Earlier this week, Cardinals shortstop Masyn Winn was certified as solid gold for his defensive brilliance in 2025.
Winn, 23, had one of the greatest defensive seasons by a shortstop since the Gold Glove was first awarded in 1957.
As I noted in a Bernie Show video on Monday:
– Since the Gold Gloves were first presented, there have been 1,149 shortstops who played at least 1,000 innings in a season. And of those 1,149 shortstops, Winn’s .994 fielding percentage is tied for 4th best over the last 68 seasons.
– This season Winn became only one of seven shortstops since 1957 to be charged with three or fewer errors during a season while playing a minimum 1,000 innings.
— Fielding percentage and error counts aside, Winn scored well in the defensive metrics in 2025. He was No. 2 among MLB shortstops and No. 4 overall (any position) in Outs Above Average. That would have been higher but Winn missed 26 days during the season because of back spasms (in April) and a knee injury (in September.)
The next career step for Winn is to become a more consistent hitter. In his two full seasons (2024-25) with the Cardinals, Winn has played 12 individual months of baseball. He performed above league average offensively in six months – and was below the league average offensively in six months. He’s had blazing-scorching hot streaks … and he’s had cold spells so extreme that icicles could have formed on his bat.
As Winn said in a Zoom session with the media after the Gold Glove announcement: “Pretty much every offensive aspect, I regressed this year. Going forward, hopefully I’ll have a full, healthy season and I’ll have a good season under my belt [offensively].”
In 2024, per wRC+, Winn was four percent above league average offensively. In 2025, he dipped to 10 percent below average offensively. His numbers for batting average, on-base percentage and (especially) slugging percentage declined from his first full season.
There’s no question that Winn’s persistent knee troubles contributed to his downturn at the plate in 2025. In his 32 games over August and September, Winn hit .198, slugged a faint .281, and was a depressing 43 percent below league average offensively per wRC+. After two strong months to open the season, Winn generated substandard offense in each of the four months that followed his hot start.
On the question of Winn developing into a good major-league hitter, I’m definitely an optimist. Here’s why, and I’ll count down the reasons:
1. Winn’s youth. He was 23 this season, and turns 24 in March. And after studying the age-connected offensive showings of past major-league shortstops, early-career struggles are pretty common. I don’t want to put you to sleep with too many numbers, so I’ll just present my summary.
2. My list is random, because my only intention here is to supply some historical perspective and I don’t need many examples to make a basic point. But I found a lot of prominent shortstops who were below-average hitters – and close to Winn’s 2025 offensive performance – at age 23. And they all settled in, learned and improved, and became good (or even great) hitters in the ensuing years.
3. Here are some of the shortstop names that fit the model of slow starts at a young age – then improvement: Ernie Banks, Robin Yount, Barry Larkin, Alan Trammell, Edgar Renteria, Garry Templeton, Alan Jimmy Rollins, Troy Tulowitzki, Pee Wee Reese, Tony Fernandez, Rico Petrocelli, Dave Concepcion, Luke Appling. And so many others. In case you are wondering, I didn’t include Ozzie Smith because The Wizard didn’t evolve into an above-average hitter until his age 30 season.
4. Winn has several good habits at the plate. Important habits. Low strikeout rate. Low chase rate. Low swing-miss rate. High contact rate. It would benefit Winn to draw more walks, but his MLB career strikeout rate is an impressive 18 percent. By industry standards, Winn is an effective two-strike hitter. He’s good at hitting pitches the other way, and has a .300 average on batted balls in play over the last two seasons.
5. Winn isn’t overmatched by four-seam fastballs. The same goes for sinkers and sliders. He crushes changeups. But in 2025 he struggled terribly against sweepers and curves. The point is, Winn does have a foundation to work with. In fact, Winn had a strong performance against sweepers and curves in 2024. So there isn’t a single type of pitch that overwhelms him.
6. To be blunt: Winn has some troubling metrics, terrible metrics, when we look at his Statcast page. Last season he was in the bottom 16 percent of MLB hitters in hard-hit rate, the bottom 16% in barrel rate, the bottom 24% in average exit velocity, and the bottom 34% in bat speed.
7. And this matters. This past season, in 104 at-bats when Winn connected for hard contact, he hit .452 with an .865 slugging percentage. On medium contact, Winn hit for average (.287) but had low power. In 69 at-bats that ended in soft contact this year, Winn hit .217 and slugged .246.
8. Should Winn focus on pulling pitches more often? And does he have the bat speed to do it? These are good questions, but here’s what I know: In 2025, Winn pulled 159 pitches and had fantastic results – with a .415 average and .717 slugging percentage. All nine of his homers – and 21 of his 27 doubles – were pull shots. And though I appreciate the way Winn salvages at-bats by punching pitches to the opposite field for hits, pulling the ball seems to be the smartest plan of attack.
9. Let’s wrap this up. Even with the imperfections, Winn isn’t an easy out for pitchers. And now it’s up to him to upgrade his overall hitting profile.
Winn is busy working on his hitting down in Florida this offseason, and is way ahead of the anticipated recovery time for his surgery to repair a torn meniscus. There’s one thing about Winn that everyone can count on and believe in: no one will outwork him, and Winn sets the highest standards for himself. He is driven to be a great all-around player. He’s also smart. Very smart.
Winn’s offense will come around, and it will take him to a higher level. It’s a matter of finding his ceiling, and I’m not sure how high that will be. But I am convinced he’ll become a good hitter, even if he isn’t a Statcast Superstar.
Thank you for reading … If you missed my column yesterday on the Cardinals need for homegrown talent, click HERE!
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Bernie covered every Cardinals postseason game from 1996 through 2014.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and Randy Karraker.