most teams have a winning record at home and hope to play decent on the road; the Cardinals have flipped that this year and it kind of makes sense. Busch Stadium has trended as a pitchers park since it’s opened and the numbers show it.

Cardinals hitters have scored 191 runs on the road and 238 on the road, which is 3.67 runs per game at home and 5.53 on the road. The pitchers have allowed 225 at home and 198 on the road, which is 4.33 per game at home and 4.60 on the road. If the hitters could get another run per game on average, they’d have an almost identical home/road split.

With the run differential at +6 overall, how does that translate into expected wins

RA	RA	RD	pW	pL	pPct
429	423	+6	48	47	.506

The Cardinals have 2 wins more than they should based off their run differential, meaning they are over performing. At 2 wins, they are within the standard deviation and it’s not something that be concerning moving forward. If the difference were over 3 wins, then it would be a problem.

That said, there are a lot of concerns with their run differential; it’s been all over the map this season and there are no trends to show if it’s going up or down.

A big reason for the fluctuations can be seen at the game level.

The Cardinals are 29-20 in games that have a run differential of +/- 2 runs or less; meaning any game where the Cardinals win or lose by 1-2 runs, they tend to win more often. When the run differential gets to +/- 4 runs or more, they tend to lose those games (14-21). They’ve had 1 game where their differential was +/- 8 or more runs (17, July 3rd vs the Cubs).

Most of the the issue falls on the hitting. When the team scores less than 4 runs, they are 14-37; when you consider they average less than 4 per game at home, it obvious that they could be above .500 at Busch. The good news is the Cardinals have more road games than home for the remainder of the season.

Here are the current NL Central standings:

Place	Team	W	L	Pct	GB
1	Milwaukee Brewers	59	37	.615	—
2	Chicago Cubs	54	42	.563	5.0
3	St. Louis Cardinals	50	45	.526	8.5
4	Pittsburgh Pirates	50	47	.515	9.5
5	Cincinnati Reds	43	52	.453	15.5

Here are the current NL Wild Card standings:

Team	W	L	Pct	GB
Chicago Cubs	54	52	.563	+2.5
Philadelphia Phillies	54	44	.551	+1.5
Miami Marlins	52	45	.536	—
St. Louis Cardinals	50	45	.526	1.0
Pittsburgh Pirates	50	47	.515	2.0
Arizona Diamondbacks	49	47	.510	2.5
San Diego Padres	48	48	.500	3.5
Washington Nationals	48	49	.495	4.0
Cincinnati Reds	43	52	.453	8.0
San Francisco Giants	41	55	.427	10.5
New York Mets	41	57	.418	11.5
Colorado Rockies	39	59	.398	13.5

The Cardinals are in the hunt still and should probably continue to be. That said, no one is really out of this yet. The bottom 3 teams have a real long shot, and the Mets have decided to sell, so it’s almost a 9 team race for the 3 spots. I expect the Reds, Nationals, and Diamondbacks to fall off, so that will help the Cardinals as well.

This year, instead of listing the team leaders at specific stats, I’m scoring those stats (and a few more) to create rankings.

Rank	Player	bWAR	fWAR	OPS+	wRC+	Score
1	Jordan Walker	3.8	2.7	190	143	75
2	JJ Wetherholt	3.8	3.5	115	114	66
2	Alec Burleson	1.4	1.6	126	122	66
4	Ivan Herrera	2.1	1.5	121	121	65
5	Lars Nootbaar	0.5	0.8	121	117	58
6	Nelson Velazquez	0.3	0.0	132	127	57
7	Masyn Winn	1.7	1.5	84	83	54
8	Nathan Church	0.9	0.3	87	83	49

Walker is clearly the best player on the team. The second tier players are Wetherholt, Burleson, and Herrera; the first 2 are interchangeable, with Wetherholt getting points for his defense and Burleson for his offense. The bottom of the list have a couple of defense first guys that are below average on offense.

The bottom 3 are Cesar Prieto (7, he didn’t get much of a chance when he was on the roster), Thomas Saggese (8, he didn’t do much when on the roster), and Victor Scott II (17, very disappointing). Nolan Gorman was surprisingly not in the bottom 3, or even 5; he’s been the 6th worst on the team (27 points).

Rank	Player	bWAR	fWAR	ERA+	xFIP	Score
1	Michael McGreevy	2.8	1.2	134	4.06	78
2	Riley O’Brien	0.6	0.6	119	3.62	71
3	Kyle Leahy	1.6	1.2	109	4.22	70
3	Andre Pallante	1.4	1.4	102	4.11	70
5	Dustin May	0.5	2.1	89	3.87	67
6	George Soriano	0.7	0.4	123	19	65
6	JoJo Romero	0.7	0.1	121	3.92	65
8	Ryan Fernandez	-0.2	0.2	154	3.06	63

McGreevy has obviously been the best starter and O’Brien the best reliever. It’s hard to remember the May has been very up and down for the season; he had a stretch where he was incredible, but a lot of bad pitching has been mixed in there.

The biggest surprise is Fernandez; he’s not been up much, but he’s pitched pretty well when he’s there. He’s allowed 5 unearned run, which is 1 more than his earned runs. He has struggled with walks, which could bring his other numbers back to Earth.

The bottom 3 are Chris Roycroft (6, no longer with the team), Jared Shuster (14, outrighted to Memphis), and Matt Svanson (25, but he’s been better than his initial start). Svanson was actually tied with Bryan Torres, but I won’t include him since he’s not a pitcher.

Matthew Liberatore is ranked 12th among pitchers (out of 22). Surprisingly, he’s got an fWAR of 0.4 and is only 19% below average according to ERA+. I still maintain they throw him on the IL with a phantom injury and send him to the pitching lab in Jupiter to rework his mechanics.

The Cardinal’s season starts back up tonight with a series in Arizona.