An Unexpected News: 5 potential hitting coaches if Cardinals’ Turner Ward is fired

An Unexpected News: 5 potential hitting coaches if Cardinals’ Turner Ward is fired

When a particular segment of a baseball team struggles, the coach is the first to blame. That has been the case this year in regard to the St. Louis Cardinals’ offense over the last two seasons.

When Oliver Marmol brought Turner Ward on staff following the 2022 season, he was promoted from the assistant hitting coach position that he held in 2022. Ward is also Goldschmidt’s preferred hitting coach, so he had the backing of the once-best player on the team.

Ward’s focus was to get his players on base and then bring them in. Despite the push in the league toward power, Turner Ward was focusing instead on on-base percentage, perhaps a dated philosophy in this day and age. Ward’s approach helped lead the 2023 Cardinals to high walk rates, low strikeout rates, and a top-11 finish in on-base percentage.

The story this year is much different, as the Cardinals have a bottom-half offense according to wRC+ (16th with a 99 wRC+), and they’re not drawing walks as often as last year (24th in walk rate). Perhaps the largest determining factor of an offense’s efficiency is how many runs they score per game. This year, the Cardinals rank 21st with just 4.20 runs per game; last year was only marginally better, as they ranked 19th with 4.44 runs per game.

Turner Ward’s offenses have been far below average regardless of the metric or stat you choose to use. He could be a victim of some offseason retooling of the coaching staff, especially if the Cardinals miss the playoffs for the second year in a row this year. Oliver Marmol’s recent contract extension buys him a bit of leash, but Ward doesn’t quite have the backing of the front office that the field manager has.Therefore, the hitting coach for the Cardinals in 2025 may be different than the man who occupied that role these past two seasons. The amount of people who could theoretically be hitting coaches in baseball is lengthy. Former players, analytical minds toiling in research departments, assistant hitting coaches with strong rapport, and even personal hitting coaches are all potential candidates.

Howie Clark

I’ve chosen to start this list off with an internal candidate in Howie Clark. Clark, 50, has been the hitting coach for the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate Memphis Redbirds since January of 2023. Prior to coaching in Memphis, Clark coached for minor league teams of the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox. He got his first and only taste of major league coaching in 2020 when he was brought on to be an assistant hitting coach for the Chicago White Sox.

Clark is a former player, something that is common among specialty coaches in baseball. He was drafted by the Orioles in 1992, and he would make his big league debut ten years later in July of 2002. Clark would play in the majors for six years for teams like the Toronto Blue Jays, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Minnesota Twins.

In his year and a half as the hitting coach for the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate, he’s managed to lead an offense that is in the top half of the International League. Last year, Memphis finished 6th in runs scored, 9th in batting average, 6th in on-base percentage, and 12th in OPS. There are a total of 20 teams in the International League. The story this year is a bit different, however, as Memphis ranks 18th in runs scored, 13th in OPS, and 15th in batting average.

Clark seems to be the safe play here, as he’s familiar with the organization after having coached for two years in the system now. Also, players such as Thomas Saggese, Jordan Walker, Victor Scott II, Masyn Winn, and Ivan Herrera are all quite familiar with him. These players are poised to be the young core of the roster heading into 2025 and 2026, so Clark’s familiarity with this crop of young talent could bode well for his case to supplant Turner Ward.