Bernie’s Redbird Review: If The Cardinals Keep Arenado, Can He Make A Comeback Offensively?

THE REDBIRD REVIEW

Suppose the Cardinals can’t come up with an agreeable trade that would send third baseman Nolan Arenado to a new baseball home? Even if the Cardinals identify an acceptable trade, that doesn’t mean it will happen. Arenado’s contract has a firm no-trade clause, so he has the final say on any proposed deal.

OK, so what happens if the Cardinals and Arenado stay together for 2025? What would the Cardinals need from him? What can he do to help the Cardinals assemble more victories than last season’s 83?

Well, first of all, Arenado must have a more positive attitude. He can be sulking, stewing or transmitting negative vibes. The Cardinals would need him to be a full-fledged citizen of the clubhouse, and that includes being more patient and helpful with young teammates.

Second, assuming that Arenado plays above-average defense again in 2025, the big challenge is his offense. At age 34 – and with clear signs of age-related deterioration – Arenado would have to reverse his two-year trend and enliven his bat.

That’s a lot to ask for … and it won’t be easy. But an Arenado upturn, while unlikely, isn’t impossible. I’ll explain. But first, review:

In 2024 Arenado batted .272 with a .325 onbase percentage and .394 slug for a .719 OPS. His adjusted OPS was only one percent above league average offensively. He endured full-season career lows in doubles (23), slugging percentage and adjusted OPS. And Arenado had his second-worst full season in homers and OPS.

The Statcast data for Arenado in 2024 was ominous. He ranked among the bottom 20 percent of major-league hitters in expected slugging percentage (.356). He was in the bottom 28 percent in bat speed, and in the bottom nine percent in bad speed. His barrel rate was in the bottom six percent. His hard-hit rate was in the bottom 12 percent. Arenado has never been a Statcast star, but the 2024 were alarming.

Arenado also experienced a drop in fly-ball rate … and, more on point, he fell off (again) in the volume of fly balls pulled to his power side – left side. His offensive profile is discouraging.

Let’s take a look at ways that Arenado can improve … not that he will do better, but why he could do better.

I’ve done some homework and identified some factors.

1. The early projection systems are favorable. For whatever it’s worth the Steamer forecast has Arenado raising his slugging percentage to .425, which would be up 31 points from last year. His home-run forecast for 2025 is 23, which would be an increase of seven HRs from 2024. As for adjusted runs created (wRC+), Steamer sees a four percent jump for Arenado, putting him six percent above league average offensively. Steamer also projects a nice bounce-back for Arenado in Isolated Power – up by 44 points. The FanGraphs metric for offense that combines hitting performance and base-running had Arenado a tad below average in 2024 – and Steamer projects that will increase to 3.3 WAR in 2025. (Steamer has Arenado declining defensively next season but he’d still be an above-average fielder.) These projections could be off, sure. And Steamer doesn’t use Statcast stuff in forming these forecasts. But I’m just pointing out a reason for at least some optimism.

2. Arenado finds a way to reactivate his pull-side power. This is his biggest challenge by far. Because Arenado doesn’t strike out much, doesn’t chase many pitches out of the zone, and his excellent contact rate on strikes (91.7%) was his best in a season as a Cardinal. But the contact isn’t producing as many home runs. That’s because he’s pulling pitches less often.

Here are his yearly percentage of pulled fly balls (to left field) in each of his four seasons as a Cardinal. And next to the pulled-fly percentage I’ll include his home-run total on aerial pulled shots that year.

2021:  41.4 percent pulled … 32 HR … 30.7% of his pulled FBs were HRs.
2022:  37.2% pulled … 28 homers … 30.7% of his pulled FB were HRs.
2023:  34.3% pulled … 20 homers … 29.4% of his pulled FB were HRs.
2024:  32.6% pulled .. 13 homers … 20.6% of his pulled FB were HRs.

Go back and look at the difference between 2021 and 2024. It’s substantial. I have to be straight here; my optimism for potential improvement in this area is minimal. Arenado has pulled fewer pitchers and he’s put more of them on the ground. That’s a poor combination. But can he tweak his swing? Arenado works hard during the offseason in a quest to make himself a more dangerous hitter. Will he discover something useful in his travels to hitting labs this offseason.

3. Arenado vs. left-handed pitching. This one baffles me. Though his slugging percentage vs. right-handed pitchers went down last season, Arenado has stayed above the league-average level against righties:

2021:  4% above league average offensively
2022:  47% above average
2023:  16% above average
2024:  10% above average

Arenado hasn’t been able to repeat his smashing 2022 campaign, but we shouldn’t have expected him to do so. He’s still turning in an above-average performance vs. righthanders.

But when Arenado faces left-handed pitchers, he’s been an enormous flop over the last two seasons. His right-handed swing a liability in matchups against lefties. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Here’s a year-by-year snapshot of his glaring decline against lefties:

2021:  44% above average
2022:  58% above average
2023:  26% BELOW average
2024:  21% BELOW average

To say the least, that’s an alarming drop. In 2021 and 2022, Arenado hammered a high slugging percentage on every type of pitch offered by lefty pitchers. But in 2023 and 2024, he had little power in connecting on sinkers, sliders and curves thrown by lefties. And the strange thing is, Arenado was at his weakest when the LH threw those three pitches into the middle of the strike zone. This doesn’t make sense. Was he getting fooled? Can he adjust? Can he solve the mystery? If so, it could go a long way in Arenado’s desperate mission to jump-start his offense.

4. Performance with runners in scoring position. I’ll go short on this one because there’s a lot of randomness baked into any type of RISP evaluation. An unusually high batting average can be a fluke; an unusually low average can be an outlier. That said, his RISP numbers have gone down over the last two seasons. In 2021-2022, Arenado hit .308 and was 47 percent above league average offensively when batting with runners in scoring position. But in 2023-2024, Arenado batted .264 with RISP and was slightly below league average.

Anyway, those are my observations. I didn’t want to write a novel on this and get too deep into the brush. Arenado is a hard case, but I wouldn’t say he’s a hopeless case.

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 this column were sourced from Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, Statcast, Brooks Baseball and Baseball Prospectus.