Meet Me At Musial, Episode 439, Where Did 2026 Go?

And we're coming to you as the Cardinals getting off on the wrong foot with the Nationals as they start their last home series of the year.

Scott, it really just, I mean, I still remember opening day, right? I mean, opening day is fairly clearly in my head.

How are we to the end of the season this fast?

Yeah, when you look at the long and short of it, you're surprised that it still snuck up on us when parts of the season felt so long.

And 162 games is truly just a long, long time.

But yeah, it's surprising.

I mean, I'm here thinking about The cold March weathers and then going into the beautiful summer.

And now, you know, it's end of September.

Friday Night Lights is going on across the street from my house right now.

And Cardinals are finishing a homestand and it'll be the last time we see them at Bush this year.

So it's weird and fast and slow at the same time.

Yeah, it probably doesn't help the fact that it's like 95 in St. Louis for the last home series.

I know it's been 100 down here and it's supposed to be all weekend long.

It doesn't feel like fall is going to come until after the season has actually ended.

So it's a little bit weird, right? Though you kind of want that crisp, cool air for that last home game, but not this year.

And, you know, I think as we look back on the season, you know, I mean, it's hard to say, even though the Cardinals are probably going to finish under .500, they're obviously going to finish out of the playoff picture.

It's hard to say that this was a disappointing year, isn't it?

Yeah, there were times when they were teasing us that it did feel like a disappointment at some times.

But in the grand scheme of things, to be 10 games over the projection model with still 10 games to go.

And the whole idea of the season was to find – just to get answers at multiple spots in the roster.

And I have to say that they did – achieve those goals and did so in a way that was exciting and also not as painful as we expected in a rebuild.

So we're moving in the right direction, but it's unfortunately going to be another season without October baseball.

Yeah.

Is there a place that you think They didn't get answers this year because it feels like to me, like almost every one of the one, you know, if you start at the beginning of the year and say you want to know ABCD, it feels like they pretty much got answers, whether they were answers they liked or not, almost on everything.

Is there anything that you think that's kind of still hanging over their heads as they go into the winter for 27? Yeah.