Beating weaker teams is one thing, but now St. Louis needs to prove it can compete with top-tier competition.
Baseball is a numbers game, and over a 162-game MLB season, things tend to balance out. Even the elite teams lose about 20 percent of their games, and the worst manage to win about that many. It’s how a team performs in the remaining 60 percent that really defines its season. Right now, the St. Louis Cardinals are right in that mix.
Heading into Monday night, the Cardinals boast a 22-19 record, riding the momentum of an eight-game winning streak. That run has brought them within two games of the rival Chicago Cubs in the NL Central. But while they’re one of the hottest teams in baseball—alongside the surging Minnesota Twins—it’s fair to ask how much their recent success is due to the quality of their opponents.
After taking two out of three from the New York Mets, the Cardinals swept the Pittsburgh Pirates at home and followed that with a road sweep of the struggling Washington Nationals. It’s possible they’ve simply capitalized on a favorable stretch in their schedule.
The real test begins now. St. Louis is set to face a much tougher slate with series at the Philadelphia Phillies and Kansas City Royals, followed by home stands against the Detroit Tigers and Arizona Diamondbacks—all of whom are above .500 and firmly in the postseason race. Will the Cardinals rise to the occasion?
What do the St. Louis Cardinals need to do over their next four series?
At this point, the Cardinals likely need to go about 8-4 over their next 12 games to stay competitive with the Cubs in the division race. While they can’t control how the Cubs perform over the next couple of weeks, it’s crucial for St. Louis to keep playing strong baseball at home and improve their performance on the road. In the immediate future, a 3-3 split over their next six games is a must.
Winning more than three games on the road against the Phillies and Royals could be ambitious, but taking a series would be a big win. Even just avoiding sweeps—grabbing one game in each series—would help prevent a major loss of momentum. Once they return home, they need to capitalize.
Ideally, the Cardinals should win two out of three in both home series against the Tigers and Diamondbacks. Beating Detroit may be a tough task, which might make a sweep of Arizona even more important. Still, the Diamondbacks are too solid a team to be underestimated. Anything above 8-4 would be excellent, 7-5 is strong, and 6-6 is the bare minimum.
If the Cardinals end up going 5-7 or worse during this stretch, it means they failed to take advantage of a favorable part of the schedule.