How 1 change transformed Scott's season

This story was excerpted from John Denton's Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO -- Like a lot of 20-somethings who don’t know what they don’t know, Cardinals No. 3 prospect Victor Scott II admits now that his own stubbornness almost ruined his 2024 season and nearly cost him a shot at getting back to the big leagues.

Fortunately for Scott, Cardinals roving instructor Ryan Ludwick walked into the batting cages with him recently and made him change his hitting approach on the spot -- something others had been suggesting to him most of this season without much success.

Resistant to change would be the nice way to put Scott’s unwillingness to move away from a no-stride, wide-stance hitting approach that had helped him zip through the Cardinals’ Minor League system, he said with a wry smile. Downright stubbornness would probably be more accurate, Scott noted.

“My dad, my coach from back home, Lawrence Peltier, and [Triple-A hitting coach] Howie [Clark] -- they had all been telling me that I needed to change,” Scott remembered. “I was stubborn to the point where I didn’t want to use [a leg-kick motion at the plate]. But it got to the point where it was like, ‘OK, I have to make a change.’”

Scott, 23, changed to an exaggerated leg kick at the plate in recent weeks, and the results have been eye-opening for both him and the MLB parent club. The Cardinals were impressed enough to bring Scott back to the big leagues on Sunday to man center field for the next several weeks with Gold Glove candidate Michael Siani out after straining an oblique muscle in his right side.

How much of a difference did the mechanical changes at the plate make? As of July 20, Scott’s average with Triple-A Memphis was .207 and he was questioning himself at every turn. After adopting a full-on leg kick, the 5-foot-11, 190-pound speedster tripled on July 23. And then came some surprising power.

On July 27 at Columbus, Scott blasted a Statcast-projected 382-foot homer that crashed off the scoreboard in right-center field. On Tuesday in Durham, he smashed a cutter so hard that it left his bat at 104.9 mph and traveled 373 feet. A night later, he accomplished a couple of firsts in pro ball with one swing -- he hit his first grand slam and his first no-doubter. Not only did Scott flash light-tower power with a 104 mph smash that hung in the air for 5.8 seconds, but the ball traveled 404 feet.

“Getting that pretty instant feedback was cool,” Scott said. “That was the first grand slam I’ve ever hit in pro ball, and it was one of the very few home runs where I knew it was a home run when it left the bat.”

Scott knows now that it's likely none of that would have happened had he not listened to the stern advice of Ludwick, a veteran of 12 MLB seasons who was named a National League All-Star in 2008, when he hit .299 with 37 home runs and 113 RBIs for St. Louis.

“I was in the cages, and [Ludwick] hopped in and said, ‘Man, you’ve got to change this!’” Scott recalled. “In my head, I was like, ‘I don’t want to change.’ But I knew it was time.

“I asked [Ludwick], ‘What should I do?’ He said a free-flowing move would help. My dad and everybody had been saying that the whole time, but I had been stubborn. But progressing forward, I realized it was something I needed to commit to and trust. [Ludwick] said I needed to be more athletic and use my athleticism and not be so static and rigid. With [no stride], you have to be perfectly on time and catch it right. This gives me a little more room for error.”

Considering how his first stint in the big leagues went, Scott now knows he erred in not listening to those trying to help him. Awarded the Opening Day center-field job for the Cardinals when Dylan Carlson suffered a left shoulder injury, Scott went just 5-for-59 (.085) over 20 games before being sent to Triple-A.

He admitted that stretch -- although painful and damaging to his confidence -- might have been for the best because it showed him that there’s plenty he still has to learn about surviving at the plate at the big league level.

“It hurt a little bit, but I feel like a little bit of failure helps,” Scott said. “I failed a lot to start the season, and I failed a lot when I first got to Triple-A, so it was pretty cool to regain a different mindset and attack it in a different way [with the swing change].”