If you were to tell me that, entering the last week of the season, the Cardinals were not technically eliminated from the playoffs, I think I’d assume they’d have approximately 10 more wins than they do.
The Mets continued their freefall with a loss yesterday and a win by the Reds. And more bad news: if the Mets and the Reds have the same record, Reds hold the tiebreaker. It’s not always the Mets – Braves famously collapsed to allow the Cardinals 2011 run to happen – but it sure feels like it’s the Mets way more than any other team.
The Cardinals are facing another team whose playoff hopes have mostly been dashed. And the Cardinals deserve a tiny bit of credit for it. They came into St. Louis having won 10 of their last 11 games and then crushed the Cardinals on Friday night. But then the Cardinals won the next two to take the series and while they did follow that up with a series win against the Diamondbacks, they then went 3-7 leading into this series. The majority of the credit goes to the Dodgers, who they faced seven times in those 10 games. But I like to think the Cardinals stopping them suddenly in their tracks was the first domino.
I have beef with the Giants and it is entirely due to them winning three times in five years with extremely mediocre teams. Not one of those teams were elite. And somehow, the Cardinals got the devil magic label. It was especially annoying when a certain Giants writer pretty much automatically put Cardinals and devil magic together whenever he mentioned the Cardinals. I was okay with and even delighted when any other fanbase did this… but not the Giants. Yes, the Cardinals two championships were kind of mediocre teams… but the 2004 and 2005 teams absolutely deserved a World Series and arguably so did the 2012-2015 teams. The luck evened out in the end. At best the 2010-2014 run deserved one and that is stretching it. They topped out at 94 wins (with 88 win pythag). THAT is devil magic.
Neither team seems to have devil magic anymore. As mentioned before, the Giants magical September run was ended by their fierce rival. They still do have more of a chance than the Cardinals do – they have the luxury of facing the Rockies to finish their season, which I know was of no help to the Cardinals. But I would take a small bit of pleasure in truly ending their season in this series. Which… I think would require just a single win in practice.
I only have to make one comparison and you’ll know how good the Giants offense is. They have the same exact wRC+ as the Cardinals on the season. Rafael Devers actually hasn’t been that good for them. He does have a 120 wRC+ with the Giants, but given his defensive limitations, he’s been worth 0.9 fWAR in 89 games. Don’t think that contract will age well. He is tied for the team lead with Matt Chapman, whose six-year contract is off to a pretty good start. Chapman of course plays elite defense with that offense.
Three other hitters have above average hitting lines (who are active). Former Brewer Willy Adames has a 107 wRC+ with great defense, Heliot Ramos has a 105 wRC+ with awful defense, and Jung Ho Lee has a 105 wRC+ playing not very good defense in CF. #6 prospect in the system Drew Gilbert joins Ramos and Lee in the outfield, and he appears to be good at defense, not good at hitting with a 73 wRC+ in 33 games. Also not good at hitting is Patrick Bailey who has a 128 wRC+ in September which does not include his 1-2 game with a double yesterday. But despite that, his season wRC+ is still at 69. Of course, he grades out absurdly well defensively at catcher. (Andrew Knizner is his backup by the way)
Another prospect they have recently promoted is Bryce Eldridge, their 16th overall pick from the 2023 draft. Making that Devers trade even more confusing is that Eldridge is A) the 11th best prospect in baseball according to Fangraphs and B) hasn’t played a position other than 1B since 2023. He is 20 and only had a 106 wRC+ in 286 PAs in AAA and also has struggled in his 5 games at the MLB level, so there’s a good chance he’s back in the minors next season, but they are either going to be forced to trade him, relegate a 21-year-old to DH, or relegate their $300 million man to DH for most of his contract. I suppose they could always try Eldridge in the outfield, but it’d be a very odd choice to stop playing him in the outfield nearly immediately after drafting him if they thought he could do it.
Rounding out the lineup is Casey Schmitt, who is a below average hitter and below average defender at 2B. We may also see Jerar Encarnacion, who has started a few games in the past week. He’s a 27-year-old corner outfielder with a career 75 wRC+ in 75 career games played. So probably not a part of their future. They may also substitute Christian Kross for Schmitt, but he too is a below average hitter and below average fielder.
