Is the Cardinals’ persistent patience with Nolan Gorman beginning to pay off?
The St. Louis Cardinals planned to trade Nolan Arenado ahead of opening day and turn over third base to Nolan Gorman.
In doing so, they would not only have saved a significant portion of the money due on Arenado’s contract, but they would also have provided ample space for Gorman to prove that he was capable of taking over as an everyday player while limiting his defensive exposure at second base.
As best laid plans often go, Gorman has instead had minimal opportunity for extended runs in the lineup, and when those opportunities have presented themselves, he struggled to produce at the desired pace. It’s hard to rebuild a major league swing on the fly even without the consideration of sporadic playing time. Those results, though, are finally starting to turn, and the Cardinals need that to stick.
“You can go back for several weeks now for the lower chase [rate], higher contact, short of the ball,” manager Oli Marmol said. “It’s real, and that’s a hard adjustment to make.”
Since May 1 – entering Wednesday, a span of just 59 plate appearances – Gorman is hitting .269 with a .442 slugging percentage. His OPS is bound to be perpetually pulled down by a relatively mediocre walk rate, but the improved slugging numbers and contact rate are more than enough to make him a productive hitter.
“With the playing time and everything, my idea was just to come out here and give the best at bats that I can when I get the opportunity,” Gorman said after crushing his third career home run against Toronto starter Chris Bassitt in Tuesday night’s loss. “That’s what I’m doing, and [I] do what I can to help this team win.”
Limited exposure means Gorman doesn’t show up on many of MLB’s swing data leaderboards, and that data that does exist is correspondingly altered in value by its small sample size. But there have been clear swing changes that reveal a much more playable power hitter than last season’s intolerable whiff rates would suggest.
In 2024, Gorman struck out in a preposterous 37.6% of his plate appearances, a figure that would have been by far the worst in baseball had he been a qualified hitter. This season, that number is 27.6%, which is still above league average but not nearly double, as it was last season. Gorman is also chasing just 24.8% of pitches outside the strike zone in 2025, compared to 30.3% in 2024. And when he does chase, his contact percentage on chase swings has also ticked up – 43.1% this season, 37.7% last season.
None of the chase and whiff numbers are as good as league average, but that is simply not Gorman’s game. He is a power-first hitter, and there are tradeoffs the Cardinals are willing to accept in order to get that power into the lineup. Those tradeoffs, though, were so severe in 2024 as to render him broadly unplayable, and he spent the season’s last month toiling at Triple-A Memphis.
There is only so much that the Cardinals can do to rebuild his swing for more contact without sacrificing his most valuable tool as a hitter. Indeed, they were willing to cut deeper into that power than they have been in years past as this year began, expecting that his power numbers might dip early in the year (as they did) as they re-established his foundation.
“I think you have to first get bat to ball,” Marmol said, “and then the more games he gets, you start to add speed to it…If you’re doing it right, I think that’s what it’s supposed to look like.”
It is to Gorman’s benefit and to the team’s credit that they didn’t take his early season struggles as a sign that he belongs in the minors, even as weeks wore on without results in box scores. Marmol described an open communication between team and player that benefited the process and made clear that Gorman was being evaluated just as much on the quality of his pregame work as the number of hits that he was piling up on the field.
In many ways, that gets to the core of what the team means when they talk about the 2025 season as one in which they’re providing runway for players and willing to allow them to develop at real time. Being in contention might well have tested some of that patience, and could still in the weeks to come.
That it has not yet – and that the patience is now being followed by results – builds upon itself, and will give Gorman additional time to assert himself. As the Cardinals wrestle with a toe injury to Brendan Donovan that might open up additional time for Gorman at second base, the opportunities are bound to arrive. The next step for Gorman, then, is translating work into success and maximizing those opportunities.
“I focus on continuing to have quality at bats,” Gorman said. “There’s nothing else I can do. That’s the only thing in my control.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
