Reason for optimism: After a confounding two-year power outage, the St. Louis offense returned to top-tier league form in 2016.
Reason for pessimism: All that offense still left the team 17.5 games behind the hated Cubs, possibly foretelling years of inferiority.
On the surface, the near-term future looks bleak for fans of the Cardinals -- at least through the lens of a team that has been to the playoffs in all but five seasons since 2000, while capturing a National League-best nine division titles in that time. Their hated rivals, one state to the east, followed up their 2015 NL Division Series victory over St. Louis with last season's domination of the entire National League and, of course, a World Series crown. St. Louis had a playoff-worthy +67 run differential and still finished more games out of first place (17.5) than in any season since 1999.
Dig a little deeper though and perhaps things aren't that gloomy.
Here's analysis I'll bet you won't hear, even on MLB-dedicated programs: St Louis was the highest-scoring team in baseball on the road last season. That's not just in the National League, where the highest-scoring team for the season, Colorado, gets completely defanged away from Coors, finishing 22nd overall. No, that's better than every American League team as well, where of course, they use a DH. In terms of a 2017 projection, the news gets even better because no player contributed an unsustainable career year in 2016 and, thanks to just one roster change among position players, St. Louis gets younger and unquestionably better on offense and defense.
Matt Holliday provided a serviceable finish to the end of his seven-plus-year tenure in St. Louis, but his days of getting on base at an elite rate appear to be over -- and his defense has never even been league average. To replace Holliday, the Cardinals took a page from the Cubs' 2015 offseason playbook and raided their outfield to obtain their best performer from the prior season. In the Cardinals' case, though, they may truly get the last laugh because for the Cubs, Jason Heyward may turn out to be a contractual and corner-outfield black hole of offensive production for years to come. Meanwhile, St. Louis' free-agent signing of Dexter Fowler and his lifetime .366 OBP (.393 last season) should immediately improve the already potent offense.
You can make a case that the Cardinals can go toe-to-toe and bat-for-bat with the Cubs. What about on the runs-allowed side of the ledger? Here the news isn't nearly as bright but, as I wrote in the Cubs preview, Chicago is absolutely going to suffer defensive regression that will be somewhat invisible to the eye on a day-to-day basis, even as it shows up as more runs allowed.
Of course, the outlook would be a lot brighter if February hadn't brought with it the news that highly regarded prospect Alex Reyes will be lost for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. That put a real damper on improvement because the Cardinals shed their worst starter last year, Jaime Garcia, in a trade with the Braves. Garcia gave up runs at a clip of 5.00 per nine innings pitched, so the potential for material improvement is still large. But instead of having Reyes fill the majority of those innings, the Cardinals will be using all their rotation depth, and hoping Lance Lynn (who last pitched in 2015) can recover from his Tommy John surgery.
Without the upside of Reyes, the Cardinals' hopes of truly challenging the Cubs for the division crown comes down to this: Former ace Adam Wainwright, who had a career ERA of 2.98 in more than 1,500 innings pitched prior to last season, must return to the form that made him a top-3 finisher in Cy Young Award voting four different years.
As bullpens go, the Cardinals' unit remains stable with five of the top six relievers in terms of innings pitched returning for 2016. Of course, a comparison to the Cubs is the most important yardstick. In terms of 2016 production (3.62 ERA vs. 3.56) and skill sets displayed (3.65 SIERA vs. 3.51) the Cardinals' shortfall is minor and can be written off to the 22 innings of nearly scoreless ball the since-departed Aroldis Chapman threw for the Cubs last season.
If it hadn't been for the Reyes injury, the Cardinals would have had the luxury of a six-man rotation and huge upside, assuming Wainwright regains the form he perennially displayed prior to tearing his Achilles tendon at the beginning of the 2015 season. Instead, a plausible path to challenging the Cubs for the division has turned into more of a low-probability event.
For our purposes, though, we don't need a division title to claim success. We just need to beat expectations that I believe are materially too low. With a market of 84 wins, this is my favorite "over" call in the National League.
2017 projection: 88-74 (second, NL Central)
Bet recommendation: Over