Cardinals Miss Playoffs for Fourth Straight Year as Young Stars Emerge

A second-half fade stretched the Cardinals' longest playoff drought since 2000, but Jordan Walker, JJ Wetherholt and Alec Burleson delivered breakout seasons.

The 2026 MLB regular season has ended with the St. Louis Cardinals out of the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year. The streak is the franchise's longest playoff drought since 2000, and St. Louis has not played October baseball since 2022. Official elimination from postseason contention came on September 19.

For much of the summer, the year looked far better. The Cardinals reached the All-Star break at 50-45 and in the race for a Wild Card berth, then went 27-40 in the second half. The fade came in a season widely cast beforehand as a rebuilding year, and the club still finished ahead of those expectations.

Jordan Walker delivered on the hype that accompanied his 2023 arrival as the No. 4 prospect in baseball. Walker debuted at 21, and after three below-average seasons many observers had given up on him. Now 24, he became an All-Star and won the Home Run Derby, and his 29 home runs surpassed his total from the previous three seasons combined. The performance positions him as a potential cornerstone of the next contending Cardinals team.

Rookie second baseman JJ Wetherholt built his own case for hardware. The 24-year-old Rookie of the Year candidate hit .242 with 17 home runs, slightly above average at the plate, but his defense drove his value. His 25 outs above average are tied for the major league lead, his 19 runs prevented set a franchise record since the statistic was introduced in 2016, and he is a frontrunner for a Gold Glove, which would make him the 20th rookie ever to win it.

Alec Burleson supplied the loudest offensive season of the group. The 27-year-old led the majors with 116 RBIs, nearly doubling his total from the previous year in his fifth season with the club, and a shift from left field to first base raised his defensive value and WAR. Burleson, Walker and Wetherholt are finalists for the 2026 All-MLB team.

Pitching was the central problem. The Cardinals ranked 20th in MLB in ERA, and they lost 39 of the 89 games in which they scored at least four runs, the third-worst rate in the league. The rotation has no true ace; Dustin May had resembled one in the first half before St. Louis traded him ahead of the deadline.

Kyle Leahy, Michael McGreevy and Andre Pallante profile as average starters, each finishing with an ERA above 3.5, while every other Cardinals starter posted an ERA above 4. The missing frontline arm pushed the bullpen into the fourth or fifth inning on most nights, and the relievers became overworked and ranked among the worst in MLB. Young bullpen prospects on the roster saw their effectiveness dip without enough recovery time between appearances.

The offseason now turns to new general manager Chaim Bloom, with an ace the clearest need on a team that ranked 27th in MLB in payroll. Burleson is nearing the end of his contract and has said he wants to stay in St. Louis, and the club's payroll position leaves room to re-sign him and pursue pitching from outside the organization.