***Official 2024 STL Cardinals Thread ***

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Ocotillo

Fangraphs has his barrel rate at 11.9%, launch angle at 12.8 and fly ball at 45.2%.

He still hits too many ground balls, but what's sinking his performance is his dismal 4.8% line drive rate that will eventually normalize.

He's only 21 and had a wRC+ of 116 in a meh rookie year. Nobody with any smarts in the industry is writing him off.

The poor line drive rate isn't an accident.

He pulls off everything. So his timing has to be perfect to drive a ball and even then he's not getting his lower half into it so it'll be a struck liner into RC field.

He leaves almost his entire pull potential on the table because his mechanics are a damn trainwreck. His top and bottom half couldn't be any more out of whack if he tried.

No, that's not something you just wait on regression to fix.

He had to be sent down. And they HAVE to take a more direct approach with him. If that means burying his ass in AA until he gives you a 100 PA rolling average with a groundball rate below 35% then so be it. You absolutely cannot bring him back up until he demonstrates fundamental changes in his approach.

This isn't tenable long-term. You can't take a guy with truly top 5% raw power, quick hands and a solid batting eye and say "Well...Casey Kotchman wasn't a bad player...."

They've already missed a window to trade him and let someone else do the spadework. The possibility of dealing him for someone like Kirby was last spring when he gave you the bird the first time you asked him to do it. Now you have no choice but to pull out the paddle, try some tough love and go full on 'Checkers or Wreckers' with him. You develop him into a star or you end up non-tendering him in 4 seasons.

There's no more room for middle ground.