Cardinals hope to catch lightning in a bottle with newest staff addition

The St. Louis Cardinals made headlines on the trade market last week when they became the first team to sell off major assets. At the same time, the organization continued undergoing a shift within their coaching personnel.

Cardinals promoted hitting coach Casey Chenoweth from Double-A to the big leagues

Among those front office and field staff moves was the promotion of Casey Chenoweth to the St. Louis bench. After serving as the hitting coach for the Texas League Champion Springfield Cardinals, Chenoweth will take on the role of assistant hitting coach for the big league club. The former Indy Ball infielder has been in the Cardinals organization since 2023, when he was with High-A Palm Beach before moving to Springfield in 2024. Chenoweth, 33, oversaw the progression of multiple top prospects during his time with the organization and figures to bring some consistency in message.

Since Chenoweth has worked with many of the Cardinals' up-and-coming players, he has already established a relationship with those prospects. As they progress throughout the minors, these players work with many different instructors and hear plenty of voices at each stop, but the promotion of Chenoweth can hopefully ease that transition. On his resume, fans can see that he has worked with top prospect JJ Wetherholt, sleeper prospect Joshua Baez, exciting catcher Leonardo Bernal, and Nathan Church, who made his major league debut this season.

This year, Chenoweth saw massive progress from Baez and Ramon Mendoza, each of whom had bounce-back seasons after underwhelming seasons prior. Springfield saw improvements from his first year as the team's hitting coach and was top three in many offensive categories. For each of the past two years, Springfield had the fewest strikeouts in the Texas League and put up a team OPS of at least .714, 20 points higher than the major league squad.

In his role as assistant hitting coach, Chenoweth will have the opportunity to work with main instructor Brant Brown and be another voice for the offense. As a team, the Cardinals are hoping for rebound campaigns from multiple players, while also expecting some prospects to take a step forward. Without knowing how involved the new assistant hitting coach will be, it can be reasonably assumed that he will have plenty of individual conversations with each hitter on the team. With players like Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker looking to become more consistent and JJ Wetherholt potentially making the leap to the majors, Chenoweth has plenty on his plate.

Regardless of what the Cardinals opt to do with the players on their major league roster, seeing the promotion of Casey Chenoweth shows that the organization values his opinion enough to move him up the ranks in an important time for prospect development. Brant Brown will still be the man in charge of the offensive approach, but having additional hands on deck could be what Brown needs to help unlock certain hitters this season.