The NLCS is set again, and for Cardinals fans, it comes with an awkward little twist: there’s no St. Louis team left standing, but there are still familiar faces in both dugouts.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers advanced Wednesday night, locking in the same matchup from last season. This time, Milwaukee gets home field advantage to open the series.
And if you’re sitting in St. Louis wondering where your loyalty should land, the answer is not exactly simple.
The Dodgers are still the division rival nobody in Cardinals Country wants to embrace too quickly, especially after going 11 of 13 against St. Louis this year.
But they also have Tommy Edman, a former Cardinals favorite who won NLCS MVP in 2024 after being dealt to Los Angeles in the three-way Erick Fedde trade. That move did not break St.
Louis’ affection for him. Cardinals fans tend to stay attached to their own, and Edman fits that mold.
He was the kind of player who could move all over the field and handle just about anything, a Swiss army knife type in the same spirit as Cardinals Hall of Famer and former third base coach Jose Oquendo.
The Dodgers also bring a bigger-picture problem for anyone in St. Louis who is tired of seeing them at the top. They’re chasing a third straight title, and they already beat the Cardinals in the 2021 NL wild card game.
Milwaukee gives Cardinals fans another route, even if it means rooting for a division rival. An NL Central team has not reached the World Series since 2016, so there’s at least an argument for wanting a change in the October rhythm.
The Brewers also have two former Cardinals on their pitching staff in Dustin May and JoJo Romero, both sent from St. Louis to Milwaukee at the trade deadline.
There’s even one more Missouri connection on the Brewers side. Jacob Misiorowski is a Missouri native, and he has said Cardinals legend Adam Wainwright was one of the reasons he fell in love with pitching.
So if you’re a Cardinals fan trying to make peace with this NLCS, you can find a case either way. The Dodgers have the familiar face and the Cardinals’ old nemesis status. The Brewers have the division-rival baggage, but also the local ties and the appeal of seeing a different club break through.
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For St. Louis, the more relevant piece may be what happens with Rob Cerfolio. The Cardinals assistant general manager has already interviewed for the Oakland position, but he is expected to stay in St. Louis, where his profile has risen inside the organization. If that holds, it could position Cerfolio for a promotion to general manager under president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, a move that would signal the Cardinals are preparing their next layer of leadership even as another club searches for its own answer. [Read more 🡒]