I think it\u2019s safe to say that many of us have our expectations set low for the upcoming St. Louis Cardinals season based on the newness of the rebuild process that\u2019s underway, but it appears that we\u2019re likely wildly optimistic compared to the new projections just shared by Baseball Prospectus.<\/p>\n
The new PECOTA Standings<\/a> shared by Baseball Prospectus<\/a> are an eye-opener. Not only do they believe that the St. Louis Cardinals will be cellar dwellers in the National League Central, but they only envision the team with 66 wins and 96 losses. When you dig deeper into their depth chart for the St. Louis Cardinals<\/a>, you see why. They project the team being outscored 624 to 761. Dang.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The individual player breakdowns are interesting as they see Ivan Herrera<\/a> being in the lineup as a catcher only 20% of the time with 60% of his appearances coming as a designated hitter. JJ Wetherholt<\/a> is predicted to be at second base 70% of his appearances with 5% also being at third base and another 5% at shortstop. Pedro Pag\u00e9s<\/a> is seen as the St. Louis Cardinals primary catcher behind the plate for 50% of his games. Nolan Gorman<\/a> is projected as the team\u2019s third baseman only 60% of his games with 10% at first base, 5% at second base and 10% as the Cardinals DH. Anyone else expecting Nolan Gorman to be at first base much? I certainly don\u2019t.<\/p>\n The PECOTA depth chart for St. Louis Cardinals pitchers<\/a> shows they believe that the team will lean on Riley O\u2019Brien<\/a> and JoJo Romero<\/a> as the team\u2019s closers. They see Matthew Liberatore<\/a> and Andre Pallante<\/a> averaging 5.6 innings per start with 5 innings for Michael McGreevy<\/a> and only 4.1 for Dustin May<\/a>. Kyle Leahy<\/a> is expected to mix up his appearance between being a starter and a setup role with an average of 4.9 innings per game.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a gambler, but I\u2019d take the over on what they predict for the St. Louis Cardinals. They have the lowest projection of wins for the team that I\u2019ve seen so far this offseason and I believe that a 66 win campaign is way below what this team will achieve. If the St. Louis Cardinals team were a prospect, I\u2019d say that overall they have a high upside with lots of fundamental work to be done. No, I would not predict 2026 to be a \u201cwinning\u201d season when it comes to record, but I believe it will be the first really fruitful season we\u2019ve seen in the past 3 years when it comes to getting the organization pointed back toward their former winning ways. If Baseball Prospectus is right, it will be a painful one to watch.<\/p>\n One other Cardinals news of note today is this. The St. Louis Cardinals today acquired right-handed pitcher George Soriano<\/a> in a trade with the Washington Nationals in exchange for right-handed pitcher Andre Granillo<\/a>. I\u2019m doubting that will change the Baseball Prospectus outlook for us much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I think it\u2019s safe to say that many of us have our expectations set low for the upcoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[22908,1181,5,33537,160,126,30968,6012,8534,4396,1453,58,4392,3736,4,1893,1554,673,67,4311,4310,71],"class_list":["post-565626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-louis-cardinals","tag-andre-granillo","tag-andre-pallante","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-prospectus","tag-cardinals","tag-dustin-may","tag-george-soriano","tag-ivan-herrera","tag-jojo-romero","tag-kyle-leahy","tag-matthew-liberatore","tag-miami-marlins","tag-michael-mcgreevy","tag-missouri","tag-mlb","tag-nolan-gorman","tag-pedro-pages","tag-st-louis","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-stlouis","tag-stlouiscardinals","tag-washington-nationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116050369343500196","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}