Oh Dear God, the Overachieving Cardinals Are Back

Last year, the St. Louis Cardinals finished a perfectly acceptable 86-76. They were on the cusp of a wild card appearance but ultimately fell a win short of the play-in game. Their roster was formidable but not quite impactful.

That 2016 season was the result of a gradual dimming of St. Louis' once resplendent roster-building powers. Per Fangraphs, from 2008 through 2013, the Cardinals featured at least three players a year who compiled at least four wins above replacement (fWAR)—All-Star-level production. Three became two in each of 2014 and 2015, and then last year St. Louis didn't deploy a single player who could even crack 3.5 fWAR.

Across the Illinois border, the Chicago Cubs deployed eight such players, and did so with Kyle Schwarber on the shelf. The Cubs snapped St. Louis' three-year run of division titles that September and, given the gushing spigot of young talent to come, figured to occupy the top seat in the NL Central indefinitely.

Fast forward to present day, and St. Louis leads the Cubs by a game in the division.

Cardinal fans need look no further than the rest of their division for disclaimers about how quickly things can unravel, whether it's star players missing games (Pittsburgh), shallow pitching (Milwaukee), or simply an overall lack of talent (Cincinnati). But if anyone will challenge the Cubs over the balance of this season, it's going to be St. Louis.

This team will have punch above its weight to stay in the fight, though. Even the Cardinals' best players are pockmarked somehow: Matt Carpenter's defense and baserunning, Jedd Gyorko's contact, Stephen Piscotty's ceiling, Carlos Martinez's command, Michael Wacha's health. The final bellwethers from the 2011 World Series team, Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina, might be dented beyond repair. Wainwright's peripherals are in line with last year's, when he uncharacteristically slogged his way to a 4.62 ERA, but instead of positive regression, he is now lugging an ERA well over 5.0. Molina, meanwhile, is batting a mostly harmless .264/.314/.392, perfectly indicative of the hitter he's been since the 2014 All-Star break, last year's incendiary second half notwithstanding.

Add it up and you have a team that looks far more like last year's than the great Cardinals teams that preceded it, with a few players orbiting stardom but not quite in the epicenter. Wainwright and Molina have the aura but no longer the results. Martinez is too unrefined to approximate the glow. Only Carpenter is the genuine article; fittingly enough, he reigns as arguably the least-recognized great hitter in the game, which means the gravitas is nowhere to be found.

So, prepare thyself. We're due for an onslaught of takes about the plucky underdog Cardinals for however long they stay in the race. It's the right story for the right franchise, and it isn't altogether untrue. The roster is catnip for it, too. There's Piscotty (a no-nonsense guy from Stanford!) and Kolten Wong (pesky!) and Gyorko (everyone gave up on him!) and Trevor Rosenthal (never gave up on himself!) and Mike Leake (overachiever!) and Molina (poised!) and even Wainwright (still grinding it out!). They make for the perfect foil to Chicago, which is presently mired in the "talented underachievers" stage of their championship defense and managed by Joe Maddon, the aesthetic and ideological opposite of Mike Matheny.

Baseball's sprawling season ensures that no other sport's media burns through more storylines in a given year, and this is an especially easy narrative to write. Ironically enough, it may also be the one thing grating enough to keep the rest of America from turning on the Cubs like they did the Red Sox and Warriors before them, and repositioning Chicago as a bully to be overthrown instead of a cursed darling. If anything is worse than the idea of a Cubs repeat, it's the thought of the Cardinals, fully inhabiting their insufferable David Eckstein-ian identity, being the team that beats them.

Even with the talent gap, there's reason to believe that this truly could be a season-long race. The Cubs are due for an uptick from seemingly every hitter aside from Kris Bryant, but it will come at the cost of outfield defense, among last season's major strengths that has been woefully diminished by Ben Zobrist spending more time in right field and Schwarber playing every day in left.

Chicago can negotiate that. Their pitching struggles, though, will be far more difficult to surmount. The back of the rotation is a Hazmat zone and there's no help coming from the farm system should Kyle Hendricks, Jake Arrieta, or John Lackey again struggle like they have at different points this year.

By comparison, St. Louis has no such glaring weakness. They are also among the few teams in baseball who could rival Chicago's versatility, particularly in the infield. And unlike Chicago, St. Louis has at least one impact arm in Triple-A to call upon for reinforcements: Luke Weaver, the 23-year-old former first-round pick who has a 0.41 ERA in four Triple-A starts this season.

It's a safe bet that Mike Leake, he of the career 3.91 ERA, won't continue to lead the National League in ERA, just as Gyorko won't maintain a batting average 90 points above his career mark. But Dexter Fowler isn't going to run his worst batting line since 2013 the way he's on pace for, and St. Louis has gotten this far with hardly anything from Piscotty, its most complete hitter after Carpenter. Their margin for error is thinner, but there are obvious, attainable ways for the Cardinals to withstand some of the inevitable regression they will face.

And that's a good thing. There's a kernel of truth buried in every narrative and the one here is that, no matter how obnoxious a season of the Nobody Believed In Us Cardinals may sound, it will be entertaining to watch a non-star-driven club strain itself in pursuit of the greatest clutch of young talent in the game today. You just may not want to hear about it along the way.

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