Two ways of looking at the Cardinals’ 2024 schedule

The good news is that the most sensible way of evaluating the schedule ahead suggests it won’t be a particularly tough one

Image: DALL-E

Much has rightly been made of the Cardinals’ theoretically difficult opening stretch of the 2024 schedule – one that sees them open with four straight road contests against the juggernaut Dodgers and one that, thanks to a lack of early off days, may press them to use a six-man rotation on a temporary basis. But what about the 2024 schedule as a whole? How you assess it, at least in forward-looking terms, depends upon the tools you use. 

First, know that the disparity among MLB team schedules has been flattened a bit as of last season, when the new format was put into place. This was a welcome development, given that teams compete across divisions for wild-card berths, even though there’s still some structural unfairness to the whole thing. As you’re probably aware, each team now plays all other 29 teams each season. This, in turn, means fewer games within the team’s league and fewer within the division. Here’s how it breaks down: 

• Thirteen games against each team within the division.

• Six or seven games against teams within the same league but from outside the division. 

• Three or, in the case of the assigned regional rival, four games against interleague opponents. 

There’s still a tilt toward intra-divisional opponents, which means it’s going to be easier to compete for a wild-card spot as, say, a member of the AL Central than it will be in the AL East, but it’s most just than it was before. 

As for the Cardinals’ 2024 schedule and the likely rigors of it, let’s use the tools mentioned in passing just above. 

Most commonly, you’ll see strength of schedule gauged going into a season by using opponents’ records from the prior season. While every instrument is something of a blunt one when it comes to this endeavor, using prior-season records is particularly unelightening. Thanks to things like roster turnover, player age and health considerations, and the fact that teams can be grossly lucky or unlucky across the span of a single season, those prior-season records can be quite misleading. A different and, I would submit, better way to evaluate schedule strength for an upcoming season is to use projected records for each team. While projections are obviously speculative in nature, they do shush a lot of the noise that undermines actual records from the prior season. It’s “this is how the team was in the past” versus “this is how the team is likely to be in the future.” 

Yes, my preference is that forward-looking schedule evaluations use projections instead of past records, but I’ll provide you with all of it. First, we’ll use those 2023 records to see how the Cardinals’ upcoming regular-season schedule looks through that lens.