I know for a fact that a nonzero number of St. Louis Cardinals employees have read, and presumably will read, St. Louis Bullpen posts. I say this not as a way of congratulating myself but as a bland statement of how sports blogging community works–this website does not generally generate the level of interest of more popular blogs, much less of, say, Derrick Goold’s reporting in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or Katie Woo’s in The Athletic. But knowing that people in the organization may read what I say is a good thing not because it scares me out of criticizing the franchise, but it encourages me to assure that my criticisms are well-considered, which in turn makes them more pointed. If I were the kind of person that just came on here and ranted about how John Mozeliak is an idiot, it would not have the same impact when I criticize specific elements of his job performance. I think the Cardinals’ front office is staffed by people who are generally decent and generally competent, but that they are competing professionally against people with similar dispositions.

I don’t consider this blog to be overly cynical–if anything, I tend to respond to bad news by looking at how it’s not as bad as it seems and I tend to respond to good news with “hey guys, check out this neat thing!” So I can’t imagine what the Cardinals employee on this blog’s mailing list is going to think when they see that my headline for Opening Day, the unofficial civic holiday that captures the entire region’s attention every year no matter how the team projects to perform, is “Hopelessness”. Probably nothing good.

There has not been a season in my time as a St. Louis Cardinals fan that has made me less excited than this one. It’s less that the Cardinals seem bad–I think the odds are very high that they surpass their 71 wins of 2023–and more that the club feels like a watered-down extension of a particularly dull few years in franchise history. The 2013 Cardinals were not dramatically different on paper from the 2012 team personnel-wise, but it felt like watching a rerun of The Simpsons or Seinfeld or some particularly rewatchable show with several layers worth unpeeling and revisiting. This roster feels like catching a re-run of Everybody Loves Raymond–it has its charms even if it’s not quite as good as I want it to be the first time, but why would I ever bother watching it again?

Phil Maton is the kind of addition that I would typically embrace as the third or fourth biggest of an off-season: a relatively fungible reliever who is not especially risky because, unless he proves something that has not yet been seen, he will not be introduced into big enough situations to matter that much. The departures of Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, and Paul Goldschmidt are hardly franchise-altering–while Goldschmidt and (combined with his initial tenure on the team) Lynn are moderately significant figures in the club’s history, neither appears to be particularly needle-moving in 2025. But they were replaced, essentially, by nobody. The replacement for Paul Goldschmidt is Willson Contreras, who might be able to replicate Goldschmidt’s performance but inherently at the expense of the depth at the catcher position. The Cardinals did not add a single new starting pitcher to replace the two (albeit mediocre) losses of the off-season but have hinted at employing a six-player rotation for the bulk of the season.

And with the exception of Sonny Gray and to some extent Erick Fedde (who was fine after the Cardinals acquired him from the White Sox, but he definitely took a step back), questions abound about their starters. While there is a solid case to be made that Miles Mikolas was unlucky with his 5.35 ERA last season, he is unlucky to the extent that he was merely mediocre rather than awful. Matthew Liberatore has never really lived up to his expectations, and while he is certainly still young enough to make a breakthrough, he still pitched in relief in 90% of his 2024 appearances. Steven Matz, who will join the rotation in mid-April, has been a walking injury since joining the Cardinals and has been materially better as a reliever than as a starter. And while Andre Pallante was a pleasant surprise last season, his track record of coming out of the bullpen and his lackluster strikeout numbers suggest that Pallante should be something closer to a seventh or eighth starter, somebody who will inevitably be called upon at some point but not a pivot of the team’s successes or failures.

At this point, among position players, who is the reliable one? Contreras, the guy whose primary value came from supplying offense at a defensive position who is now playing a position where offense is expected? Nolan Arenado, the player acquired in his prime for a bag of used baseballs that the organization inexplicably seems to have expected would garner a serious return as his numbers steadily decline? Lars Nootbaar, who has missed no fewer than 45 games in each of his MLB seasons? Brendan Donovan, who was initially viewed as a Tommy Edman-esque utility player and now might be expected to be a focal point in the middle of the batting order? Masyn Winn, who was undeniably impressive last season but whose offense waned in September, has been so dreadful in Spring that I am bothering to mention Spring Training stats, and was never expected to be more than passable at the plate? Any sincere hopes for the Cardinals offense is built on the unspoken assumption that Jordan Walker will become the fully formed superstar his prospect pedigree indicated, or that Nolan Gorman will curtail his strikeouts at least into the territory of respectability, or that Alec Burleson will hit as well as his underlying metrics suggest he should.

Had the Cardinals traded Nolan Arenado and/or Ryan Helsley, the team would be worse. But the team would have a clear vision for 2025–test out these toolsy position players, hope that somebody in the rotation manages to stick, and wait a couple years until their rebuilding farm system is ready to produce legitimate MLB talent. As it stands, it’s not entirely career if the Cardinals are trying to trick the fans into believing in the short term, or if they are successfully tricking themselves.

The Cardinals aren’t 11th in National League pennant odds because it is assumed that they will be terrible, but because it is assumed that they cannot be great. Only three NL teams–the Washington Nationals, the Miami Marlins, and the Colorado Rockies–have worse odds to make the playoffs according to the sports books. Their over/under for wins is 76.5 (this is not a gambling site and I will absolutely not be placing a bet on this, but I would probably lean towards the over here). Willson Contreras is a 100:1 shot to win NL MVP, good for first on the Cardinals and tied for 29th in the league.

It would be unfair to ask that the Cardinals act as a panacea for the world, that they gift me a World Series win any time I’d like a pick-me-up. But at this point, they aren’t even inspiring hope. It should still be fun to sit at Busch Stadium on a nice afternoon, but there is less of a sense of importance to every game than I have ever felt before. Thank goodness the Blues are making a legitimate playoff run.

I would love to be wrong–I remember thinking the Cardinals would finish in third place or so in 2004 and fourth place or so in 2011 and being delighted by my incorrectness. But I worry that the consensus forming around this team–that the Cardinals are relentlessly middling and unexciting–is completely fair.