Bernie’s Redbird Review: A Look At Seven Cardinals Hitters With A Lot To Prove In 2025.

THE REDBIRD REVIEW

As the Cardinals begin the long and winding process that leads them into the 2025 season, I’m already on the way to setting a record for typing and saying these two words: young players. Or, if you prefer … young guys or maybe young dudes.

As in: the rebuilding, regenerating, replenishing, resetting, rehabbing, reforming, revamping Cardinals are going with young players in 2025. The Cardinals will let the young guys play. The Cardinals are creating playing-time opportunities for the young dudes.

But what are we talking about here? In this column I’ll be focusing on the St. Louis position players. How many of them are truly “young” in the baseball sense? Sure, we’re using human-being age, but that isn’t the same as baseball-playing age. The athletes have an entirely different standard for growing “old.”

In 2024, the average age of an MLB position player was around 27.9 years overall – and 27.6 years in the National League. What about the Cardinals? Even with the “senior” Paul Goldschmidt and the “aging” Nolan Arenado on last year’s squad, the St. Louis hitters had an average age of 28.2 years. That made them the 12th youngest set of hitters in the majors – and fifth youngest in the NL. So the Redbirds were hardly ancient.

On the other hand, we have a tendency to refer to certain guys as “young” who aren’t really young. They’re in between. Example: utility utensil Brendan Donovan. He’ll be 28 in January. He graduated to the majors in late April, 2022. His 1,491 plate appearances rank 97th among MLB hitters since the start of the ‘22 campaign. Is Donovan really young? No. He’s in the middle. The same probably applies to Lars Nootbaar, age 27, who already has logged 1,255 major-league plate appearances since making his MLB debut for St. Louis on June 22 of the 2021 season. Noot is just outside the top 150 of major-league hitters that have the most plate appearances since that date.

Luken Baker is 28, but he hasn’t played that much. He isn’t “young” per se … but the big man is an inexperienced major-league player.

The Cardinals have three 26-year-old hitters in Alec Burleson, Pedro Pages and Michael Siani (in July.) Burly is just under 1,000 plate appearances in his big-league career. The other two aren’t as experienced. Nolan Gorman won’t be 25 until May, but he already has filed 1,179 major-league plate appearances on his resume.

Masyn Winn turns 23 in March. Jordan Walker is 23 in May. They’re both young … as is Victor Scott II (nearly 24) and Ivan Herrera (25 in June).

If you want to put any Cardinal with fewer than 1,000 MLB plate appearances in the “young” category, I wouldn’t disagree. But I’d prefer “inexperienced,” as is the case with Luken Baker.

Excluding Goldschmidt (now a free agent), Nolan Arenado, and Willson Contreras (33 in May), the only St. Louis position players with more than 1,000 big-league plate appearances are Donovan, Nootbaar and Gorman. So in that context, this is a fairly young band of hitters. Sorry for my fussing; I just want to make sure that I am not being guilty of overstating their youth or making a misleading marketing pitch.

Here are some thoughts on seven of the younger-generation (or inexperienced) Cardinals:

1. Victor Scott II: If he earns the starting center field job in advance of the 2025 season opener, that would be a beneficial development for the Cardinals. He’s one of the fastest players in the majors, an excellent base-stealing thief, and his power began to emerge late last season when he hit .311 with a .354 onbase percentage and .467 slugging percentage over his final 19 games.

2. Ivan Herrera: In 72 games this past season the catcher batted. 301 with an .800 OPS. Among MLB hitters that had at least 250 plate appearances in 2024, Herrera had a higher OPS than Manny Machado, Willy Adames, Jackson Chourio, Steven Kwan, Jose Altuve, Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Salvador Perez, Austin Riley and many more. Herrera’s 2.1 Wins Above Replacement was higher than that of Pete Alonso, Xander Bogaerts, J.T. Realmuto and Francisco Alvarez. Herrera needs to play a helluva lot more in 2025. The Cardinals could have a special talent in Herrera – but we won’t know unless he plays extensively. Herrera is pretty much the ideal example of a young hitter who warrants a full opportunity in a rebuilding type of season.

3. Alec Burleson: I was all in on the big shooter back on July 21. At that point of the season, in his first 92 games, Burleson was batting .294 with a .500 slugging percentage and .824 OPS. He had 14 doubles, 18 homers and 59 RBIs. On that day Burleson led the Cardinals in batting average and RBIs, was tied for first in homers, and was second to Willson Contreras in slugging. After that? Burleson’s hitting performance drooped substantially; over his final 60 games he had a .230 average, .300 slug, .600 OPS and only nine combined doubles and homers.

What happened? Well, Burleson wasn’t as effective against fastballs during his final 60 games. But the biggest issues over that time were his .107 average against breaking balls, and his .103 average against sliders and sweepers. On non-fastballs Burleson batted .184 with a .235 slug and just one homer from July 22 through the end of the season.

4. Lars Nootbaar: He just needs to stay healthy and pile up a large total of at-bats. That’s his problem. And that’s his challenge. I took the four busiest months of Nootbaar’s career – based on the highest number of plate appearances in a month – and added them all together. My finding: his offensive performance was collectively 31 percent above league average in those busiest months. Nootbaar tends to be extra rusty when he returns from the injured list. The more he plays, the more he rakes.

5. Nolan Gorman: from June 5 until the time he was demoted to Triple A Memphis on Aug. 21, Gorman hit an abysmal .170 with a faint .291 slugging percentage and an alarming 40 percent strikeout rate. The new hitting coach, Brant Brown, has a tough assignment here. Gorman was an absolute mess during a collapse that lasted two-plus months. He was overpowered by four-seam fastballs and befuddled by breaking pitches. Gorman made it easier for pitchers by falling into too many two-strike counts and chasing too many balls out of the strike zone. Beginning June 5, Gorman batted .059 with a 61 percent strikeout rate when he made contact with pitches out of the zone.

6. Jordan Walker: His numbers were terrible at the big-league level in 2024. His hitting approach was completely out of whack. After popping fastballs for a .349 average and .651 slugging percentage as a rookie in 2023, Walker scraped for a .222 average on four-seam fastballs this past season and his slugging percentage dropped by 207 points. He batted .185 against every type of fastball in 2024.

Another massive flaw for Walker was his failure against low and outside pitchers. On low-and-away pitches that sailed out of the strike zone in 2024, Walker batted .042 with a 61 percent strikeout rate. But the futility was also evident when he connected with a low-and-away pitch that landed in the strike zone; Walker hit .125 with no power against them. Walker’s awkward stance made him crooked and vulnerable; he basically requires a complete reconstruction as a hitter in ‘25. And the best time for that is during a rebuilding season for the Cardinals.

7. Luken Baker: These are very small sample sizes. But the right-handed slugger – who pulverized left-handed pitching in the minors – didn’t do much against them in his first exposure to big-league pitching in 2023. But even though we’re talking about only 22 plate appearances vs. big-league lefties in 2024, Baker blasted them for a .722 slugging percentage and 1.086 OPS. That warrants a more extensive showcase in 2025. But Baker is inferior against right-handed pitchers, so he’d have to be part of a set platoon at first base or DH.

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie

A 2023 inductee into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, Bernie has provided informed opinions and perspective on St. Louis sports through his columns, radio shows and podcasts since 1985.

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Stats used in my baseball columns are sourced from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Statcast, StatHead, Baseball Savant, Baseball Prospectus, Brooks Baseball Net, and Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise noted.