Victor Scott II is one of the most interesting players the Cardinals have rostered in quite some time. He has plus-plus speed, elite defense, and swings the bat with the ferocity of a house cat playing with a ball of yarn. While the Redbird infield has players in place that you could envision playing for the next World Series contending team, the outfield is a series of question marks. Lars Nootbaar has never had the breakout many hoped for and is now two years away from free agency, and could be moved by the trade deadline. Jordan Walker continues his quest to regain the lost luster of his prospect pedigree. Scott had an up-and-down 2025 season, but showed big improvements on both sides of the ball, setting him up as a potential breakout candidate for 2026.
2025 Recap
Scott carried a 94 wRC+ through June and had posted 1.7 fWAR in just 283 plate appearances. The WAR was, of course, propped up by excellent defense and baserunning, but he was playing at a borderline All-Star pace for most of the first half. There were signs that this would be difficult to sustain as he was running a 27.2% strikeout rate and had a high .337 BABIP. The rest of the season did not go as well. Over his final 59 games, Scott was exactly replacement level and saw his batting average fall below the Mendoza line as he scraped along with a 46 wRC+. Despite the poor results offensively, there were positives. His xwOBA, which measures his expected results, was virtually unchanged in the second half. More importantly, he cut his strikeout rate to 18.9%. His overall batting line was torpedoed by a .210 BABIP. On the season, he ranked fifth among all outfielders in FanGraphs’ defensive value metric. His value on the basepaths was 13th in all of baseball, sandwiched between Chandler Simpson and Fernando Tatis II. Scott trailed only Trea Turner in sprint speed at 30.2 feet per second.
Without belaboring the point, Scott is awesome at baseball except when he is standing in the batters box. If he can find a way to scrape together a league-average batting line, he will be a certifiable weapon and establish himself as one of the most valuable center fielders in baseball. To be fair, this same thing applies to many defensive specialist types. We saw the version of this actually working out with Tommy Edman putting up 15 WAR on the back of his speed and defense. Harrison Bader would fit in this bucket of recent Cardinals as well. Without some offensive production, you are left with Peter Bourjos or Michael Siani, players that may fit on a roster, but cannot hold down a starting job long term.
You can count Oli Marmol as one of Scott’s believers. When he was interviewed at Winter Warmup, he twice brought Scott up, without being prompted, as a player he was excited about coming into the season. He spoke glowingly about Scott’s work ethic and maturity, giving him a real chance to make the necessary adjustments offensively. Scott himself spoke openly at Winter Warmup saying, “I told them I wanted to come back a totally different player.” Scott went on to detail how he had returned to West Virginia over the offseason for a panel of motion capture and force plate testing to try and diagnose his offensive woes. The testing showed that his movements were inefficient and hurt his ability to be “adjustable.” He went on to say that his mechanics caused him to spin off the ball and sweep too many grounders to second base. He did not go into too much depth on what the specific changes to his mechanics would be, although he did mention better shin angles and more efficient rotation via getting into his front side better. I will leave the mechanical analysis to people with a better eye for scouting, but Scott was explicit in what he wanted the outcome of the adjustments to be. Going into 2026, his stated focus will be on being shorter to the ball, being more adjustable (particularly to breaking balls), taking the ball the other way, and trying to drive the ball into the gaps rather than over the fence.
Key Things That Define Scott as a Hitter
To evaluate the adjustments Scott is attempting to make, we need a clear understanding of who he is as a hitter today. There are three specific things in Scott’s profile that, when combined, make him an incredibly unique hitter.
Exit Velocity – His average exit velocity ranks 167th out of 177 players with at least 450 plate appearances. This by itself is not a problem, as the bottom of the rankings are populated by plenty of productive hitters like Jacob Wilson, Luis Arraez, and Steven Kwan. With Scott saying specifically he is going to focus more on gap-to-gap line drive and opposite field coverage, he is prioritizing improving his hit tool rather than maximizing his power. With Scott’s long track record of limited power output, this approach is more achievable than trying to be a poor man’s Cody Bellinger or Cedric Mullins, lefty swingers who maximize limited bat speed by hitting at higher launch angles.
Out-of-Zone Contact – Scott’s overall contact rate is 75.6%, which is roughly league average. His contact rate on pitches outside the zone, however, is an abysmal 46.6%, about 9% lower than league average. Similarly to ranking low in the power department, this does not preclude hitters from being successful. In fact, Aaron Judge ranked last in baseball in this metric. Right behind Scott in the rankings are Jeremy Pena, Michael Busch, and Mike Trout. Directly ahead of him are Fernando Tatis II, Jo Adell, and Elly De La Cruz. You don’t have to be a genius analyst to spot the outlier here. It is OK to swing and miss, but only if you scorch the ball when you do connect.
