5 Cardinals who further prove that spring training stats are hogwash

It's old hat by now: Spring training statistics have little to no effect on a player's performance during the regular season. Guys are tinkering with their swings and arsenals, and opponents often aren't of the highest caliber. Despite this established fact, with no other resources to go off of so early in a year, fans may latch onto players' production, or lack thereof, and make predictions of how he will fare during the marathon season.

The St. Louis Cardinals saw several players display promising starts to spring training and others struggle to get off the schneid, but, as should be expected, many of these Cardinals' performances have flipped drastically since the preseason concluded.

These five Cardinals hold no resemblance to their spring training selves.

Nathan Church

A player who broke out across three minor league levels in 2025, Church played in 27 games for the Cardinals last season but hit just .179 with a .504 OPS. In 2026, the Cardinals opted to give him another big-league look after a spring where he slashed .289/.413/.447. Of his 11 hits, four went for extra bases.

Church needed to take advantage of a small window of opportunity with the Cardinals, as left field was a question mark after Lars Nootbaar was placed on the 60-day injured list to begin the season and the team chose to roll with Church over another spring training standout in Nelson Velazquez.
Prior to the season, Bleacher Report's Joel Sherman rated Church as the 20th-best rookie for 2026, saying he offered a high floor and intriguing upside, and on Opening Day, Church went 3-for-4 with two RBIs, Hopes were high that he could run with the job, potentially allowing the Cardinals to part ways with Nootbaar at the trade deadline.

Instead, Church has faceplanted in his chance to make an impact with the major league club, hitting only .143/.189/.229. That anemic on-base percentage is a result of his abysmal 46.9% chase rate, and he's walked just once in 37 plate appearances. Even in the outfield, Church's normal strong suit, he had a mental lapse on April 13 where he forgot the number of outs. The Cardinals have already begun to curtail Church's playing time in favor of Jose Fermin and Thomas Saggese, neither of whom defends as well as Church but who might offer a slight upgrade at the plate.

Church may be losing his grasp in the Cardinals lineup, and with Joshua Baez rapidly climbing the ladder to St. Louis and possibly becoming the everyday option in left field by 2027, his spot in the team's long-term plans appears to be in jeopardy as well.

Matthew Liberatore

After his first year as a full-time starting pitcher and playing well in the first half before fading down the stretch, Liberatore entered spring as the Cardinals' odds-on Opening Day starter. He added a splitter to his repertoire over the offseason and found immense success in spring training, pitching 15 innings and allowing three runs while striking out 19 batters.

In an article from The Athletic, Eno Sarris pointed out that Liberatore had a Stuff+ stat of 118 through his first 155 pitches of spring training and that several pitches in his arsenal had gained velocity and movement. On March 9, Liberatore coaxed 16 swings and misses in a five-inning outing, a career-best mark over that duration of time. It seemed that the Cardinals' new development staff had not only found new players that fit the team's new mold of strikeout stuff, but also developed a pitcher who was acquired under the John Mozeliak regime into a mound menace.

The regular season hasn't been as rosy for Liberatore, though. Through 21 innings, he's surrendered a league-leading five home runs, but most alarmingly, his strikeouts have almost completely disappeared, as he's fanned just 12 batters in that span. He doesn't seem to trust his new splitter yet, throwing it just four times this year,

Liberatore was efficient in 2025 but has seen his pitch volume spike this season. He threw around 80-90 pitches in some of his better seven-inning stints in 2025, but his last two starts have seen him go only five innings each and throw 93 and 105 pitches. There's a good chance that teams simply know what to expect from Liberatore now: He's in the zone frequently, so hitters have attacked him, and he needs to readjust to that by inducing more whiffs on pitches on and off the plate. If he can, there's still plenty of time for him to deliver a strong season as the Cardinals' No. 1 starter.

Nolan Gorman

Since a breakout season in 2023, Gorman has struggled to find consistency in his hitting, slipping into what has seemed to be increasingly long cold spells. He hit .205 with 14 home runs in 2025, a far cry from his career high of .239 and 27 long balls in 2023. In spring training, it appeared that something had finally clicked and he had mitigated his strikeout-happy ways, fanning only eight times in 39 at-bats and also accruing seven walks. He even knocked three home runs and hit .256.

