Is Arenado’s return to form due to Cardinals’ coaches or mental adjustments?
Nolan Arenado eagerly confirmed a reporter’s suspicions after he walked off the Milwaukee Brewers at Busch Stadium on Saturday.
“With the moves I was making last year, absolutely not,” he said when asked if he would’ve been able to turn on Trevor Megill’s high and inside fastball in quite the same way. “I was not in a good place last year. I don’t like thinking about it. I don’t think I get to that last year.”
Credit was given to the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitting coaches and there was a clear sense of lighter shoulders and proof in execution following his third homer of the season. What the data shows, though, is not a hitter who has changed a great deal about his swing. Instead he might only be a more confident, less burdened hitter, and one eager to demonstrate to the Cardinals as well as the rest of the league that he has a lot left in the tank.
From their perspective, that might be more than enough – as long as things unfold in the way they desire.
MLB’s bat tracking data, provided by Baseball Savant, does provide a window into some of the changes Arenado has made year over year. In 2024, for instance, he stood with a slightly closed stance – one degree, as measured by their player tracking. In 2025, that has shifted to four degrees open. The league average is 10 degrees open, so he’s still somewhat more closed off than a typical hitter, but his foot placement suggests he’s being less intentional about trying to force balls to right field, an area in which historically he hits for little power.
His bat speed, too, is up one mile per hour, measured on average at 71.7 MPH as opposed to last year’s 70.7. If that seems like a distinction without difference, consider that league average for that measurement is 71.5; his changes inside that narrow envelope have taken him from well below average to slightly above.
Hitting a baseball is the most difficult thing to do in sports in large part because small changes that could feel imperceptible to a lay person might be enough to allow an elite athlete to fire swings in the small fractions of seconds which make up the decision window. Increased confidence and comfort means more decisiveness, and that also shows up in the data.
The database measures “fast swings” as any exceeding 75 MPH, and the average rate for a big league hitter is 22.8%. Arenado has historically been below average in that measurement due in part to his bat to ball skills; he doesn’t strike out often because he has top notch pitch recognition, but that necessitates a somewhat slower bat in order to reach the various corners of the zone.
Still, in 2024, his percentage of fast swings plummeted to just 12.8%. When a hitter describes feeling “caught in between,” they’re often discussing the hesitant decision process which can eventuate in that slower rate. In 2025, that number has jumped back up to 19.7%. It’s still less than an average big league hitter, but he’s never been an all or nothing offensive player. Swinging harder more often is an indication of feeling more decisive and sure when he does spring an attack.
“When I keep my posture and I don’t overstride, usually good things happen,” he explained. “I was able to get to it and it was a good, tight turn. You’ve got to be able to get to the heater.”
For all of his improved coverage and higher quality swings, the ball isn’t behaving terribly differently off his bat year over year. He was just in the ninth percentile in average exit velocity last season; this year, that’s the 13th percentile. His hard hit percentage is slightly down, 28.7% this year, 31.6% last year. His barrel rate, though, while still below average, is up – 3.2% last year, 5.3% this year.
These are all fractional changes that might not seem significant given the sample sizes, but what they demonstrate is that the Arenado who struggled to post a final line well below career averages last season is not the player he truly is now. Instead, he looks much more like teams would expect along his natural aging curve. And, crucially, he once again is an elite defender, ranking among the top players in the game in essentially every defensive metric.
That his dropoff is gradual and not precipitous matters a great deal to the Cardinals, who have not flinched from a winter goal of finding him a new team on which he can chase a championship. That deal may well materialize during this season, and it could even do so with a team that didn’t advance seriously in negotiations over the winter.
Had he stepped between the lines this season and looked again like a player in free falling decline, that option may not have been available. Now, things look back on track, and that allows both player and team to take another swing toward finding a situation that works better for both.
They’ll be able to swing hard, too. That was also not a guarantee.
