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By Position FWAR, here’s where the Cardinals ranked as a team from best position to worst:
5th best at 2nd Base
12th best at Starting Pitcher
13th best at 1st Base
13th best at Right Field
14th best at CatcherThat’s it for the top half positions. Now for the “uglies”:
20th best at Designated Hitter
21st best at Shortstop
22nd best at Left Field
25th best at Relief Pitcher
29th best at Center Field
30th best at Third BaseJust one top 10 finish – mostly driven by Wetherholt’s incredible defense and solid offense. Starting pitcher was clearly a surprise position for all of us this year. I figured they’d be around 20th best and I’m sure many thought they’d be worse than that.
If playoff baseball is where we want to go, how do we get there? This shows we’re a ways off. If World Series is our destination, this shows we’re a LONG ways off.
However, hope springs eternal and the Cardinals have lots of hope around some of these positions (C, LF, SP, RP) and maybe not so much some others (3B, CF).
Here’s your exercise Cardinal Nation. You have $20 million to spend and you’re not allowed to trade any top 50 prospects. You can trade from the Major League roster if you want amongst any arbitration eligible players. Can you find a path to getting the team to be top half at every position (assuming everyone plays at 2026 level that you’re acquiring or retaining)? For purposes of this exercise, we’ll allow you to assume Bernal at primary C and Baez in LF gets us to top 15 production even though both are question marks.
Just for comparison, here’s how Milwaukee finished by FWAR for each position:
4th best at C (compared to 14th for Cardinals)
2nd best at 1B (compared to 13th)
Best at 2B (compared to 5th)
18th best at 3B (compared to 30th)
8th best at SS (compared to 21st)
3rd best at LF (compared to 22nd)
27th best at RF (compared to 13th – We win one!)
18th best at CF (compared to 29th)
18th best at DH (compared to 20th)
4th best at Starting Pitchers (compared to 12th)
4th best at Relief Pitchers (compared to 25th)Milwaukee did have 4 under-performing positions with RF being especially bad. However, they were top 5 with six of their positions including both sets of pitchers. I guess if you’re top 5 in basically half of everything, you’re going to be really good as long as you don’t stink everywhere else. The Cardinals had one top five finish (2B) and were only better than Milwaukee in one area (RF).
Maybe we need to talk to the White Sox. They lost more than 100 games in 2023, 2024, and 2025. They are now one game away from the ALCS. Of course playing in a really bad division helps.
As for the Cardinals I would seek upgrades at 3B, CF, and bullpen. That will be tough to do if we only have $20M to spend and can’t trade any top 50 prospects. By top 50 I assume you mean top 50 in MLB, not top 50 in the Cardinal system. Regardless you would have to get lucky by signing a stopgap veteran who overperforms or you would have to trade someone like Herrera, Burly, or maybe Crooks.
I did mean any of our top 50 prospects. That isn’t a real restriction on the actual team, but right now they seem to be in the hoard prospects mode. I didn’t want someone proposing to trade 8 prospects to get to the value of one certain MLB player, which the Cardinals would never do right now. But could they trade Colton Ledbetter or Brayden Davis? Sure. But I’m not sure how valuable that is.
Oh ok. That would be some rather restrictive parameters indeed. Might as well punt to 2028, which seems to be the majority opinion anyway.
Couple of interesting facts:
8 of the top 10 spenders made the playoffs this year. That made up 2/3 of the playoff teams. This also included 7 of the top 10 teams in revenue. No surprise there as that’s about how many make it every season.
Only the Dodgers are left from that group. That could be in part because these teams beat up each other. The Brewers did beat the Padres though. And the Rays beat the Yankees.
So it was very difficult for the little guys to get in, but they’ve had good success after arriving.
I’m really curious to see how the Rays finish as they are one of the “have-nots” that seem to never win it all as a bottom 10 revenue team. The Brewers, while no longer a bottom 10 revenue team due to some recent successful seasons, used to be bottom 10 and haven’t been to the World Series since 1982.
Here is another way to look at it as of late afternoon on 10-8-26.
There are five teams still standing. Here are there their 2026 CBT payroll rank per Cots:
1. Dodgers 1st
2. Brewers 19th
3. White Sox 26th
4. Rays 27th
5. Guardians 29thThe $112M Rays knocked out the $341M Yankees. The small market guys are doing ok.
In hindsight, trading Contreras, Gray and Arenado really doomed our club this year. But we are committed to a younger roster looking at the future to win, not the present. And the hope was that Gorman would find his former pedigree, along with what worked out pretty good for some others (JJ, Junior, Burly, Leahy, Pallante).
Trading only from the big league roster means you will probably be hoping for more production from most of the same group, as well as two or three more farmhands come up and do well. And you could get lucky and trade say Herrera and someone like Bruihl and get a guy that has been good, not great, and he comes into his own and really provides a lot of value. Basically end up trading say 2.5 WAR away and get back 5. It’s just not many tradable players we have are likely to bring anything better back.
I’m reasonably certain all 3 players you mentioned were more than happy to leave StL, Bikemike. I also continue to believe that word around the campfire among players is that the Cardinals are no longer an organization that is deemed to be an attractive employer.
In hindsight, trading Contreras, Gray and Arenado really doomed our club this year
We weren’t any more doomed this year than last year.
The small market guys are doing ok.
Or the small markets are doing horrendously bad over the past 25 years but this year may be an outlier. We shall see. If it ends up Dodgers/White Sox, then smaller markets will have lost yet again.
If winning the World Series is the only barometer of success then that is a high bar.
Also, the White Sox may technically be in a large market but they don’t really act like it and rarely have. They aren’t big spenders and everyone knows they are the little brother in that city.
There is one big spender remaining and four small/smallish spenders.
And the large spending Yankees, Phillies, Braves, Padres, Red Sox, and Astros are sitting home wishing they did more than just write checks, not to mention the big spending inept Mets.
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