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It’s taken an injured list stint by Jordan Walker and Donovan’s recent foot ailment to clear a path for Gorman to regularly find himself in the lineup of late. That’s not to say the Cardinals have mishandled the situation. Gorman has simply been the odd man out.

Alec Burleson’s and Ivan Herrera’s bats earned them each regular playing time, and manger Oli Marmol maintains that catcher Pedro Pages’ work behind the plate and with the pitching staff has been invaluable, which has forced Herrera to get most of his at-bats as a designated hitter.

Even with all of that, Gorman continues to provide hints of the impactful left-handed power-hitting force he brings to a lineup. Game changing thump in a 6-foot tall, 225-pound package capable of playing second base or third base. That’s not something to give up on lightly.

It’s still in him, all the potential that attracted the Cardinals to him as a draft candidate (19th overall pick in the first round of the 2018 Draft), made him one of the top prospects in their farm system (a Baseball America Top-50 prospect in baseball in 2022) and made him arguably their most productive slugger in the big leagues just two seasons ago.

This season, the indicators of his ability have been whispers compared to the thunderclaps of recent years. Yet again, circumstances have played a heavy hand in that as well.

Through the team’s first 69 games, Gorman logged 130 plate appearances. He missed eight games while on the IL in April with a hamstring strain, but recent injuries have also afforded him more playing time in recent weeks. He’s currently on pace for a little more than 300 plate appearances for this season.

That’s meant Gorman hasn’t had as many opportunities as he has in the past.

How has that changed how he evaluates himself?

Well, I asked, and he answered.

“If don’t get into a game and I don’t have results that day, then there’s not really anything I can overthink,” Gorman said at the start of this past homestand. “So it has given me the ability to trust what I’ve been working on going into games. Whether it’s a pinch hit or one at-bat or whatever the case is, I’m not going to go out there and change the next day just because I flew out to center or whatever it is.”

Gorman’s 2024 season left a lot of folks unsatisfied, including Gorman, considering he’d made necessary adjustments in 2023 and showed the ability to change games against big-league pitching with his power.

He seemed on the cusp of a breakout after his 2023 season, the first time he spent the full season in the big leagues. While he wasn’t knocking on the door to a batting title with a .236 average, he led the Cardinals with 27 home runs and a .478 slugging percentage with 208 total MLB games under his belt at the end of that season.

From barrel percentage, hard-hit rate, sweet spot percentage, expected slugging and exit velocity, the metrics bore out that he made high-caliber to elite-caliber contact in his age 23 season.

Of course, that came with large doses of swing and miss (31.9% strikeout rate) as well as healthy dose of walks (11.4%) — he ranked among the 83rd percentile of all big-league hitters in walk rate. That’s also part of him as a hitter.

Last season, Gorman slashed .203/.271/.400 with 19 home runs in 107 games. He struck out at an alarming rate of 37.6% and finished the season in the minors, a clear sign of how pronounced his struggles at the plate became.

Despite those struggles, Gorman likely would be getting everyday at-bats at third base if the Cardinals traded Arenado this offseason.

Instead, Gorman entered the weekend having played in 39 games (32 starts).

That brings us back to Gorman’s early comments about overthinking and changing from one day to the next based on results.

Is that something he felt, looking back, he’d done too much of in the past?

“Yeah, I think I’ve changed way too much and I don’t know if I have a pinpoint idea on why I’ve done that — I’ve got some thoughts — but I’ve changed too much,” Gorman said when I posed the question to him. “I’ve just got to go back to being the hitter I was throughout the minor leagues and things I’ve done up here at times.”

During the homestand, Gorman went 7-for-18 (.389) with two home runs, a double, five RBIs, two walks and five strikeouts. Going into Friday night, he’d hit safely in eight of his previous 11 starts and batted .333 in that stretch.

If Gorman finds consistency in his approach at the plate, that might be one of the biggest big-picture developments when we look back on this season.

“I think talking about and being open about and understanding how we’re evaluating him has helped that,” Marmol said. “If you don’t know what you’re being evaluated on or you’re just guessing as to when I’m going to play next and then do I need to get two hits to be in there again tomorrow, I think that’s where you start to go places you don’t need to mentally.

“But if he understands we’re evaluating your work and the transferability of that work into the game and it’s not just about getting hits, I think it gives him the freedom to take what he’s working on into the game and not worry about strictly the result.”

By not worrying about the result, the results should follow and Gorman can still find the form that made him such a highly-regarded hitter.