After a long winding road and the many meetings led them to the big hole at third base, your St. Louis Cardinals decided to promote a prospect to fill the opening.
I wouldn’t call Blaze Jordan a third base prospect. He is, above all else, a hitting prospect. No disrespect intended, but Blaze Jordan is why the designated hitter position was invented and installed.
The newest Cardinal can play first base, and he’ll DH, but right now the Redbirds have a little emergency for Jordan to handle. And they want to see him walk up to the dish and shoot his shot against big-league pitchers. It’s all about the bat. Period. End of story. Set the fireworks. And that’s perfectly fine.
If it means having Blaze playing goaltender at third base – glove save! No, he blocked it with his chest! – well, just give him a mask and make sure the medics are standing by.
Look, I kid. I’m being goofy, I’m just having fun. I love this decision made by the Cardinals to promote Blaze Jordan from Triple-A on Friday to take over for the underwater Nolan Gorman.
The Cardinals called Blaze.
I wanted to imagine this…
Chaim Bloom making the call. A famous Chuck Berry song playing in the background.
“Long distance information give me Memphis Tennessee,” …
And how can anyone not like Blaze Jordan?
Blaze is a fun hitter. He has a fun name. He has a cool name. With that name he could be a buckaroo on the Dutton Ranch. With that name he could be a character straight out of a baseball movie like Bull Durham.
I mean, once upon a time Blaze Jordan was the boy at the carnival. He was so big and strong he could knock outfield walls with his immense power.
At age 16, he won the MLB High School Home Run Derby in 2019. He walked into Progressive Field in Cleveland during All-Star Week and tore the place up like a wicked storm generating extreme hail damage with 20 home runs in the first two rounds – and then young “Whammer” launched seven more homers in the finals to take the trophy.
You can’t make up a story like this. Except that Blaze Jordan – a fine country gentleman from Southaven, Mississippi – went up to Ohio and put on a show. Just like the Whammer in “The Natural.”
Plus, he’s a Big Man. Even though he slimmed down a couple of years ago, Blaze Jordan remains in the Big Man family. And I get to make the ruling on that.
I saw a preseason scouting report that called him THICK. Hell, ain’t nothing wrong with THICK. I know all about that, having been raised on my southern grandma’s cornbread.
Blaze Jordan is also an unusual hitter. Which makes him an interesting hitter. He doesn’t strike out much. He has superb bat-to-ball skills. But he also has a wild-man streak at the plate, with a detrimental habit of hacking away at too many pitches outside of the strike zone.
At Triple-A Memphis, his inflated chase rate of 38 percent is in the bottom five percent of minor-league hitters. Which is also why his walk rate, 7 and ½ percent, is in the bottom 11% of minor leaguers.
Despite wasting so many swings on wayward pitches, ol’ Blaze had struck out only 11.5 percent of the time this season. That’s exceptional. That low, low, low strikeout rate put him in the top 3 percent of minor league hitters.
And Blaze has grilled up a gorgeous slash line: .313 average, .373 on-base rate, .548 slugging percentage and 921 OPS. His quality of hitting, based on wRC+, was 37% above the Triple-A average offensively.
Blaze may not play a beautiful form of third base – Boyer or Pendleton or Rolen or Arenado he’s not – but he does have good hands… and his bat plays.
Let’s remember something based on recent roster decisions.
The Cardinals have shown more willingness to prioritize offense over defense. That’s why they sent bunt man, center field Victor Scott, to Memphis.
That’s why they benched starting catcher Pedro Pages and gave a large catching opportunity to left-handed slugger Jimmy Crooks.
That’s why Chaim Bloom Cardinals promoted outfielders Nelson Velazquez and Bryan Torres. It’s why Bloom was willing to go with Nathan Church in center field – because he has way more upside than Scott offensively. And Church can go fetch the ball. He hauls ass like a Frisbee dog out there.
So, if the Cardinals are willing to sacrifice defense as a tradeoff for increased offense, then why wouldn’t they do the same thing to remedy third base?
I actually feel bad for Nolan Gorman. As I wrote on Friday morning here on STL Sports Central, Gorman is having the worst stretch of his big-league career. And it’s gruesome.
In his last 17 games Gorman has 3 hits in 50 at bats with an ungodly strikeout rate of 49 percent. “It was one continuous knockdown,” one member of the Cards org told me. “He couldn’t get back up. Those strikeouts were like punches to his jaw. Over and over. We had to stop the fight.”
