St. Louis Cardinals Slip Below .500 as the Trade Deadline Sell-Off Question Gets Loud

The St. Louis Cardinals never left home this week, and it did not help. Seven games at Busch Stadium against the Reds and Cubs produced a 2-5 record, a slide below .500 for the first time all season, and a four-game set against Chicago that felt less like a rivalry series and more like a measuring stick snapping in half. At 54-55, the latest Cardinals news is no longer about a scrappy overachiever hanging around the race. It is about Chaim Bloom's first trade deadline running the baseball operation, which arrives Monday, August 3, and the growing list of veterans who might be wearing other uniforms by Tuesday.

Seven Home Games, Five Losses

The week opened Friday with a 4-2 loss to Cincinnati, a game the Cardinals never quite got a grip on. Saturday was the outlier, and it was a beauty: Andre Pallante threw seven shutout innings in a 7-0 win, chasing Hunter Greene under a seven-run, eight-hit line, and the offense broke a 1-0 game open with a six-run sixth. Sunday brought the correction, a 5-3 loss that handed the series to a Reds club sitting seven games under .500. Losing two of three at home to Cincinnati would have been the story of most weeks. Then the Cubs showed up.

Chicago took the opener 7-3 on Monday behind Alex Bregman, who snapped an 0-for-12 skid with four hits and an early RBI double, and Nico Hoerner, who went 4-for-5 with four RBIs and tacked on a two-run homer in the ninth. The Cubs banged out 14 hits; Jose Fermin's fifth homer of the year accounted for most of the St. Louis highlight reel, while starter Matthew Liberatore was chased after just three and two-thirds innings and eight hits. Tuesday was worse, a 10-2 flattening in which the game was functionally over by the middle innings. Wednesday the Cardinals finally punched back, winning 3-2 in ten innings on Ivan Herrera's walk-off double. Thursday's finale went to the Cubs 4-2, closing the book on a series Chicago took three games to one.

Pallante, May, and Herrera Kept It Interesting

The individual performances deserved better company. Pallante's Saturday gem was his eleventh win against six losses: seven innings, two hits, one walk, eight strikeouts against a Cincinnati lineup that never threatened. Alec Burleson had three hits in that one, and Herrera doubled in two during the six-run sixth that also featured run-scoring knocks from Masyn Winn and the kids at the bottom of the order.

Wednesday's win was the emotional peak of the week. Dustin May, pitching with every scout in America watching, held the Cubs to one hit over five innings with two walks and three strikeouts, matching zeros with Matthew Boyd, who was nearly as stingy across six. Chicago's Pete Crow-Armstrong seemed to have stolen the game with a 424-foot homer off Luis Gastelum in the top of the tenth, but the Cardinals loaded the bases in the bottom half, Jordan Walker's forceout brought in the tying run after an intentional walk to JJ Wetherholt, and Herrera lined a two-run double to left to end it. Herrera finished with three hits and has quietly been one of the most productive bats on the roster during an ugly month, which matters for reasons we will get to shortly.

St. Louis Cardinals Standings Reality Check

Here is the cold arithmetic. The Cardinals sit third in the NL Central at 54-55, roughly 13 games behind a Milwaukee club that has been the best team in the league for most of the summer and six-plus behind the second-place Cubs. The wild card is the only lane left, and even that has narrowed to about three games with multiple teams to climb over. Not impossible, but not the position of a team that should be trading prospects for rentals either, especially with the Cubs and Brewers both built to keep winning and the schedule offering no obvious soft landing.

The arc stings because the first half was legitimately fun. St. Louis was 47-39 on July 5, exceeding every reasonable projection. Since mid-June, though, the bottom has dropped out: the club went 9-15 over the first four weeks of July and, per CBS Sports, has played 13-21 baseball since June 17 with a run differential that dipped into the negative. This week's 2-5 against the division was not a cold snap crashing into bad luck. It was the season's trend line, extended.

Trade Deadline: Bloom's First Big Call

The deadline lands Monday, August 3, and the reporting out of St. Louis has shifted from whether the Cardinals sell to how deep the sell goes. Nothing had been completed as of Thursday night, but the candidate list is well established:

• Dustin May - A pending free agent whose surface numbers (a 4.59 ERA, rough over his last six starts) hide a 3.16 FIP that ranks among the ten best in baseball. Wednesday's one-hit, five-inning showcase came at a convenient moment. Starting pitching is scarce; he is the likeliest Cardinal to move.
• Ryne Stanek and JoJo Romero - Both relievers are on expiring deals. Romero is the trickier sell: he is on the injured list after an appendectomy, though a three-year track record with a 142 ERA+ still draws interest. Stanek has been trending up with his velocity intact.
• Ramon Urias - Another walk-year veteran, currently on the injured list.
• Lars Nootbaar - Controllable beyond this season, so dealing him would signal a genuine rebuild rather than a retool.
• The catching surplus - With Herrera, Pedro Pages, and Jimmy Crooks all in the organization, one of them could headline a bigger swap.

The name to watch on the keep side is closer Riley O'Brien, an All-Star with triple-digit velocity and club control through 2030. Teams will call; Bloom has little reason to answer. His first deadline in charge is expected to involve degrees of selling rather than a teardown, but by Monday evening the roster should look different.

What's Next for the St. Louis Cardinals

The road finally beckons, which might be a mercy after this homestand. Oli Marmol's club gets a change of scenery, a different league, and an opponent with its own deadline distractions, three things that have historically been good for a team trying to reset a clubhouse mood.

• Friday, July 31 - Cardinals at Blue Jays, Rogers Centre, 7:07 p.m. ET, opening a weekend series in Toronto.
• Saturday and Sunday, August 1-2 - The series continues against a Jays club that is reportedly selling ahead of the deadline itself.
• Monday, August 3 - The trade deadline. Expect the phone lines in St. Louis to be busy well before first pitch.

So the week ahead will tell us more about the St. Louis Cardinals than the week behind did, and most of it will happen off the field. A road series in Toronto offers a chance to stop the bleeding, but the real scoreboard is the transaction wire. If May, Stanek, and friends are gone by Monday night, the rest of 2026 becomes an audition for Wetherholt, Walker, Herrera, and the next version of this team. That is not where anyone expected Cardinals baseball to be after the 47-39 start, but pretending otherwise is how franchises stay stuck in the middle, and the middle is exactly where this club has been living for a month.