Cardinals Drowning In NL Wild Card Race; Odds Of Making Playoffs Insurmountable

St. Louis' season is coming to a close

Sep 10, 2024; St. Louis, Missouri, USA; St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Thomas Saggese (25) bats in his Major League debut during the ninth inning against the Cincinnati Reds at Busch Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-Imagn Images / Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

The St. Louis Cardinals began 2024 with high hopes of turning things around from last year's 91-loss season but sadly, things haven't gone as planned.

Despite fixing last year's issue with the rotation by signing three veteran starters during the offseason, the Cardinals endured many other problems this season that have derailed any momentum of success they could garner.

As a result, St. Louis is suffocating in the National League Wild Card race and would have to pull off a miracle to make the playoffs at this point in the season.

The Cardinals have a 0.2% chance of making the playoffs and 0% at winning the World Series, according to FanGraphs' Major League Baseball playoff odds calculator -- as of Wednesday before game two of a series with the NL Central-rival Cincinnati Reds.

With only 18 games left to play this season, the Cardinals don't have much time left to erase a 6 1/2 game deficit in the NL Wild Card race.

Even though the Cardinals seem to trail the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves by a small margin, erasing such a deficit is no easy feat.

The Mets and Braves would have to go on awful losing streaks and St. Louis would have to do the opposite. The chances of both NL East clubs stalling out this close to the postseason are highly unlikely.

That said, Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak needs to start looking ahead so he can figure out how he will turn the franchise around in the final year of his contract next season.

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