Cardinals offense continues to struggle with too many balls on the ground.
The St. Louis Cardinals offense as a whole is much improved through the first month of the season compared to 2024’s awful performance. However, there is still one flaw persisting that could hold the group back as a whole in 2025: they are still struggling to create am effective launch angle to increase the output of their slugging. Accomplishing this would make them a more legitimate threat with staying power all season long.
Credit where credit is due, the Cardinals still have the best team batting average, lead the league in doubles, are 4th in team on base percentage, and 8th in team OPS. Unfortunately, they’re also in a free fall in rankings when it comes to home runs. The team is tied for 20th in baseball with the San Diego Mike Shildt’s.
Ivan Herrera’s last game was April 6th. It’s been 22 days, and he still shares the team lead in home runs at 4. To me, that’s unacceptable from an offense that features power bats like Nolan Gorman, Willson Contreras, Nolan Arenado (to an extent), and Alec Burleson. Lars Nootbaar shares the team lead and has some power, but his true superpower is the on base percentage, so I give him a slight pass in this discussion as it’s hard to ask him or Donovan to really do any more than they have at this point.
Then, there’s the biggest offensive disappointment of the season so far in Jordan Walker. xWOBA at .267, xSLUG at .335, his whiff% at 34.7 are all significant red flags in his offensive profile that have me a little more pessimistic on his long term future and whether or not he will be capable of reaching his ceiling, with the Cardinals at least. There’s still plenty of time for him to turn it around, but his shine has certainly faded some and, yes, this season is about finding out whether or not he can battle through it and come out better on the other side. But make no mistake this has not been an ideal start to the season the team or the fans were hoping for from Walker.
There are positives though. Walker’s bat measures at 77.7 MPH on his swing which puts him in the 99th percentile. He swings the bat harder than most players in baseball, he just has to hit the ball more consistently, and if he can do that and get the ball in the air? Then the Cardinals and Walker would really have something.
Speaking of launch angle, Walker’s launch angle sweet spot% is 26.6. That puts him in the 13th percentile in all of baseball. Not good. But it’s not just Walker, Alec Burleson is quite literally the worst in baseball so far this year at 16.9% which puts him in the 1st percentile. Nolan Arenado is at 24.4% (6th percentile), Pedro Pages at 30.9% (33rd percentile), Masyn Winn 32.6% (41st percentile), Willson Contreras 35.1% (56th percentile).
The Cardinals have done a legitimately good job of generating offense from an aggressive base running strategy, whether that’s hustle doubles, stealing bases, or taking extra bases on balls in play. Those are good fundamental areas in which the team foundationally is in a good place. But what this team truly lacks (so far) is real thump and presence in the middle of the order to make it a well-rounded offensive force that can win in different ways. Whether that comes from guys mentioned above, or if it has to come externally, it is an area of the modern game that is required to be successful.
It’s hard to keep pace with any of the legitimate playoff offenses scoring 1-2 runs every three or four innings when the big boys of the league can hit multiple 2 or 3 run home runs in the same game on a fairly consistent basis and pull away from you when the game dictates it. This is an area I am hopeful the Cardinals will address and improve upon as the season continues. If they can’t this might be a longer retooling process than you or I had hoped for.
-Thanks for reading