St Louis Cardinals: Nolan Gorman putting on a show at Springfield

The St Louis Cardinals may be having troubles, but the team’s top hitting prospect is putting on a show at AA, signaling brighter skies are ahead.

Despite the current troubles at the MLB level, the St Louis Cardinals have plenty of fun talent in the minor leagues just waiting to make their way to St. Louis.

The team right now at AA Springfield is particularly fun with a lineup anchored by the team’s top two prospects, Nolan Gorman and Ivan Herrera. Both have turned 21 in the past six weeks and both will find their way to St. Louis sooner rather than later if they keep up their current trajectory.

Herrera has been climbing up prospect lists in his own right, but Gorman has been on the prospect radar for quite some time now after he hit 17 homers in 63 games in his first season of professional baseball.

In 2018 and 2019, there was always a worry with Gorman that the swing and miss in his game would overcome the raw power he had. Those years, his strikeout percentage sat in the high 20’s or low 30’s, a dangerous sign for the minor leagues.

This year, however, playing at AA, the No. 31 prospect in baseball has looked like a very different hitter.

In a league where he is more than three years younger than his average competition, Gorman is striking out less than 22% of the time. He has also doubled his walk rate to 10.9% from where it was at the end of 2019.

While these wholesale changes are great, Gorman was still off to a slow start to the minor league year before the calendar flipped to June. In his last 10 games, Gorman is slashing .429/.489/.952 with seven homers. Five of those seven homers have been hit in the last two days.

The Travelers are probably tired of facing Springfield and nobody can blame them.

The recent hot streak has brought Gorman’s overall AA line to .328/.401/.588 with 10 homers in just 33 games. As if this wasn’t enough, Gorman has also stolen three bags and is doing all this while learning to play second base and succeeding there.

Right now, Gorman looks amazing, but there is no reason to rush him up to the MLB. The Cardinals have their issues, but adding Gorman to the mix doesn’t fix a lot of their issues. Gorman looks good, he hopefully will be good in the future, he just can’t fix the starting pitching and there is not really an easy spot to put him.

Gorman is catching the eyes of people now with his recent hot streak and he could definitely hit AAA this year. However, it’s too early to start watching for him to show up at Busch Stadium.