Gorman started the season well, too, hitting a home run in consecutive games on March 29 and 30, But for the year so far, he has a .208 average and has slugged just .333, with no extra-base hits aside from those two home runs. The whiffs have also returned, as he's struck out 19 times in 48 at-bats.

The lack of power is worrisome for a player who used to have that as his calling card. It's easier to stomach strikeouts if a player can hit bombs to balance them out; however, Gorman has continued to rack up the K's without providing power in return. Given his troublesome back issues over the past few seasons, which tend to hinder players throughout their careers, as well as the changes to his swing path that have led to him swinging with less impact, Gorman could have lost the thunder in his stick for good.

A silver lining for Gorman, now a third baseman, is that the early returns on his defense have been strong. He's two outs above average on the season, and although nobody will match Nolan Arenado's brilliance at the hot corner, Gorman has held his own at the position. If he can't find a groove at the plate, the calls for the Cardinals to cut bait on him will amplify, but the team doesn't have any highly ranked third base prospects looming to steal Gorman's job. The Cardinals may be stuck with Gorman for another season even if he bottoms out in 2026.

Matt Svanson

Svanson produced a standout rookie season out of the Cardinals bullpen in 2025, holding a 1.94 ERA and notching 68 strikeouts in 60.1 innings, and that performance carried over to spring, where he pitched eight innings and allowed five hits and one earned run, striking out seven and walking one. Early in spring, rumblings emerged that Svanson could form part of a closer committee with Riley O'Brien, but those hopes were quickly dashed once the regular season rolled around.

Slated to work high-leverage innings out of the bullpen, Svanson has come apart at the seams. In 8.2 frames, he's allowed a whopping 18 hits and 15 earned runs. His Stuff+ has dropped from 105 last year to 93 in 2026 (100 is average), and his arm angle has dropped by four degrees, which is likely affecting the deception on his pitches. His control is another problem, as he's already walked six batters and is frequently falling behind in counts, forcing him to attack the zone.

The Cardinals already sent Chris Roycroft to Triple-A Memphis after he pitched ineffectively in five outings, and Svanson could soon follow if he can't whip his pitching into shape through his next few appearances. The 27-year-old should still have a future with the Cardinals; they won't toss aside someone who showed the level of talent he displayed last year. He may just need to work out his issues in Memphis for part of the season and return once he's fixed what are likely to be mechanical flaws.

Jordan Walker

At the end of an article covering players who have disappointed fans following standout springs, here's something to perk you up. Walker has been among the major leagues' best hitters on the young season, and he leads the major leagues with eight home runs and a .767 slugging percentage as of April 14. But it didn't start out well for Walker, who appeared utterly lost in spring training. He hit .205 in 44 at-bats, striking out 16 times, and with upstart prospect JJ Wetherholt now in tow, many fans had given up on Walker ever discovering his potential and pivoted to Wetherholt as the next franchise savior.

One Cardinals insider mentioned that Walker didn't appear to be having fun during spring training and wasn't his usual joyful self, which understandably led to some trepidation among fans. There were murmurs around Cardinals Nation that Walker wouldn't last the entire season in the major leagues; however, the Cardinals were committed to providing him every opportunity in their season of rebuilding.

But away from prying eyes, Walker was on the grind, training at Driveline over the offseason to work on his swing and adjust his movement while handling the bat. Clearly, it's paid huge dividends. Aside from the counting stats, Walker is at or near the top of the Baseball Savant leaderboards in multiple hitting categories, such as average exit velocity and barrel percentage, and he's quickly hurtling toward becoming St. Louis' next iconic sports figure.

It's clear in hindsight that the Cardinals' choice to rush Walker to the major leagues in 2023 was the wrong decision after he had delivered a torrid spring by wielding the same swing that had gotten him to baseball's loftiest perch. He needed to hone his craft and hit more balls in the air to become a consistent threat against major league pitching, but the Cardinals may have damaged his psyche by demoting him while he was still performing well.

With all that unpleasantness seemingly long gone, Walker's evolution from someone who was flailing in spring training to one who is dominating in nearly every facet of the game has been a breathtaking sight. His revitalization should provide Cardinals fans with hope that the team's rebuild is on the right track and that it may even reach its conclusion more rapidly than the organization expected.

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