Cardinals part ways with hitting coach Brant Brown

Every other coach on the major-league staff is expected to stay for 2027, so the offense is where the change lands.

It isn't hard to see why the hitting coach went. St. Louis finished 77-85, 4th in the NL Central, and missed the postseason for the 4th year in a row. The bats were a big part of it: only the Angels had a lower OPS or slugging percentage in the majors. If you're picking one coach to take the fall for that, it's the hitting coach.

Brown got the job after the 2024 season, replacing the fired Turner Ward, and he came over after a run as the Mariners' hitting coach that didn't exactly go great either. The idea was a new voice for a lineup that had already gone flat. 2 years later, the lineup is still flat and the new voice is gone.

Who stays on the rest of the staff is still a little murky. The Cardinals haven't been saying much about it this offseason, and the beat reporter covering them pointed that out directly.

So the earlier reporting on which coaches are coming back is the best info out there, and the team is choosing not to confirm it. That leaves Brown's exit as the one move anybody can actually see. Keeping the rest of the staff and swapping only the hitting coach makes a pretty clear statement: the front office thinks the pitching and defensive side is fine, and the lineup is the problem.

The likely replacement could already be in the building. Assistant hitting coaches Brandon Allen and Casey Chenoweth are expected to stick around, and one of them could be promoted into the top job. That would be the cheap, low-drama option, which fits an offseason where the Cardinals are keeping almost everything else the same. It won't count for much unless the offense improves, though. Only the Angels hit worse, and changing coaches doesn't add any thump to the lineup by itself.