June 8, 2026: Changes are afoot in center field, plus a quick rotation note

The troublesome bottom of the lineup has now been fully remade

Well, that’s more like it. The Cardinals enjoy Monday’s off day coming off a three-game home sweep of the Reds -- a sweep that included a 10-run uprising on Friday. Jordan Walker appears to have emerged from his second notable power slump of the season, and his ongoing capacity to do just that continues to raise confidence that he’s found a new level at the plate on a sustainable basis. Lars Nootbaar’s return from bilateral heel surgery has given the lineup some sorely needed length and solidified the left field situation.

Speaking of which, Noot announced himself loudly on Saturday with this clutch bomb:

Yes, the vibes are improving once again, as the Cardinals have won four in a row overall, and Tuesday begins a stretch that will seem them play 12 of their next 19 games against teams with losing records. The only two winning teams they play during those 19 games -- the Padres and Diamondbacks -- both have worse run differentials than the Cardinals. Needless to say, that’s a near-term opportunity to solidify their wild card status as the All-Star break and then the Aug. 3 trade deadline begin to creep into view.

That brings us to this week’s temperature check ...

• Record: 35-28, second place in NL Central, in top wild card spot

• Run differential: minus-2

• Third-order record: 31.2-31.8

• FanGraphs playoff odds: 39.5%

• Strength of schedule: .508 opponents’ average winning percentage, fifth in MLB

• Remaining strength of schedule: .509 opponents’ average winning percentage, eighth in MLB

• Average home attendance per game: 28,284; 17th in MLB

Yes, friends, that’s a 90-win pace. Now let’s jump in ...

Before the team departed for the Tuesday series opener against the Mets in Queens, the Cardinals made the decision to option center fielder Victor Scott II to Memphis in favor of Nathan Church, who just wrapped up his recovery from a shoulder strain and concluded a brief minor league rehab assignment. According to Derrick Goold, Church will be active and available for Tuesday’s game.

The return of Nootbaar as the every-day left fielder forced the decision in center, and given Scott’s struggles at the plate this outcome aligns with what I’ve been saying in this space -- that Church was in line to be the primary in center once he and Noot were both healthy. As for Scott, the results just haven’t been there in this, his age-25 campaign.

In 184 plate appearances in 2026, Scott has a slash line of .194/.276/.258, which comes to a measly OPS+ of 55. With an xwOBA of just .273 -- putting him in the ninth percentile of MLB hitters in this important metric -- Scott was similarly punchless at the batted-ball level. Scott this season did notably increase his ground-ball percentage. That’s not a good thing for most hitters, but with Scott’s lack of power and elite speed, his case was different. Still, he batted just .196 on ground balls, bunts excluded. The league as a whole in 2026 is batting .239 on non-bunt ground balls. That approach, to the extent it was intentional, didn’t work. It did, however, give Scott as many GIDPs, three, as he had all of last season in almost 300 more plate appearances. To bottom-line it, a player with Scott’s abundance of speed and lack of pop can’t get on base less than 30% of the time and be playable. It’s also worth noting his base-stealing took a step back in 2026.

That brings us to Church. He perhaps doesn’t quite have Scott’s range in the outfield, but his significantly better throwing arm -- one of the best throwing arms in the entire organization -- makes the defensive value of both players something like a wash. As for the bat, this is Church’s clear edge. Across his sample of 156 plate appearances this season, Church has a line of .247/.282/.390 with five home runs. That’s good for an OPS+ of 91. That’s not ideal, but it’s far better than what Scott has provided this year. Thus far, Church’s top-line production is almost exactly in line with his xwOBA, so there’s no cause for excessive pessimism or optimism to be found within the underlying fundamentals.