Swing Decisions – To round out Scott’s unusual profile, he makes fantastic swing decisions. He is excellent at laying off balls, which helps mitigate his contact issues, and he swings aggressively at pitches in the zone. His zone swing % minus his out-of-zone swing % is 13th in all of baseball.
The combination of poor contact and excellent swing decisions give Scott the profile and approach of a slugger who is sitting back trying to punish pitches in the zone, even at the expense of some strikeouts. The icing on the cake is that Scott also has a launch angle that is several points above league average. Scott is basically Shohei Ohtani trapped in, well, Victor Scott’s body… Since writing an article titled “Victor Scott Is the Next Shohei Ohtani” would get me banned from the internet and banished from polite society, I will focus on the more realistic path.
The eight softest-hitting (by exit velocity), left-handed swinging players in baseball last year were: Adam Frazier, Sal Frelick, Zach McKinstry, Luis Arraez, Victor Scott II, Steven Kwan, Jung Hoo Lee, and TJ Friedl. The average wRC+ of the lefty slapper comp group is 105 with a pretty tight range of 89 to 114 (excluding Scott). For Scott, anything in this range would be a huge success. Looking at this group of players, the underlying metrics are remarkably similar. You have a few outliers, like Arraez’s ultra-high contact or McKinstry getting to slightly higher max exit velocities and producing a decent slugging percentage, but overall, these players get to their production in similar ways. Scott’s contact rate kept him from equaling the production of this group as it was ten points below the next man on the list, TJ Friedl. Digging into the data a bit further, his abysmal contact rate on balls outside the zone is driven by a 24% contact rate on breaking balls. To provide some context on just how dreadful this is, the rest of the group had a contact rate of 62% on breaking balls outside the zone. Scott’s struggles against breaking balls help explain how he has run such a high strikeout rate despite making great swing decisions and an average amount of contact overall.
Reasons for Optimism
Contact Rate Can Be Improved
For players that received at least 450 MLB plate appearances in both 2024 and 2025, the largest improvement in contact rate was 7% by our old friend Paul Goldschmidt. Seven players out of the 115-player sample had an increase of 5% or greater. Scott needs to see this level of improvement, at a minimum. It is a lot to ask, but he has a plan in place specifically to address his struggles with off-speed pitches and breaking balls, so this will be a metric worth following in the early going.
The Bunting Can’t Get Worse
At Winter Warmup, Scott said that he had been bunting like crazy this offseason. I know bunting can be a divisive topic, so I will just share some numbers and not plant a flag. Scott was 7 for 26 in bunt attempts for a .269 average. Beyond the bunting-for-hits results, Scott also laid down 10 sac bunts and fouled off or missed an additional 32 bunts. Within our comp group, Friedl was successful on a shocking 11 of his 18 bunt attempts for a cool .611 batting average. Kwan was the second most prolific bunter, reaching safely on six of 13 attempts. Overall, Scott was by far the worst bunter despite attempting to bunt far more frequently than his peers, so there is plenty of upside here in just improving on a poor baseline. If he is going to keep bunting in 2026, I am glad he has been working on it.
There Are Already Some Skills in Place
While Scott’s issues making contact, particularly on breaking balls, are his biggest obstacle, there are some things working in his favor too. He is excellent at laying off pitches outside the zone, which helps mitigate his swing-and-miss issues. He maintains this discipline not by being passive, as he is extremely aggressive in swinging at pitches in the zone. This is a great starting point and could make him an absolute pest to deal with if he can make more contact. He also ran solid contact rates in the minor leagues right around 80%, so there is some precedent of better performance.
Looking Ahead
I am just as skeptical as the next person when it comes to offseason hype around player adjustments, trips to Driveline, and new conditioning regimens. I do put real weight behind Marmol’s confidence in Scott. I also think Scott’s stated goals for improving his offensive production are right in line with what the data shows. Diving into underlying metrics with players often leads to the conclusion, whether true or not, that they are actually better than their surface-level stats or that they are one small tweak away from making a jump forward. With Scott, I had the opposite reaction; he needed a massive overhaul to his approach and improvements to key parts of his game, or he would be relegated to being a fourth or fifth outfielder. Thankfully, we are just a few short weeks away from getting our first glimpse of the new Victor Scott II in game action.
