ST. LOUIS -- His bat loaded with unquestioned power -- but also plenty of swing and miss -- Cardinals slugger Nolan Gorman has sacrificed some of his bat speed in favor of making more contact to cut down on an unacceptable strikeout rate from 2024.
The hope now for the Cardinals is that with Gorman expected to get more playing time in the coming days that he can take more swings like the one that led to his first home run in more than two months on Tuesday.
Vaulted into the lineup with Jordan Walker on the 10-day injured list with a left wrist injury and Iván Herrera earning more catching assignments, Gorman started at designated hitter and knotted the game early on with a two-run homer to left-center. The Cardinals would go on to lose, 10-7, after the Royals scored six times in the fifth inning, but Gorman’s two-hit night and opposite-field blast qualified as a breakthrough moment for the club on Tuesday at Busch Stadium.
Gorman, who has been working hard in side sessions and with his cage work, thinks he found a groove with his swing lately and he is going to stick to that style to provide some much-needed production.
“The biggest thing is trusting what I’m doing and not trying to change things with how few and far between at-bats come right now,” Gorman said before homering for the second time this season and the first time since March 30. “At this point, it’s just trying to work on what I’ve been doing and not searching for something if something goes wrong in the game. It’s about trusting the process and understanding that my swing will work.”
The Cardinals went into 2025 wanting to use the season to provide a runway of opportunity for young and unproven players, namely former first-round picks Walker and Gorman. While the former has gotten plenty of at-bats and playing time and has flashed much-improved defense, the latter saw his playing time severely limited when the Cardinals were unable to trade star third baseman Nolan Arenado in the offseason. The healthy return of Herrera and a recent hot streak by Alec Burleson -- who also homered on Tuesday -- has also cut into Gorman’s DH opportunities.
However, that should be changing in the coming weeks with the Cardinals beginning a stretch of 13 games in as many days and 29 games in 30 days. Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol plans to use his bench more to spell starters, meaning that Gorman should get more chances to build some rhythm with his rebuilt swing.
“If you allow him to play more, you’ll see him step on the gas a little more, meaning more power,” Marmol said of Gorman. “Some of that contact is being traded for power at the moment. Especially if you’re not playing every day. The more at-bats you get, the faster you allow yourself to drive.”
Gorman drove a 93.8 mph sinker from Michael Lorenzen out of the park in the second inning with his 403-foot smash barely clearing the glove of Kyle Isbel and the wall in left-center. One of the corrections Gorman has tried to make to his swing is thinking more about driving the ball the opposite way or back up the middle instead of being a dead pull hitter.
The progress he’s made while working with new hitting coach Brant Brown was apparent on the home run ball, which left his bat at 105.7 mph. While Gorman’s bat speed has dropped from 73.2 mph in 2024 to 70.7 mph on average in 2025, that’s helped his strikeout rate drop (from 37.6% to 27.1%) and his chase rate decline (from 30.3% to 24.8%).
“I’m locked in when I’m driving the ball the other way, anywhere from left-center to right-center,” Gorman said. “If I’m staying through that area, I’m in a pretty good spot.”
Gorman’s progress was evident during last week’s series in Baltimore where the Cardinals won two of three games. His swings looked much more under control there and featured not only two line-drive singles back up the middle, but also the first triple of his career when he drove the ball deep to right-center.
Marmol, who is trying to balance playing time opportunities with Walker and Gorman with the steady pursuit of winning on a nightly basis, loved seeing Gorman unleash his best swing on Tuesday.
“It was encouraging, and he’s been working hard,” Marmol said. “This next stretch of games, it’s going to be an opportunity for him to get more playing time because we don’t have the days off. But it was good for him to go out there Day 1 and feel good about his swing and hit a homer.”