The Downfall of Cardinal Baseball…What Happened?

On September 20, 2024, the St. Louis Cardinals were eliminated from MLB postseason contention with a loss to the Cleveland Guardians. For a long time, the Cardinals have been one of the premier franchises in baseball, with their 11 World Series wins trailing only the 27 won by the Yankees. Some of the greatest players in MLB history have played for the franchise, such as Bob Gibson, Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, Albert Pujols, and Lou Brock.

The 2000s have been mostly kind to the Cardinals, with the franchise having won 11 division crowns, four pennants, and two World Series rings. However, the franchise has felt stale recently. Since losing to the Cubs in the 2015 NLDS, the Cardinals have four playoff berths, two division crowns, and one playoff series win. Additionally, this season will be the fifth time since 2015 that they have missed the playoffs. So, what happened? Let's dive in and see.

2012-15: Two Key Departures And The Brief Success Afterward

After a magical 2011 postseason that saw the Cardinals claim their most recent championship in a seven-game series over the Texas Rangers, Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa stepped down. Rather than hire Terry Francona, a likely HOF manager who stepped down from the Red Sox job the same offseason, they went with Mike Matheny, a former Cardinal catcher with no prior managerial experience. This was their first big mistake.

Also departing the organization that offseason was Jeff Luhnow, who before becoming the disgraced GM of the Houston Astros, developed a farm system that was consistently among the game’s best under his leadership. Along with Theo Epstein, Luhnow was among a select few MLB executives who were ahead of the game when it came to player development in the 2000s. Several players from the 2011 roster were productions of that system. The franchise’s second big mistake was not making a true effort to find a successor that would be just as good if not better than Luhnow.

Matheny’s first season in 2012 saw the Cardinals advance to the NLCS, but they blew a 3-1 lead to the San Francisco Giants. In 2013, they went to another World Series, but lost to the Red Sox. In 2014, they once again lost to the Giants in the NLCS. Finally, in 2015, they lost to the Cubs in the NLDS.

I consider the 2015 season notable as it was Matheny’s fourth season. When a great manager/coach steps down, their successor often spends the next four or five years winning with the roster left by their predecessor before largely being left to their own devices. What happened in the following seasons was evidence that while Matheny found initial success in St. Louis, it was largely with the roster developed by Luhnow and managed by La Russa.

2016-19: The Beginning Of The End And A Few Bad Moves

The 2016 season saw the Cardinals miss the postseason for the first time since 2010. The next two seasons ended with the same result. During the 2018 season, Matheny was fired. Although he never had a losing record during his time as Cardinal manager, Matheny’s losing of the clubhouse and tendency towards veteran favoritism led to his downfall. Under new manager Mike Shildt, the Cardinals benefitted from collapsing Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers teams to capture the NL Central in 2019, and went onto to win their first playoff series since 2014 by beating the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS. However, they were swept by the eventual World Series champion Washington Nationals in the NLCS, and in the process became just the second team in NLCS history (after the 2015 Cubs) to never lead at any point in a game. The NLDS win against Atlanta is their last playoff series win to date.

During this time, the Cardinals also made a few bad moves that would significantly impact the team going forward. While they made a great move by trading for Paul Goldschmidt during the 2018-19 offseason, they executed a just as equally bad trade when they acquired Marcell Ozuna from the Marlins the previous offseason. The latter trade saw them give up future Cy Young-level pitchers Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen, two players who could have benefitted them down the road. Following the 2019 season, they traded outfielders Randy Arozarena and Adolis Garcia- both of whom would go onto become future ALCS MVPs, with Arozarena also winning a Rookie of the Year award.

2020-Present: The Changing Of The Standard

For the first three years of the 2020s, the Cardinals made the playoffs, but got no series wins and one total win over three years. This decade has also seen the franchise largely become stuck in the past and trying to recapture its own glory. They've brought back old players from the 2011 championship team such as Pujols, Lance Lynn, and Matt Carpenter in an effort to relive their old glory days, despite all three being in the twilight of their careers when returning to the team.

The Cardinals fan base has a saying called “The Cardinal Way” as a reference to their high standards. Nowadays though, their standard is just being average. Their current best players aren't ones they've developed. Rather, they're the likes of Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, the latter of whom was acquired in a trade from Colorado. When the Cardinals fired Shildt after 2021, their idea of a replacement was…Oli Marmol, who has been an average manager at best since his arrival. In the front office, the game seems to have passed President of Baseball Ops John Mozeliak by. The Cardinals have refused to rebuild, even though the writing's on the wall to do so. Goldschmidt’s game has declined since his 2022 MVP season and he's also a free agent this offseason. Arenado too is experiencing a decline, but is under contract through 2027.

The truth about St. Louis baseball is that 2011 may have been their last great season for a while. Since then, the franchise has not only not tried to rebuild the momentum that was left by Luhnow and La Russa, they don't even care about doing it. Being average and good but not great is now the standard, a far cry from the days where the standard was competing for championships. It doesn't matter to them that in the past decade, they're the third most successful team in their own division. The Cubs finally broke their long-standing championship curse and won a World Series in 2016, while the Brewers have been the class of the division since 2018. Unless they actually start a rebuild and make an effort to find their next great executive and manager, it's going to be a while before we see the Cardinals as an elite MLB franchise again.

Serafino Diaz is a writer at Chaotically Intolerant, Phoenix's finest Vikings, Bucks, and Cubs fan, traveling everywhere I can.