It’s been an opening stretch to forget for the St. Louis Cardinals, who find themselves dead last in the NL Central with a record of 18-26.
The Cardinals find themselves with a .409 winning percentage, despite winning eight of their last 10 games, including a three-game sweep of the Boston Red Sox earlier this month.
St. Louis also has one of the biggest splits between the team’s actual winning percentage (.409) and their Pythagorean percentage (.520), showing how bad the team’s breaks have been out of the gate this year.
Oddsmakers at BetMGM Sportsbook see the Cardinals as a possible turnaround candidate, with World Series odds of +4000 (tied for 15th overall) and NL futures of +2000 (ranking 7th in the Senior Circuit). Expect BetMGM Missouri sportsbook to heavily feature the Cardinals when it eventually becomes live in the state.
St. Louis also has the second-best NL Central odds on BetMGM Sportsbook, at +325, coming in behind the Brewers (-155) and ahead of the Cubs (+500).
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2023 St. Louis Cardinals, By The Numbers
BetMissouri.com wanted to contextualize how the Cardinals stack up in 2023 versus some of the franchise’s most forgettable teams of late.
- 2023: .465 [Actual win % (.409)/Pythagorean win % (.520)]
- Averages out to ~75 wins over a 162-game season
- Last time the Cardinals had 75 or fewer wins in a season (1999, team went 75-86)
- Last time the Cardinals had a win % of .465 or worse in 162-game season (1990, .432)
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Cardinals Have Unique Win Percentage Split In 2023
So far, it seems safe to say that the Cardinals have been on the long end of luck more often than not this season.
With a +9 run differential and a 2-8 record in one-run games, all signs point to a righting of the ship in St. Louis, with the team’s run of bad luck bound to flip at some point.
With the team sitting 6.5 games behind first-place Milwaukee and 5 games behind Pittsburgh in the Central, there’s no reason to believe the Cardinals can’t flip the script and get back to .500 sooner rather than later.
That turnaround has to begin in earnest this weekend, though, with the L.A. Dodgers coming to Busch Stadium for four games, before taking on the Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Guardians on the road over seven games next week.
If the Cardinals can go 8-3 over that stretch, they’d enter the team’s opener of the two-game home series against their in-state rivals with a 26-29 record, which would close a significant amount of the gap between them and the Brewers and Pirates in the Central.
That road to redemption begins against the Dodgers along the banks of the Mississippi River tonight, in a game that BetMGM Sportsbook gives the Cardinals +130 moneyline odds in.
With 118 games to play and a reasonable distance to make up in the division, there’s no reason for Cardinals fans to jab the panic button just yet, with plenty of baseball still to play in the Show Me State.
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