The Giants have a mediocre bullpen who we’ve caught at a bad time… for them. They’ve picked up three losses in the past week. In their defense, only one of those losses was a high leverage reliever. Lefty Matt Gage picked up the loss against the Diamondbacks in an 8-1 loss last Monday, but he pitched 5th and only gave up a run. The rest of the bullpen gave up the rest. Okay that’s not much of a defense. Joel Peguero picked up the loss on Saturday when he came into a tied game and gave up 3 runs in 1.2 innings pitched. Not to keep picking on Gage, but he blew the save right before him. But he blew the save in the 4th inning and Peguero gave up his runs in the 5th and 6th innings.
Ryan Walker was the one high leverage reliever who picked up a loss. Walker, if you’ll remember, both blew the save and picked up the loss against the Cardinals in the 9th the last time we saw the Giants. Okay I am making a terrible case that this bullpen is mediocre. Again, I’m going against how I started talking about this bullpen, but this bullpen does not strike people out. Walker leads the active bullpen with a 22.4 K% and 2nd place is Jose Butto with a 20.1 K%. The other six relievers are under 20% which is almost unheard of in the modern MLB.
Monday – 8:45 PM
Michael McGreevy (4.08 ERA/3.75 FIP/4.20 xFIP) vs. Justin Verlander (3.75 ERA/3.71 FIP/4.62 xFIP)
Verlander has said that he wants to pitch next season and I’m sure some team will give him that chance. That team may very well be the Giants and probably needs to be a team with a home park where it is very difficult to hit homers. San Francisco has a 91 park factor on home runs, so it’s about as ideal a place to pitch if you don’t want to allow homers. That said, he does sort of feel like he’s on the verge of being absolutely unplayable, so not sure how much longer he can defy the advanced stats on this one.
Good news! We get two more starts of Michael McGreevy. He will close 2025 with basically 17 starts (his relief appearance was functionally a start given 5.2 innings pitched) and approaching 100 innings. He’d have to have two very good starts to hit the 100 inning mark. I know people are unhappy he wasn’t in the majors all year and I’m not saying it’s not justified, but what 2025 needed to tell us was whether McGreevy could be a trusted member of the rotation. That questioned has been answered. Mo to some extent has also given Bloom something of a gift here because McGreevy is league minimum for the next three years, because of how long he was down. Not my favorite argument, but they got an extra year and he definitely won’t qualify for Super Two.
Tuesday – 8:45 PM
Andre Pallante (5.29 ERA/4.73 FIP/4.18 xFIP) vs. Logan Webb (3.27 ERA/2.68 FIP/2.81 xFIP)
So to say this is something of a mismatch would be a bit of an understatement. Not to compare the pitchers, but Webb is also a groundball pitcher except he actually strikes people out and doesn’t walk them. So if you manage to make contact, and you won’t 26% of the time, it’s probably on the ground. And he’s stingy with the walks too. Good luck.
In theory, this is definitely a good matchup for Pallante. He’s pitching in a park where it’s incredibly hard to hit homers, where their best hitter is left-handed, where their regular lineup against RHP will feature four lefties and a switch hitter, and whose offense is easily below average. In theory of course, because when Pallante is off, any team in baseball can hit him.
Wednesday – 8:45 PM
Sonny Gray (4.33 ERA/3.38 FIP/3.05 xFIP) vs. Robbie Ray (3.65 ERA/3.94 FIP/4.29 xFIP)
Will this be Sonny Gray’s last start as a Cardinal? I kind of doubt it and I hope not. I’ve shared before that the 2026 pitching depth is weak as hell, that Gray’s $35 million salary will not provide very much trade value at all, and I highly doubt the Cardinals kick in a lot of money to make him have trade value. Throw in his no trade clause and I can’t think of a worse set of circumstances set up for a worthwhile trade. Let’s hope he finishes this season strong.
I forgot Robbie Ray existed to the point where I had no idea he will be making his 33rd start this season. Good for him. I was corrected in my last series preview that the Cardinals have righted the ship against left-handed pitchers or at least the Cardinals sunk so low against right-handed pitchers that it is no longer worth pointing out that they are especially bad against lefties. So, uh, I guess this means we have more of a chance against Ray than if they faced him in April. That’s how stats work right?
The Cardinals being out of it is a bit freeing as it pertains to the series preview, because it’s tempting fate a bit to be this openly antagonistic towards an opponent, but it really doesn’t matter because what are they going to do? Sweep the Cardinals? Who cares? This was actually very fun for me to write to the point where i am going to be extremely tempted to be actively hostile in the series previews next year.