It should be noted that Church in 2025 with St. Louis fared poorly over 27 games and 65 plate appearances. This season, though, he’s added more than a full mile per hour of bat speed, which has helped him catch the ball out front more. As a result, Church has more than doubled his rate of pulled fly balls -- the surest path to hitting for power -- and according to Statcast his ideal attack angle rate has jumped from 31.6% last season to 40.9% in 2026. Church has also drastically decreased his groundball rate from a year ago. At that same time, Church’s stance is a bit more closed off than it was in 2025, and he’s also setting up just a bit closer to the pitcher. All this leads one to suspect that Church’s progress with the bat in 2026 has a structural underpinning.

Church may also benefit from more regular playing time and a more defined defensive role (and one at his natural position). So let’s assume he’s able to maintain his pre-injury level of offensive production upon his return. Consider:

• Church in 2026: .295 wOBA

• MLB left fielders in 2026: .320 wOBA

• MLB center fielders in 2026: .305 wOBA

Center is of course a more premium position than left, and as such Church the hitter will compare more favorably to his up-the-middle peer group. If he continues to produce in such a manner, then he’s going to be an average-ish hitter by positional standards who projects as a pronounced asset in the field. The sum of those two things is “useful player.” On balance, that’s not something the Cardinals have had in center field in 2026.

Now let’s peep Oli Marmol’s possible go-to lineup starting Tuesday:

1. JJ Wetherholt, 2B

2. Iván Herrera, DH (Marmol needs to find his way to some rest for Herrera soon and also consider elevating Walker to this spot.)

3. Alec Burleson, 1B

4. Jordan Walker, RF

5. Lars Nootbaar, LF

6. Masyn Winn, SS

7. Nolan Gorman, 3B

8. Nathan Church, CF

9. Jimmy Crooks, C

Maybe you drop Winn to seventh and elevate a left-handed bat to six in order to complicate that lefty lane at the bottom of the lineup. The point is that this should be a much improved bottom of the order relative to what was in place prior to the Crooks promotion, which preceded the returns of Nootbaar and Church. In the very recent past, the Cardinals were lugging around offensive liabilities at four different positions -- left, center, catcher, and third. Now, potentially and project-ably, three of those four are no longer liabilties. That’s useful churn on the part of the front office, and nothing about it has compromised the long-term vision.

Not to lose the thread here, but I’m very open to the idea that José Fermín should supplant Gorman as the regular third baseman. I’m not sure Bryan Torres has the arm for the left side of the infield, otherwise he could be the primary if Gorman continues to be a sinkhole offensively. At the very least, there should be a strict Gorman-Fermín platoon at the hot corner. Elsewhere, against tough lefty starters perhaps you slide Nootbaar -- in light of how good he looks on those surgically repaired heels -- over to center and put Nelson Velázquez in left. Fermín’s also looked capable enough in his 15 innings in center this season, so he could man the eight against lefties on occasion. Or maybe you let Church test his mettle every day regardless of the opposing pitcher’s handedness. There are options, but Velázquez needs to be somewhere in the lineup when a left-hander is starting.

One more note on Scott. I think it’s noteworthy that they optioned him to Memphis rather then demoting him while keeping him on the active roster. I increasingly suspect that Scott’s ceiling is as a fifth outfielder/defensive replacement/pinch-runner, but that the Cardinals dispatched him back to Triple-A rather than shifting him to that role right now suggests they still have developmental hopes for him. Chaim Bloom and company are pretty clearly responding to this surprise run at contention by fortifying the roster in St. Louis from within, and if he and the rest of the brain trust saw “fifth outfielder” as the best use of Scott moving forward, then they would’ve done that. Instead, he’s away from the glare with what I assume is a very specific list of developmental tasks. His story isn’t finished yet.

