Cardinals brass believes Victor Scott II could be set to have a big year in 2026

We all know about Victor Scott II's speed and defense. He ranked in the 99th percentile in all of baseball in Outs Above Average with 17, and he ranked in the 100th percentile in sprint speed with a pace of 30.2 MPH. Scott is an exceptional athlete and it shows on the basepaths and in the outfield.

Where his 2025 season fell short was at the dish.

Scott finished the year with a .216/.305/.296 slash line and only five home runs across 138 games. His .080 ISO was the fifth-worst among all hitters with at least 450 plate appearances. While he was still able to steal 34 bases, he could have stolen even more bags if he had gotten on base at a higher clip.

As a result of his struggles at the plate in 2025, Victor Scott II has taken the offseason to help step up his game. He, along with his manager Oliver Marmol, has high expectations for the almost 25-year-old center fielder.

"Not having the success (Scott) wanted last year is a big part of this because he got to experience it, but the way he processes not having the success he wanted is key for me," said Marmol. "This is a guy that after every game has his notes. He wants to review the game. He wants to review the plays he was in. He wants to review the plays he wasn't in to learn from other guys. He wants to review all his at-bats.

"He's mature enough to keep his confidence and know the adjustments needed in order to kind of come back a little bit and do what he needs to do."

Victor Scott II and Oli Marmol have high expectations for the St. Louis Cardinals center fielder heading into the 2026 season.

After taking about a month off of intense baseball work, Victor Scott II has spent the last two months working diligently on improving his offensive game. He started work in November by focusing on his hitting.

"I like to see the areas where I can go, but I told (the Cardinals) I wanted to come back a totally different player," said Scott. "I knew I had two calling cards: the defense and the speed aspect, but I'm not complete without my offense."

Scott, an alumnus of West Virginia, started his research and training at his alma mater. West Virginia recently completed a state-of-the-art facility with all sorts of hitting and pitching tools within. Their Baseball Biomechanics and Performance Center is outfitted with cutting-edge performance tech, including Trackman, force plates, motion capture systems, and other advanced data analysis tools. Scott decided to go back to his college roots for an offensive reset, and he enjoyed the feedback and information he got in return.

"I went to West Virginia for a motion capture and a force plate testing just to see how my body was moving to get a further look ahead on this offensive stuff," said Scott of his visit to his alma mater. "We found out some of my movements were kind of inefficient and didn't really help me with being adjustable."

After finding out this information, Scott made a plan with the Cardinals and the biomechanist at West Virginia to help improve these facets of his offensive game. "We started crawling before we walked with this whole swing. We didn't want to just jump straight into hitting off the machine. We started doing a lot of movement prep and trying to get my hips to rotate the right way, trying to create better shin angles, a firmer front ankle, so I could better use energy."

Hopefully Victor Scott II is able to take these things he's learned at West Virginia into the 2026 season and become a more complete player. There's little to no concern regarding his defense and baserunning. If he can become a league-average hitter thanks to his offseason work, Scott could become a top-tier center fielder in no time.