Frustrated and confused after going through the worst decline of his successful MLB career, third baseman. Nolan Arenado rewatched old videos of himself and practiced his swing after St. Louis Cardinals lost to Cincinnati Reds on Monday.
The cause, Arenado reitrated on Monday, was because of an obvious aspect for the eight-time MLB All-Star. He is cannot difficult to recover the strike that gave him 30 homers and drive in 100 runs. This was for seven consecutive seasons from 2015-22 (excluding the shortened 2020 season).
“It’s bad. The swing is not good, my swing is not good,” Arenado said after an 0-for-4 day at the plate dropped his batting average to .258. “I’ve been working on it and trying to figure this thing out, but my swing is not good.
“I’m a guy that pulls the ball in the air and I haven’t done that all year. I don’t know what the answers are. I’ve got to continue to try to find it. I can see the difference of when I was good and when I’m not, but trying to apply it in games right now is really hard for me.”
The statistics are not looking good for Arenado. The Hall of Fame candidate, had a career-worst .663 through Monday, dropping from a previous .864 OPS. It was his 11th straught game without a home run. Arenado did not deliver a homer until his 14th game of the season; a three-run hit at Arizona on April 12 and another 19 games before going deep. Now he has not had a homer since his long ball on May 13 in Anaheim.
Arenado has work to do to avert an impending worst start to a season, with four days left in May. He ended the month with only four runs in his rookie season of 2013. He had only six homers entering June 2014. In the past three years, Arenado had nine (2023), nine (2022) and 11 home runs (2021).
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol tried to give Arenado a “breather” to ease his frustrations. On Monday he dropped him to fifth behind Iván Herrera.
“In hitting in the middle of the lineup there, at the No. 3 or 4, as he has, we’ve had conversations and I felt like getting Herrera up there today made sense,” Marmol said, who was clearly choosing his words carefully.
The major issue Arenado faces is his ability to jump on fastballs and pull them from the park. From 2021-23, he pulled 87 of his 90 home runs into the seats in left. His lowest percentages of pulled hom runs was in 2018 (55.3 percent) and 2017 (67.6 percent). Similarly, Arenado has been late to pitches, spraying them to right and center field this season while pulling two of his three homers.
“I’m a guy who flirts with [his swing] too much and I’ve always been that way, but I also know what I’m doing now is not good, so I don’t want to just sit there and not [work],” Arenado said. “I always watch old video of myself and mimic those good moves. But sometimes when you create bad habits, they’re hard to break. This one is taking a long time.”
