Cardinals To Hire Joel McKeithan As Hitting Coach

The Cardinals are set to hire White Sox assistant hitting coach Joel McKeithan as their new hitting coach, Robert Murray of Fansided reports. He’ll take over for Brant Brown, who spent the past two seasons as hitting coach in St. Louis but was dismissed last month.

The 35-year-old McKeithan spent the past two seasons as an assistant hitting coach with the White Sox. He’d previously been both an assistant hitting coach and lead hitting coach with the Reds. McKeithan has also worked as a minor league hitting coach in both the Phillies and Tigers organizations.

White Sox hitters mashed 211 homers and walked at a 9.5% clip in 2026. Both marks were the fifth-best in baseball. On the whole, the posted a .236/.320/.406 batting line that was about 4% better than average, by measure of wRC+. The Cards hit .239/.313/.378 as a team, giving them the fifth-worst wRC+ (93) in the sport. They hit the seventh-fewest home runs in MLB (167) and tied with the Twins for the fifth-worst walk rate (8.3%). Obviously, any successes and failures of a team are attributable to far more than just one individual coach, but it’s still not a surprise to see the Cardinals draw their new top hitting instructor from an organization that had a more productive all-around year.

To this point, Brown has been the only coach dismissed from manager Oli Marmol’s staff. Third base coach Pop Warner and outfield/baserunning coach Jon Jay were on expiring contracts, but Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last month that both are expected back for the 2027 season.