Masyn Winn's performance is about toughness, not regression for Cardinals shortstop

At the beginning of the season, the entire Redbird Rants staff made our preseason predictions. One thing we voted on was who would be the team MVP. My pick was Masyn Winn. With the unbelievable plays he makes with his gold glove and his arm, and the leadership role he was taking on, I thought this was a logical choice. This would be his third season in the major leagues, and I was sure his hitting would improve enough this year to make him one of the best shortstops in the league. 

As of June 5, he is hitting .234, has two home runs, has a higher strikeout rate than at any time in his major league career, and a wRC+ of 83. And his defense has also slipped. 

If you just look at his hitting so far, he has some very interesting numbers. His walk rate has gone up, but the entire league has seen an increase in walks. Mainly because of ABS. ABS has also contributed to the league strikeout percentage going down. Winn has seen his strikeout rate go from 19% in 2025 to 21.5% this year. 

He is not swinging at pitches outside the zone. His bat speed is not as fast as last year, but it’s the same as it was in 2024 when he had his best season. Even with that same bat speed, his exit velocity is down by 1.6 mph, the lowest it's been in two years. So we have to keep diving deeper. 

With Statcast and FanGraphs and all the data we can gather from other sites, we can see differences in the results from year to year, but without context they have very little meaning. I can tell you that his average is down twenty points from last year and down thirty points from 2024. You can also see that his strikeouts are up, so if he fixes his strikeout problem, the average will go back up. Problem solved, right? Not really. 

With Masyn Winn, it’s a bit more nuanced. This is not something like Jordan Walker finally getting the launch angle figured out and that one thing unlocks everything else. I already said he is not wailing away at pitches outside the zone, or having a fall-off in bat speed. This is not just a matter of pitch recognition. His OBP is the same as last year, but his slug is off by 40 points. 

What affects the slug is the power numbers. If we can find a difference here, then this is where his problem is. His hard-hit rate is about the same as last year and, all things being equal, his slug should not be dropping this much. One thing that jumps out, though, is that he is not pulling the ball. He has gone from a 40% to a 35% pull rate. 

Going deeper, I found something that could explain what is going on with Winn. With these contradicting numbers, there had to be something that would be an anomaly. With bat speed and pitch recognition the same, there must be some reason why he can't pull the ball. Something that would just be so different from past years that it might be a clue. 

The last three years when he stood in the box he averaged 33 inches deep, 22.3 inches off the plate, and his feet spread 14.4 inches apart. This year he is over an inch deeper in the box, 1.7 inches more off the plate, and his feet are 3.8 inches farther apart. The biggest change in his stance, however, is his angle. Over the last three years, he had an average open stance angle of 52 degrees. This year the open stance angle is 39 degrees. 

If his hitting was so bad he felt he needed to change his stance this much, that may make sense to try something new. Remember, I said without context, numbers have very little meaning. If you look at this one change, however, with the background of a player who has knee issues, it makes sense. 

Last year, he played with a tear in his right meniscus. He had surgery for that. Then, this year in April, he was hit by a pitch on his left knee, and then in May, he tweaked that left knee again while trying to beat out a double play. 

A torn/recovering meniscus on the right side limits his ability to sit back, load, and drive explosively off his back leg to generate raw exit velocity. The left leg is the landing and bracing mechanism. If a hitter has soreness, bruising, or even just on the left side, they will instinctively avoid a hard, violent front-side plant because bracing against a compromised leg hurts.

Playing hurt for the Cardinals is impacting Masyn Winn's performance

What can a player like Winn do to compensate? Move off the plate and change the angle you start your swing. If you do that, then you no longer need that rotation, and you are not putting that much torque on your legs. With that shorter swing and changing the angle he is starting from, however, he needs to rely on barreling the ball because he is no longer getting that power from his legs. 

The fielding is also affected. He has outs above average (OAA) of one, and his fielding percentage has dropped 17 points from last year to .977, ranking him at 106 (20th for shortstops). Last year he had three errors. This year he already has five. You put the same strain on those knees in the field with a quick first step, the pivot, and then getting his legs set under him to make those 90 MPH throws to first base. 

If these measures are being taken to reduce the strain on his knees and, by doing that, keeping him healthy, that is one thing. It’s another if this is because he is still hurt. The one thing to monitor is playing time. In 2024, when he was completely healthy, he played in 150 games. That was 92%. This year, when health is a question, he is still playing in 92% of the games.  I really don't see how this can be good in the long run.

The Cardinals have a history that isn’t the best when dealing with injuries. In 2023, Tommy Edman was having an awful time at the plate and missed time in July of that year. The Cardinals blamed it on wrist inflammation. In January 2024, John Mozeliak let it slip that Edman had surgery on that wrist back in October 2023.

It happened with Nolan Gorman last year, having severe back issues, and the team blamed it on timing, and then days later they placed him on the IL. 

My conclusion is that instead of wondering why he is having an off year, we should instead wonder where he finds the toughness to go out and play this game every day. 

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