Nolan Gorman described himself as 'miserable' when he was sent to Triple-A Memphis in June, but he's back with the Cardinals and he's hoping to show he can solve the club's issues at third base.
With nearly 500 MLB games under his belt and 81 big-league home runs to his credit at the time he was optioned to Memphis in early June, a stunned Nolan Gorman kept looking at his surroundings and wondering how he ended up back at the Triple-A level of baseball again.
The third base job of the St. Louis Cardinals finally his after four years of waiting, Gorman truly thought 2026 would be his year to shine. However, when swing-and-miss woes hit again and Gorman found himself back in Triple-A, there was no masking of his initial feelings.
“I was pretty miserable,” Gorman said candidly. “I don’t consider myself a Minor League player whatsoever. I think there is a lot of good I can do up here against Major League pitching, and I’ve shown that at time throughout the seasons I’ve been up here.
“When I get into the season, I have to lock into myself and not try to do too much or try and find another answer to some other issue. What I had going into this season was going to suit me well over an entire season, but then I lost it and I started searching again.”
Gorman, 26, is back to searching for opportunities to show that he can still contribute with his powerful left-handed swing. He was out of the starting lineup again on Tuesday night when the Cardinals were held to just one hit in a 2-0 loss to the Pirates. Gorman hasn’t started since last Wednesday’s loss to the Giants, a game where he showed off his improved plate discipline by walking twice. His last homer came on Sept. 6 in Colorado, and he’s hoping more chances will come over the Cardinals’ final five games of the season.
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol has been noncommittal about his team’s third baseman for 2027, saying that even though the squad has used Thomas Saggese, Jose Fermin, Blaze Jordan and Gorman there, that the competition for the position is “wide open” heading into next year’s Spring Training.
Gorman’s fifth MLB season has been another disjointed one with him playing 82 games with the Cardinals and 46 with the Triple-A Memphis Redbirds. Strikeout woes continued to plague the first-round pick from 2018 – regardless of whether he was playing in the big leagues or in Triple-A. He started the season by homering in two of his first five games, but a .224 average in April fell to .192 in May. Then, while in the throes of a 1 for 20 stretch that included 11 strikeouts, Gorman was demoted to Memphis.
Rather than reporting directly to Memphis, Gorman headed to Atlanta to work on his swing at the Maven Baseball Lab to work with University of Virginia head coach Chris Pollard. While there, worked on letting the ball travel deeper and using a swing that would keep his bad in the zone longer.
“I pretty much got feedback that what I was doing in the offseason was right, and I needed to get back to that,” Gorman said of a swing he abandoned once he started struggling badly in June while still with the Cardinals.
In Memphis, Gorman couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t belong in the Minor Leagues and that showed up in his swing-and-miss stats. He struck out four times in five at bats in his first Triple-A game on June 23, and he whiffed 21 times in his first 11 games with Memphis. His strikeout rate soared to 36.3 percent – higher than the 31.8 percent it has been at the big-league level with the Cardinals.
Gorman credited wife Madison, who he married on Dec. 31, 2024, with helping pull him out of some dark places mentally when he was still struggling at the Triple-A level.
“My wife was a huge part of just day and night feeding me support,” Gorman said. “She was probably the biggest contributor to helping me, for sure.
“I’m not a very emotional guy, and if you asked her, she would want me be more open about that stuff, but I kept my emotions in pretty good. After the All-Star break, (Madison) came back to (St. Louis), and there were a couple of weeks of coming back to the hotel room and I was absolutely miserable. But you realize that there’s nobody coming to save you.
That love and support manifested itself in the form of Gorman’s best power surge, which came in early August and ultimately led him back to the big leagues. He homered six times over the first nine games of August, and he was back with the Cardinals by Aug. 25. He homered in his second game back on Aug. 26, but his power has been spotty while his opportunities have grown sparse. What has improved has been his eye as he’s walked six times in recent weeks.
Gorman thinks his hitting struggles often overshadow what he brings to the team in terms of his defense at third base. Lighter and more agile this season, Gorman has committed just four errors in 479 innings at third this season. He lights up when talking about playing third base, and he hopes he will get more shots to prove that he can help solve the Cardinals’ issues at the position.
“This whole year I have felt really good over there and my thinking all along was that I’m back in the position that I came up playing, I’m comfortable there and it gave me the freedom to go out and do what I was capable of doing. I never let (hitting) affect my defense.”
Gorman said his confidence is still high – maybe even irrationally so based off his struggles of the past three seasons – that he can still be an every-day player in the big leagues.
“I still have that confidence, and I still have the confidence piece that is needed to be a good player,” he said. But – this is what has killed me – because I want to continue to get better, I’m constantly looking for something that will make me better. The offseason work that I did, I had a lot of confidence in that. But when something would go bad, I’d constantly be looking how to fix it, and I get away from what I know will work. So, I have to find something and just stick to it.”
