Cardinals, Hitting Coach Brant Brown Part Ways

The Cardinals are moving on from hitting coach Brant Brown, as first reported by Katie Woo of The Athletic. Brown has been with the club for the past two seasons.

St. Louis ranked 16th in scoring this past season. The club finished in the bottom five in OPS, wOBA, and wRC+. The Cardinals were similarly underwhelming on offense in 2025, ranking in the bottom 10 in those three metrics.

Brown was hired heading into the 2025 campaign. He’s had several big-league stops along the way. After a decade coaching in the minors, Brown joined the Dodgers as an assistant hitting coach in 2018. He moved on to the Marlins in 2023 as their top hitting coach. Brown also had a brief stop in Seattle before coming to St. Louis.

Woo adds that the Cardinals are expected to keep the majority of manager Oli Marmol’s staff. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that outfield coach Jon Jay and third base coach Ron Warner will be retained by the team for next season. Jay and Warner were both on expiring contracts.

While the offense as a whole came up short, there were several bright spots in 2026. The biggest development was the breakout of Jordan Walker. The former top prospect blasted 29 homers and stole 22 bases en route to his first All-Star selection. Walker made some batting stance tweaks that helped him get more out of his top-of-the-charts bat speed. He lowered his groundball rate and hit more homers in 2026 than he had from 2023 through 2025.

The Cardinals also saw rookie JJ Wetherholt emerge as a viable tablesetter at the top of the lineup. The young infielder popped 17 homers and scored 89 runs in his first taste of the majors. With Alec Burleson and Ivan Herrera as steady producers, plus full seasons of Leo Bernal and Joshua Baez, St. Louis will enter 2027 with a solid foundation on offense. The main goals this offseason will be finding permanent fits at third base and center field, two weak spots in 2026.