Who is most to blame for the Cardinals' hitting woes the last few seasons?

If you've watched the St. Louis Cardinals the last few years, it's hard not to notice how mediocre they have been offensively.

The beginning of the 2025 season looked like the tide was turning, as Brant Brown had the Cardinals' offense producing like a top 10 unit in the game for a while, and various young players on the roster were taking steps forward in their development.

And then Lars Nootbaar fell off a cliff, and Ivan Herrera missed significant time, and Brendan Donovan's toe injury caused his Silver Slugger production to drop off, and Jordan Walker couldn't hit a baseball to save his life, and Masyn Winn came down to earth, and Nolan Arenado looked like Monstars stole his hitting ability, and...well, you get the picture.

For three years now, the Cardinals' offensive production has been less than the sum of its parts. That is probably one of the biggest indictments that someone can have on an area of a baseball team. When the talent on paper looks better than the results on the field, well, something is really wrong.

Each year, various excuses could be made for the Cardinals' offense, but at the end of the day, they have not been good enough. The Cardinals shook things up this past offseason by firing hitting coach Turner Ward and hiring Brant Brown, but their overall numbers actually took a dip this year. Sure, Alec Burleson and Ivan Herrera established themselves as legit bats, but Walker, Gorman, and Nootbaar had extremely dissapointing years at the plate, and youngsters like Winn, Victor Scott II, and Thomas Saggese failed to take significant steps forward.

As I said earlier, this has been a year-long decline that the Cardinals have been experiencing. Back in 2021 and 2022, with Jeff Albert at the helm as their hitting coach, the Cardinals' offense was taking steps forward, with 2022 being the year it really all came together. Even after Albert left following the 2022 season, the Cardinals maintained a top-seven offense in baseball during the first half of the 2023 season, but since then, things have cratered.

Here is how the Cardinals offense has ranked over the last five seasons:

2021: .244 BA (11th), .313 (19th), .412 SLG (13th), 95 wRC+ (15th), .312 wOBA (17th), .320 xwOBA (13th), 198 HR (15th), 706 R (20th)

2022: .252 BA (10th), .325 OBP (4th), .420 SLG (7th), 112 wRC+ (6th), .326 wOBA (5th), .317 xwOBA (9th), 197 HR (9th), 772 R (5th)

2023: .250 BA (15th), .326 OBP (11th), .416 SLG (14th), 103 wRC+ (13th), .322 wOBA (13th), .333 xwOBA (4th), 209 HR (12th), 719 R (19th)

2024: .248 BA (11th), .312 OBP (14th), .392 SLG (19th), 98 wRC+ (18th), .307 wOBA (16th), .310 xwOBA (17th), 165 HR (23rd), 672 R (22nd)

2025: .245 BA (17th), .314 OBP (18th), .379 SLG (27th), 96 wRC+ (19th), .304 wOBA (23rd), .316 xwOBA (23rd), 148 HR (29th), 689 R (19th)

2025 represented the worst ranking the offense has had in AVG, OBP, SLG, wRC+, xOBA, xwOBA, and HR over the last five seasons. Things have gotten worse, not better.

So, who is to blame? You might think I'm ready to point the finger at Brant Brown, but in all honesty, the true answer is a much harder pill to swallow.

Who is most to blame for the Cardinals' hitting woes in recent years? The young bats who have not taken a step forward.

There is a lot to blame the Cardinals' front office and coaching staff over the last number of years, but when it comes to the depth of struggles their offense has had the last three years, the young bats need to look at themselves in the mirror.

Yes, the veterans played a significant role as well. Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt were paid to produce like superstars, and they were nothing close to that. During Goldschmidt's final two years with St. Louis, he posted a .257/.333/.430 slash line, which amounted to a .763 OPS and 111 wRC+. Arenado has been even worse in his last three seasons with the Cardinals, slashing .261/.312/.413, which was a .725 OPS and 99 wRC+.

Had those two produced like they were supposed to, things would have looked much better for the Cardinals. But the Cardinals have been looking to the future the last two years, meaning their young bats are what they are most concerned with, and frankly, it hasn't been good enough.

Ivan Herrera has produced like a star his entire big league career at the plate, so he is exempt from this conversation. Alec Burleson took a major step forward this year and isn't at fault either. Brendan Donovan has been great for the Cardinals, and his main issue is just needing to stay healthier so he can keep producing like a top-of-the-lineup bat. But outside of those three, things have been frustrating across the board.

Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman are the face of these struggles, and the duo of Dylan Carlson and Tyler O'Neill are the long-lost brothers who don't get as much flak anymore because they are gone now.

Walker was arguably the top prospect in baseball prior to the 2023 season, and while the Cardinals made a mistake with how they handled his development that season, that can't continue to be the excuse for why things have not worked out. Walker, after being demoted at the end of April in 2023 to fix his glaring ground ball problem and then recalled to St. Louis in June, posted a .277/.346/.455 slash line in 387 plate appearances, good for a .802 OPS and 120 wRC+. Walker figured things out over a long stretch of baseball and looked like the future star many thought he would be.

That would not be the case. In 2024, his OPS plummeted to .619 with a 72 wRC+, and regressed even further in 2025 with a .584 OPS and 66 wRC+. Those are unacceptable marks for a player as talented as Walker, and while he is still young and has plenty of time to turn things around, he has himself to blame for his woes.

Gorman, like Walker, gave the Cardinals a large sample size of production in 2023 that proved he can produce in the Majors. After an above-average rookie year in 2022, Gorman slashed .236/.328/.478 with 27 home runs and 76 RBI in just 464 plate appearances in 2023. His 118 wRC+, .805 OPS, and .241 ISO as a 23-year-old were super encouraging, and the Cardinals just hoped he could cut down a bit on his 31.9 K% in future years.

Well, in 2024, it skyrocketed to a historically bad 37.6 K%, and he regressed to a .203/.271/.400 hitter with an 87 wRC+ on the year. While there were some bright spots in 2025, he still posted just an 88 wRC+ in the same number of plate appearances as he had in 2024. With 1581 plate appearances in his big league career now, time is ticking on his future with the club.

Nootbaar's story is also as frustrating as theirs. From 2022 to 2024, he posted a 123 wRC+, 118 wRC+, and 114 wRC+ in consecutive seasons, and his underlying metrics continued to point to more success to come. Health always seemed to be the main issue with Nootbaar, so if you told me that he would play in 135 games in 2025 like he ended up doing, I would have told you he would have a career year.

Instead, it was by far the worst year he's had in St. Louis, slashing .234/.325/.361 with a 96 wRC+ in 583 plate appearances. Now Nootbaar enters the Cardinals' first offseason under Chaim Bloom with another significant injury and is coming off the worst production of his big league career.

Winn and Scott were not supposed to be bat first options, so their slow progression at the plate is far less concerning, but still adds to the conversation. After posting a 104 wRC+ as a rookie last year, Winn dipped down to a 91 wRC+, and it is concerning jpw worn down he has gotten physically as the seasons go on. Having recurring back issues and a significant knee surgery already in his career has me at least a bit worried for his long-term trajectory at the plate. Scott did make a major jump from a 40 wRC+ hitter in 2024 to a 76 wRC+ hitter in 2025, but his long-term upside is likely as a bottom-of-the-order bat.

And as I alluded earlier, there are many ghosts of the Cardinals' past that haunt their lineup. O'Neill went from being a top 10 MVP vote getter and long-term middle of the order bat in 2021 to off the Cardinals before the 2024 season. Carlson went from one of the top prospects in baseball and an exciting young outfielder to struggling to find a role on any big league roster. Oh, and all of these struggles have come while names like Randy Arozarena and Adolis Garcia find success elsewhere.

It's the Cardinals' young bats that are most to blame for the Cardinals' issues over the last few years, and they also remain the key to turning things around long-term. If Walker and/or Gorman figure things out, the outlook of this lineup is vastly different. If Nootbaar rebounds, that helps a ton, too. If Winn, Scott, or other young bats take steps forward, that lengthens the lineup. And of course, better health from Herrera or Donovan would go a long way.

Prospects like JJ Wetherholt, Rainiel Rodriguez, Joshua Baez, Leonardo Bernal, and others play a role in this as well. Once the Cardinals have a true core of young bats they can rely on, they can add those outside pieces on top of it, and truly begin to take off as a productive unit in the sport.

Yes, there is plenty of blame to go around for the Cardinals offensive woes, but until the young core takes control of this team's destiny, it's going to continue to be an issue.