Cardinals fans may need to eat crow after giving up on this young bat too soon

Yohel Pozo stole the spotlight in the St. Louis Cardinals' epic 8-6 win over the Chicago Cubs on Friday afternoon, but it was Nolan Gorman's contributions that point to a much larger revelation for the club.

Gorman may actually be "back", and there are a lot of fans who will need to eat crow on their disdain for the 25-year-old if that is the case.

Nolan Gorman's resurgent season will cause a lot of Cardinals fans to eat their words if this continues

Gorman was one of the main drivers of the Cardinals' win over the Cubs on Sunday, going 2-5 with a home run, two runs batted in, and two runs scored. This isn't a one-off performance from Gorman; he's been hot at the plate for quite some time now.

All offseason, the Cardinals touted Gorman and Jordan Walker as their poster children for "runway" in 2025, and yet, even the Cardinals seemed to give up a bit on Gorman earlier in the year. No, they weren't throwing him in the metaphorical trash like many fans called for, but they did put him on the bench to begin the year, and until recently, it was like pulling teeth to get him in the lineup consistently.

Well, after spending the offseason working with new hitting coach Brant Brown on overhauling his swing, then struggling to find it in real game action in both spring training and the early parts of the season, the Cardinals continued to work with Gorman behind the scenes, and that work is finally paying off.

Since May 26th, Gorman has appeared in 30 games and had 108 plate appearances, slashing .250/.333/.490 (.823 OPS) with six home runs and four additional extra base hits to go along with 16 RBI and 14 runs scored over that stretch. Gorman's 30.6 K% is still not ideal by any means, but he's walking a lot (11.1 BB%) and doing damage when he touches the baseball (.240 ISO), resulting in a 130 wRC+ over that stretch.

The funny thing about a runway season is that, well, more runway will continue to define this story for everyone watching. If Gorman continues to take advantage of the opportunities in front of him, he's going to find himself playing every day and back in the good graces of the organization and fanbase. But if this is just a hot stretch from the powerful lefty, then it will be hard to convince people that he's going to figure things out.

During this stretch, Gorman's hard hit% (34.9%) is back to where it was when he was mashing baseballs in 2022 and 2023, but perhaps even more encouraging is the return of line drives to his game. In 2023, the year Gorman truly broke out at the plate, he posted a 23.1% line drive percentage, but during this stretch at the plate, he's hitting line drives 27.4% of the time (and that number is at 24.2% for the entire season). He's also posting easily the lowest ground ball percentage of his career (25%), meaning 75% of his batted balls are in the air. That's a great thing for someone like Gorman, who can do a whole lot of damage when he turns on pitches and when he hits them the other way.

Fans are sick of hearing the word "patience" out of John Mozeliak's mouth, but when it comes to Nolan Gorman, each passing day makes that patience like the right call. Will it sustain? Well, that's what the rest of the season will tell us.