16. St. Louis Cardinals (9–10, minus-13, LT: 14)
Winning six out of seven against NL Central opponents over the past week cured a lot of early ills. Moreover, you know this talented offense isn’t going to be this horrific for long: Every member of the starting lineup except Jedd Gyorko is performing below career norms (in the case of players like Dexter Fowler, way worse than career norms), and the Cardinals have been more atrocious with runners in scoring position than any other team in baseball that’s not the Royals.
With that dose of optimism in tow, read St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Derrick Goold’s fascinating feature on the Cardinals’ efforts to improve performance through biomedical research and other innovative methods. We are so far past the days of not-selling-jeans-here analysis, it’s positively jarring to think that the Moneyball era once counted as the cutting edge of baseball.