There was nothing wrong with the Cards third-base position offensively for the first month of the season.
In the first 31 games, the Redbirds third basemen, led by Gorman, had a .423 slug, and .717 OPS. It isn’t easy to remember this now, but in March-April Gorman and others at the hot corner ranked 2nd among all MLB third base groups with 20 RBIs and were tied for 5th with six home runs.
But in the 39 games played from the start of May and through June 11, St. Louis third basemen hit .178, with a pathetic .297 slugging percentage. And in the past 39 games before Friday, STL third basemen had nine runs batted in, the lowest total in the majors. And their third baseman hit .129 with runners in scoring position. Over that time.
Calling Blaze Jordan to meet them in Minneapolis signified several things:
– The merciful decision to stop the bleeding with Gorman. Get more offense from third base.
– Have a deeper 1 through 9 lineup, which means more runs scored and an enhanced opportunity to win more games.
– And they could develop a prospect. A young, promising hitter like Blaze Jordan.
Though Blaze bats from the right side, he’s put up very good numbers against right-handed pitching at Triple-A this season.
And his stats against lefties are awesome this year; that includes a .625 slugging percentage and .982 OPS.
Look, when I noticed Blaze Jordan getting some starts at 3B again, I didn't think it was just some random move. It’s not like Memphis manager Ben Johnson woke up one morning with the urge to play Blaze at third base again. No, that kind of decision is made at the upper levels of the organization.
Was this a last resort move? You could say that. Because the Cardinals weren’t going to listen to no-chance ideas like moving Jordan Walker to third base, or JJ Wetherholt to third base. They weren’t going to pick up the remains of an ancient third baseman who should have retired a couple of years ago. They would have plugged on Ramon Urias, but he injured his left elbow – after spending a long time on the IL with a right-elbow injury. Had Urias been ready to play soon – he wasn’t and isn’t – then he would be replacing Gorman at third.
But the Cardinals like Blaze Jordan. While running the Boston front office Bloom drafted Jordan out of high school. Bloom played the lead role in the decision to ask the Red Sox for Jordan in the trade exchange for pitcher Steven Matz. They’re excited to give Blaze a look as he gets his first taste of big-league baseball.
The Cardinals’ player-development operation has a new project: fix Nolan Gorman. They have a plan for Gorman. They will likely get him away from the field and put him “school” just as they did last season with outfield prospect Josh Baez – and that changed the kid’s career trajectory.
And Blaze Jordan gets a chance. And there will be more opportunities down the line. He was described to me as "playable" at 3B, which was a change from the previous assessment of "not really a third baseman." Which is why they moved him off third. But like a good baseball operation, the Cardinals had meetings and discussions to reassess the situation and Jordan’s potential role in it. They noted how hard he worked, saw some slight improvement and decided there was nothing wrong – and really nothing to lose – by giving Blaze a chance now, ahead of schedule.
“There's merit in giving him a chance,' it was explained to me. 'We can learn more about what we have. And this will give him a chance to contribute offensively.' He can help us there. Another person in the org said, "probably not average (defensively) but noticeable improvement. But guys in the minors are always working on things. Just about every minor-league player, including the good prospects, have flaws they need to polish.”
When Blaze suddenly reappeared at 3B in the Memphis box scores – game on – I knew that wasn't random, either. So it was time to make some calls, do some digging. And it became 95 percent obvious to me that Blaze Jordan would be boarding a flight and headed to the Twin Cities. I didn’t write or say that definitively – because I couldn’t get absolute confirmation … but yeah, the roster change was in progress.
It’s good for Nolan Gorman, and I think he would agree with that. It’s good for Blaze Jordan. I believe it’s good for the Cardinals, who moved ahead, again, in their determined mission to give their “kids” a chance when merited.
The Cardinals keep looking at their young players to learn more about them and see if they’re ready to fly. The Cards keep opening the clubhouse to young players. Young players have given this team that “Tarps Off” vibe. The parent team, the St. Louis Redbirds, keep filling out the lineup card with the names of Memphis Redbirds.
And they’re winning. The Cardinals entered the weekend with the sixth-best record in the majors. Most pundits saw them as a team that would have the 26th-best record in the majors. But no, the boys keep winning … even as this roster turns younger and younger. What a great story. And here comes Blaze Jordan.
Thanks for reading …
Have a super weekend.
–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.
Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams.
Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball.
Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
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 his longtime friend Randy Karraker.