Good grief. IF the coaches are telling a BIG, STRONG 6'-6" player that's his swing plane needs to be an uppercut to hit home runs, he doesn't stand a chance. I haven't seen any of his minor league at-bats, but when he started the season it sure looked to me like he was constantly hitting the ball off the end and underside of the bat. With his size he will 'do damage' just by trying to make solid line-drive contact. It's what he did his rookie year!
2023 stats: 420AB's, 16 HR's, 19 doubles, 2 triples, .787 OPS.
VERY comparable to what Burleson has done at this point this year. And he's getting accolades!
Cardinals coaching has broke what didn't need fixing.
Walker had a solid rookie season and showed promise and he still has an extremely high ceiling but this really undersells what Burleson has done this year.
316 AB, 17 HRs, 14 doubles and an .814 OPS. He, and Winn, have literally carried the offense while the guys that were expected to do it have been awful.
Cardinals coaching didn’t break him. Maybe he could’ve stayed in the majors and somehow gone from pounding balls into the ground at 100 mph and turned that into line drives like he did after is demotion and call-up last year, but he’s gone down a level and really struggled.
Burleson has always had great exit velo, barrel rate and xBA before this year with subpar counting numbers and he’s figured it out at 25.
Good chance walker does the same with reps but going down to AAA and struggling like he has is certainly a concern.