St. Louis Cardinals manager Oli Marmol didn’t shy away from the bigger picture after the club missed the playoffs for a fourth straight season. In fact, he leaned right into it.
“This is the most excited I’ve been about our system in a long time, as far as what’s currently in the room and what’s coming,” Marmol said, cutting off a question about young players who have arrived seemingly more prepared for competition at the highest level than the generation which preceded them. “It’s a really good time to be a Cardinal fan, because what’s coming is real, and what’s in that room is real, and we know where the holes are.”
That kind of comment is the sort that can set off Cardinals fans who are already fed up with October-less baseball. And that frustration is easy to understand. The results on the field haven’t matched the standard, and patience is running thin.
Still, Marmol’s point has some real weight behind it.
The Cardinals last reached the playoffs in 2022, when Albert Pujols was on his magical run alongside Yadier Molina in their final seasons, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado were competing for National League Most Valuable Player, and the team battled its way into the postseason before losing to the Philadelphia Phillies in two games in the Wild Card round.
Since then, the drought has stretched even longer. St.
Louis has not won a playoff series since 2019, when it beat the Atlanta Braves in five games before being swept by the Washington Nationals in the National League Championship Series. In the years that followed, the Cardinals fell to the Phillies, Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in the Wild Card round, or missed the playoffs entirely since 2023.
There are different ways for fans to measure how long this has really gone on. Some will point to the lack of success since 2022.
Others will say the Cardinals haven’t felt like themselves since that 2019 run. And for anyone who doesn’t put much stock in getting swept in the NLCS, the real line of demarcation may go back to the mid-2010s.
That’s what makes the current mood around the organization so striking. The on-field frustration is real, but so is the sense that the Cardinals are in a much better place organizationally than they have been in years. The Chaim Bloom-led front office has worked to add talent throughout the system, and that has created a level of genuine optimism about the future that hasn’t been there in a long time.
The offseason will obviously matter, but it’s fair to look ahead and see a team that could be in the postseason mix in 2027. Not as a long shot.
Not as a club hoping everything breaks perfectly. More as a legitimate Wild Card contender, with the division not out of the question as the next window opens.
By 2028 and 2029, the Cardinals could be a really, really good team.
That’s the case for why Marmol’s words make sense. It’s not about asking fans to accept average baseball.
It’s about the organization trying to get back to a standard St. Louis has long expected.
And if this plan keeps moving in the direction it appears to be headed, the payoff down the road could be much bigger than anything the Cardinals could have forced in the short term.
In Other News...
Cardinals Just Cleared The Way For A Third Base Battle
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The departure leaves the Cardinals with a clearer path to sort out third base internally heading into next season, and that competition figures to be one of the more interesting decisions on the roster. Urias had been a potential stopgap, but with him now gone, the club can turn the spot over to its in-house options and see who seizes the job. [Read more 🡒]
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At the same time, the organization has already committed to the longer view, making multiple trades designed to restock the pipeline. Those moves brought in a wave of prospects and draft picks, helping strengthen a farm system that will shape the next phase of the franchise. That is what makes this moment matter: the Cardinals have enough progress on the field to avoid a full collapse, but enough unfinished business that the focus now shifts squarely to how quickly the rebuild can turn promise into contention. [Read more 🡒]
Cardinals Have A Catching Decision Fans Cant Ignore Much Longer
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At the same time, Leo Bernal has quietly pushed himself into the center of the picture, working his way into the primary catching role and earning steady playing time for the quality of his defense. For the Cardinals, the challenge is balancing immediate reliability with long-term development, all while living under the shadow of a position that has a unique standard in St. Louis. [Read more 🡒]