It is the question echoing through the empty seats at Busch Stadium, burning up the phone lines on sports talk radio, and summarizing the existential dread currently gripping the St. Louis Cardinals fan base: Why are we paying Dustin May $12.5 million?
On the surface, the move looks like a standard “prove-it” deal—a one-year contract for a former top prospect with electric stuff, designed to give the player a platform to rebound while giving the team a potential trade chip at the deadline. But for a fan base already on edge, watching a beloved franchise gut its roster and cry poverty over lost TV revenue, the signing of a pitcher coming off a statistically disastrous 2025 season feels less like a savvy gamble and more like a punchline.
Let’s look at the numbers the front office is asking you to ignore. In 2025, Dustin May posted a record of 7-11. In an era where win-loss records are supposedly obsolete, they still tell a story. A 7-11 record isn’t just a losing record; it’s the kind of record associated with a fifth starter on a last-place team. But the record is merely the tip of the iceberg. The underlying statistics are where the real horror lies.
May finished the 2025 campaign with a -0.6 Wins Above Replacement (WAR). Let that sink in. Negative WAR. In baseball terms, a negative WAR means the player performed worse than a “replacement-level” player—the kind of guy you call up from Triple-A Memphis on a Tuesday afternoon to eat innings. The Cardinals just spent $12.5 million on a pitcher who, by the objective measure of value, actively hurt his team’s chances of winning last year.
Over 132.1 innings pitched, May surrendered 73 earned runs. That is a 4.96 Earned Run Average—nearly five runs per nine innings. In an era of suppressed offense and dominant pitching, a 4.96 ERA is a liability. For context, that is the kind of ERA that gets you skipped in the playoff rotation or moved to the bullpen during a pennant race. The Cardinals are paying starter money for a pitcher whose 2025 results were barely replacement-level.
If you want to dig deeper into the analytics, the picture gets even murkier. May’s signature pitches—the sinker and the cutter that once made him “the next ace” in Los Angeles—graded out with negative pitch values in 2025. A negative pitch value means the pitch itself was a detriment. Hitters weren’t just surviving against May; they were thriving against his best offerings. He also allowed 21 home runs. Now, he will be moving his home base to Busch Stadium, a park that, while pitcher-friendly in some dimensions, has a tendency to turn routine fly balls into souvenirs down the left-field line.
So, the obvious question remains: If the numbers are this ugly, why does this deal exist?
The front office, led by President of Baseball Operations Chaim Bloom, will tell you they are buying upside. They will point to the 2020 World Series champion, the 97 mph velocity, and the “unicorn” stuff that once made May one of the most exciting young arms in baseball. They will likely whisper about the “skinny” excuse—May admitted he pitched much of 2025 at 20 pounds below his ideal weight due to a series of off-field health issues (including the infamous freak esophageal tear caused by a piece of lettuce). The hope is that with a full offseason of training and a clean bill of health, the 2020-2023 version of May will reappear.
But for Cardinals fans, the narrative doesn’t fit. The team spent the entire offseason shedding payroll. They traded away franchise cornerstones like Nolan Arenado. They watched a 100-year streak of Hall of Famers on the field snap. They heard the front office use words like “financial flexibility” and “rebuilding the pipeline.” Fans braced themselves for a painful but disciplined rebuild.
Then, the team turned around and spent $12.5 million—a significant chunk of their remaining offseason budget—on a pitcher who just went 7-11 with a negative WAR.
The frustration is compounded by the “trade chip” narrative. Industry analysts immediately labeled the May signing as a classic “Bloom special”: sign a high-risk, high-reward player to a one-year deal, hope he performs well for three months, and flip him for prospects at the July trade deadline to a contender desperate for starting pitching. If that is the plan—and there is every indication it is—it means the Cardinals are asking their paying customers to tolerate a losing product for the first half of 2026 so that the front office can maybe acquire a Single-A lottery ticket in July.
It’s a cynical strategy, and it’s one that ignores the reality of the current market. Dustin May isn’t a reclamation project like Jordan Montgomery was in 2022; he is a pitcher who has undergone two Tommy John surgeries, a forearm surgery, and an esophageal tear. His velocity has been on a steady decline (from 97.3 mph in 2023 to 95.4 mph in 2025). The Red Sox, who acquired him at the deadline last year, saw the elbow neuritis and the negative WAR and decided they wanted no part of him for 2026. The Red Sox let him walk. The Cardinals paid him.
This is the crux of the issue for the St. Louis faithful. For decades, the Cardinals operated with a certain level of pride. They weren’t the Yankees, but they weren’t the Pirates. They were the model of consistency—a franchise that, even when not in contention, at least respected the intelligence of its fan base by fielding a watchable product. The Dustin May signing feels like an abandonment of that ethos.
Paying $12.5 million for a pitcher with a losing record and negative WAR isn’t just a gamble; it’s a signal. It signals that the 2026 season is not about winning. It’s about inventory. It’s about hoping a damaged arm can hold together long enough to fetch a low-level prospect in August. It’s about asking a fan base that just watched a century-old streak of excellence die to get excited about a guy who allowed 73 earned runs last year because he “used to throw hard.”
Maybe Dustin May will shock everyone. Maybe the weight gain will stick, the cutter will regain its bite, and he will post a sub-3.00 ERA in the first half, netting the Cardinals a top-100 prospect. But until that happens, the question remains a bitter one for fans holding the bag: In a year where the team is supposedly pinching pennies and preparing for the future, how did $12.5 million end up in the pocket of a pitcher who was worth negative wins just a season ago?
