- This topic has 2,485 replies, 69 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Shady
If Gorman doesn’t start making more consistent contact. Why not send him to Memphis to try to work things out? Bring up the hot-hitting Prieto and give him a try at 2B.
I would rather they just bring Nootbaar up to play LF, Gorman goes down, and Donovan shifts to 2B.
Carpenter and Siani are hitting well enough that CF and DH aren’t large holes in the lineup.
Arenado’s 2023 by months is a good look back. He was cruising along w/.900+ ops for May /June / July.
August .705 and Sept .505
2024: .689, .687, .702Injury related? I can’t remember, but it’s July again. Where’d the .900 ops go? It’s been a year.
Gorman is not gonna fix the Cardinals! He has over 1,000 at bats and he just can’t make enough contact to make his power play! Even in college he had a hard time making contact! If you look at Gorman as a left handed DH who will hit 7th or 8th and bat 210 with 25 homers you might get that!
If the rumors were true that Seattle was willing to trade Logan Gilbert for Gorman we really screwed up not doing it!
Gorman is a curious case.
Last season at age 23 he had an
.805 OPS with 27 HR in just 406 ABs.And earlier this season he went on a tear. Actually, as horrible as he was in June, he still leads the team in home runs and is third in RBI.
Point is…the talent is there. Is he hurt? Is he a mental case? A substance abuse issue? Or would better and/or different coaching bring him back to where he should be?
It’s very curious. He didn’t just forget how to hit in June. My guess is a complete lack of confidence. Maybe a couple weeks off to clear his head would help? Couldn’t hurt.
Good points and open questions, AdM. Those who suggest Gorman “never learned how to hit” ignore his positives. We can all agree that he is definitely in a deep slump. Where we differ is in what to do about it.
Maybe Gorman needs a Jim Rome slump buster. Joking aside, it does look mental and I think he has acknowledged that by having hired a mental coach. Gorman certainly is talented, but he needs to go up confident and with a clear mind.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5600882/2024/07/02/cardinals-tommy-edman-lars-nootbaar/
This is worth reading.
If i had time i would read thru this thread at all the ways to fix the Cardinals. My own replies would probably make me laugh the hardest.
I’m an honest guy and never want to be hypocritical. So i will make it clear I was 100% behind a rebuild. Not complete but i was’nt for signing Sonny Gray and all for moving any of our veteran players. Walker Winn Gorman were the only guys I wouldnt have traded.
So here on July 10 I find myself taking a day off of work to watch a team I’m fully invested in. Isn’t baseball a funny game. We were rapidly on our way back down the toilet. Now we are perhaps a player or 2 away from serious contention. And the way they’ve done it is astounding. If you could have looked at Goldy and Arenados production decline, who would have believed we were 4 games behind the division lead and 23 in the league in runs scored with a negative rs/ra of around 30.
I have watched enough of this to understand that we are an injury or 2 to our pitching staff from everything falling apart. But I’ve also watched enough of this to understand this team has gelled and has that special something aside from metrics and anylitics that could carry us into a fairytale postseason. So maybe we need a new thread “What’s it gonna take to keep the Cardinals rolling”I figured this thread was worth digging out.
I see where Gorman, now in his third season, may well catch and pass Tony Gwynn’s career total of 434 strike outs amassed over his 20 year career. Gorman is at 400 I think. He has averaged over a K per game, so it just depends on how much he plays the rest of the year.
Gwynn spent a couple years in the minors and I was wondering what they would have talked to him about back then. I’ll bet launch angle wasn’t mentioned a single time. They didn’t have the fancy booth where they stick sensors all over you and dial in your biomechanical optimization. I doubt anybody ever aimed a radar gun at him. It was probably more like what major league pitchers are going to be doing to him and what he’s going to do about it.
I think my current answer to the question is to clean house from the top down hiring as many high level people from organizations like the Astros and the Brewers as possible
Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, and Cubs people may not work out since they have way more money to work with.
I think we also probably need a new owner but…..
I think the Cardinals used to self generate their own knowledgeable people that would tend to get poached but not any more. So, yeah, they are going to have to do the poaching.
With Gorman, I am sure his confidence is shot and that is a big issue. As a coach I would work with him in just meeting the ball – hitting line drives right back at the pitcher. Just do that over and over in BP and in the cage. Don’t try to yank the pitch – don’t worry about launch angle or any of that. Just work on driving that ball right back where it came. The raw power is there and the home runs would come, but he needs to just relax and hit. If the pitch is on the outer half, go with it.
And looking at his stance, I would suggest he try crouching just a bit. He’s kind of up and back and seems to sort of flail away. Maybe get down just a bit and focus on seeing the ball and meeting it square right down the middle.
Walker’s stance is similar in that he stands back, and has to adjust down to the pitch. I would get him more balanced and down a bit. I think both guys have been taught to stay back and upper cut, and it is hurting their contact more than it is giving them added power.
Burly used to do that alot, stiff legged and upright. Watch that front knee now. He can dig it out, and by lowering his base, he increases the upright angle of his swing naturally. More legs and knees is where the swing starts. I think Carlson is stiff legged too. He’s really dependent on his top half.
I think Gorman has had a long enough look. The positives are solidly outweighed by the negatives. It’s time to let that bird fly away.
One thing about trading Gorman, it would be a sure fire way to cure his slump. He would go .275/.360/.550 in a different uniform. And probably better than that if he was traded to Tampa for an old reliever. 🙂
I don’t think there’s anything more Gorman can do in AAA. Prime trade candidate in the off-season.
I wouldn’t be shocked to see the Cards pull an Anaheim and put a couple guys on waivers to save some cash towards the end of the month. I see 3-4 prime candidate’s with one being on the DL currently.
If I were a betting man, I’d guess Gorman and Herrera will not be on the roster in 2025. With Donovan, Saggesse and several other capable guys behind Gorman, it might be time to move on.
Contreras and Pages in STL
Crooks in Memphis
Bernal in SF
ETCI just don’t see where Herrera fits at this point, and would be much more valuable to an AL team with a young top 3 starter up for trade……
Most of the proposals to get rid of Arenado this winter had Gorman taking over at 3B. Now what? He couldn’t even stick as a platoon player.
Gorman is still only 24 years old. Don’t know why he regressed this year after getting off to a good start. I don’t believe they’re going to give up on him, though. IMHO, he was mishandled this year. He should have been sent down a month or two ago. Instead, they kept sending up to the plate to strike out time after time and erode his own confidence.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.