For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the St. Louis Cardinals.

Batters

For a very long time, the Cardinals were one of the safest bets in baseball. They’ve rarely been a juggernaut in recent decades, but they almost never had disastrous seasons and could almost always be counted on to end up with somewhere between 87 and 92 wins no matter what kind of shenanigans took place during the season.

Then 2023 happened. After posting just one season below .500 in the 21st century, the Cardinals finished with 91 losses, their worst showing since 1990, which was also the last time they finished in last place in the division. Back then, the team quickly recovered and immediately got back to a winning record, though it didn’t make the playoffs again until 1996.

The lion’s share of the blame for St. Louis’ lousy season doesn’t really sit with the offense. Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado both had big drop-offs from 2022, but that’s hardly a surprise considering that both were MVP contenders that year (with the former being the winner) and are on the wrong side of 30. ZiPS expects both to be above-average starters in 2024.

Overall, the offense was sixth in the NL by wRC+, and while that’s hardly a sterling showing, basically all the good parts of the lineup will return this year. Jordan Walker is likely to improve in his second season in the majors — though it remains to be seen if he can actually reasonably play a defensive position — and Masyn Winn was one of the biggest improvers in ZiPS over the course of 2023. There’s certainly some risk with this team — there are several players who are likely in their decline phase and St. Louis isn’t the absolutely phenomenal defensive club it was a few years ago. Nobody projects as a superstar, but there isn’t any gaping hole in the lineup, either. The Cards remain a very Cards-looking offense.

Pitchers

While one can reasonably disagree about whether the Cardinals did enough to shore up their pitching by adding Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson, and Lance Lynn, there’s little doubt about where their 2023 problems lay. Jordan Montgomery was solid and Miles Mikolas ate innings well, but practically everything else went wrong. Steven Matz lost his job in the rotation, a notable feat given the lack of good alternatives, and St. Louis’ yearly plan to get one last good season out of Adam Wainwright finally went horribly awry.

ZiPS like Gray just fine as the ace of the rotation. After that, there’s a significant drop-off, with ZiPS seeing the rest of the team’s rotation options — including the just-signed Lynn and Gibson — as rather nondescript fourth starter types. The good news is that even if the projections aren’t really taken with anyone, there’s at least a healthy headcount here, which will hopefully keep the bottom from falling out this year. ZiPS actually likes the team’s top three pitching prospects — Tink Hence, Tekoah Roby, and Gordon Graceffo — quite a bit, it just doesn’t see them being more than ordinary if called into action in 2024.

The bullpen gets a solid set of projections, with five relievers getting ERA projections in the threes. Andre Pallante makes it six if you only look at his ERA projection as a reliever (3.78), and getting a couple starts off of John King’s projection would improve his mark to 4.15. Depending on the system’s assumptions, ZiPS projects the overall bullpen somewhere between eighth and 12th or so in baseball right now, so a clear plus.

So what does it all add up to? ZiPS sees the Cardinals as having patched up enough of their immediate problems to return to winning 85-90 games, depending on what, if anything, the rest of the NL Central does this winter. Like most teams that have a suddenly horrific season, the Cardinals have become underrated in the public eye, and the hastily reassembled rotation, coupled with a solid bullpen and an above-average offensive core, could very well take one of baseball’s weakest divisions.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

Source