Finally, there’s a parallel center field discussion to be had about Joshua Báez, one of the Cardinals top prospects. He’s been a house afire at Memphis of late, as he tallied 10 homers in May and has been even better through the first week-plus of June. Overall, the 22-year-old Báez is slashing .276/.349/.587 with 17 home runs in 56 games for the Redbirds. Báez enjoyed a breakout 2025 at Double-A, in which he ramped up his power production while also drastically cutting down on his strikeout rate. He went on to have a sparkling camp this spring, which led some to wonder whether the Cardinals would skip him past Triple-A and put Báez on the Opening Day roster. They did not (wisely, I would submit), but no doubt some fans are presently clamoring for him to be the new center fielder in St. Louis. It’s a tantalizing and understandable thought, but it’s not hard to see what the Cardinals are seeing that prompts them to keep Báez down on the farm for now. Impressive production notwithstanding, Báez this season has ...

• Seen his K%, or strikeouts as a percentage of plate appearances, rise from 20.6% last season to 32.1% this year.

• A walk rate of 7.5% compared to a 2026 Triple-A average figure of 11.6%.

• A K/BB ratio -- lower is better for hitters -- of 4.26 compared to a Triple-A average figure of 1.95.

• A swinging strike rate of 36.5% versus a Triple-A average figure of 26.3%.

• A wOBA (.394) that’s 32 points higher than his xwOBA (.362).

• An xwOBA of .237 against pitches that are 95 mph or greater versus a Triple-A average xwOBA of .308 against such high-velo offerings.

• An in-zone contact rate of 73.3% compared to a Triple-A average of 82.4%.

I’m not ticking all this stuff off in order to drag Báez -- if anything, he’s only burnished his standing as a premium prospect by putting up big power numbers against an older peer group at the top rung of the system. Rather, I’m pointing out that he’s not a finished product and that he has some underlying weaknesses that would almost certainly be exploited by the best pitchers in the world. He made some strides on this front in May, but it’s entirely fair to want to see more of it before he’s thrust into a big-league playoff race. On another level, you’d probably be giving back some defense in going from Scott/Church to Báez in center, and that may not be the best thing for this contact-heavy rotation, even considering their ground-ball proclivities and improving strikeout fortunes. It also may not be the best thing for Báez’s still ongoing development.

Back to the whole point: Here’s to what figures to be a measurably improved offense going forward.

***

A quick concluding note on the rotation ... Here’s an interesting nugget from Jared Greenspan in his recent piece about emerging White Sox ace Davis Martin. Greenspan writes:

“Martin is one of four starting pitchers (min. 500 pitches) who throws six different pitches at least 10% of the time, along with the Rockies’ Tomoyuki Sugano and Kyle Leahy, and Michael McGreevy of the Cardinals. The balanced mix allows Martin to mix and match. He consistently uses six pitches to right-handed batters and five -- all but his slider -- to lefties.”

Yes, half of those starting pitchers with such deep and balanced repertoires are Cardinals. I’ll add that Dustin May isn’t far off from joining their exclusive ranks (a slight uptick in curve and changeup usage gets him there). Spot starter/”piggyback” reliever Hunter Dobbins would also be a “six pitches at 10% or more” starter right now if he’d been a regular rotation presence. Elsewhere, Matthew Liberatore and Andre Pallante are also deep-repertoire types, if not quite as evenly spread as the names above.

I’ve noted recently that the rotation has enjoyed a pretty strong upward trend in strikeout rate, which was sorely needed. A number of pitchers are workshopping new offerings, and as they gain increasing comfort with them they’re able to more reliably attack hitters with those swollen repertoires. That’s a path to swing and miss these days, even in the absence of elite velocity, and the Cardinals are taking it. It speaks well of the rebuilt and expanded pitching infrastructure that this is happening. New changeups and varied fastball shapes abound, and with May they’ve reintroduced and modified the curve that he abandoned after the 2019 season (a pitch that the Dodgers and Red Sox -- two orgs that know a bit about pitching development -- apparently thought better of), all to deepen his arsenal against left-handed batters.

This is a relatively minor data point, but it’s yet another reason for confidence in Bloom and the staff he’s assembled.

Back soon with more.