Cardinals outfielder Victor Scott II’s helmet begins to fall off as he slides into home plate, scoring a run during a game against the Pirates on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at Busch Stadium.
Allie Schallert, Post-Dispatch
There’s an old-school element of the game Victor Scott II brings to the field for the Cardinals, and it hearkens back to a bygone era of baseball. However, it goes deeper than just the fact that he plays with the sort of speed, aggressiveness and defensive focus that triggers memories of former Cardinals like Vince Coleman, Willie McGee and Ozzie Smith.
If you fancy yourself a student of the game, then you’ve got to appreciate that Scott’s approach to learning and improving his skills starts with a foundation formed by past greats. He’s been shaped by studying and understanding successful players who came before him.
For Scott, it doesn’t start with the latest Trackman data on his exit velocity. It starts with him gaining a great understanding of basic fundamentals from past players who mastered them, and then he adds that to the modern teaching methods and tutelage given by the current Cardinals coaching staff.
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That’s why Scott, 24, references legendary pure hitter and Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn’s teaching point about swinging the knob of the bat and not the barrel. Scott regularly does drills to remind himself of this foundational element of his swing.
“You want to go with the basics,” Scott said. “That’s where you want to start at. You want to go with the principles of your standards that you have to execute a swing. Then you build from there. But (hitting coach) Brant Brown has helped me a lot with learning about how my body moves and what drills to do in order to feel certain things.”
There it is, that idea that you start with old-school basics and then incorporating biomechanics.
In the current climate, working on your craft and improving your game increasingly means getting into a performance lab with motion capture suits, blast motion sensors, high-speed cameras, super-sophisticated computer systems, reams of data and a cadre of analysts.
The idea being that if you crunch enough numbers, gather enough data and give it enough time and practice, then you can simply build a new swing or design a new pitch.
Earlier this year in spring training, Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame player and former hitting coach Jim Rice reportedly got into a verbal altercation when an unidentified Red Sox team staffer interrupted Rice’s conversation with a young hitter because the team didn’t want hitting taught Rice’s way.
The Rice example can make it seem like these current data analysis-driven coaches don’t see anything to be gained from decorated players of yesteryear.
Scott’s approach shows he believes the exact opposite.
Asked why he looked back to former players like Rod Carew, Ichiro Suzuki, Brett Butler, Gwynn and others to hone the basics of his game, Scott’s reply dripped with respect for those players and the one who pointed him in that direction.
“Those are guys that did it right,” Scott said. “Plus, having Willie McGee as a mentor, he told me, ‘Study these guys. Also study present-day guys and take pages out of their books.’ Some of the guys that he sent me were guys that played when he played. Learn from those guys because those guys did it the right way, and they did it for a long time the right way.”
It’s not simply a case of mimicry. Scott isn’t trying to become Gwynn or Carew or Ichiro or anyone else. He’s using them to find the best fit for his game.
What is @Victor_Scott2 thinking when he’s in the batter’s box?
The @Cardinals OF joins us in-studio to break down his offensive approach, hitting against Paul Skenes and more.#MLBCentral | #ForTheLou pic.twitter.com/HUWnR3m3E2
— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) April 18, 2025
The 5-foot-11, 190-pound Scott knows no one player will match up exactly with what works for him.
“That’s why you study multiple guys,” Scott said. “Because Brett Butler may bunt differently than Ichiro. And Ichiro may bunt differently than Rod Carew. You start studying these guys and figure out what worked for them. How did they do it? Now, how can I implement this in my game? That’s kind of what I’ve been doing along this journey.
“Bunting is just a simple example that I’m using now.”
That goes for hitting, defense, baserunning, everything.
It’s all an ongoing process. Scott continues to mix an old-school flow with a new-school beat, and a lot of folks have taken notice of how well he moves his feet.
Scott enters this weekend’s series batting .275 with a .349 on-base percentage, a team-high 13 stolen bases, five bunt hits and 25 runs scored (13 from the No. 9 spot in the batting order).
For those who only evaluate performance via metrics, Scott ranks among the 87th percentile of all major leaguers in launch angle and sweet-spot percentage, 99th percentile in range in the outfield and leads the majors in sprint speed according to MLB Statcast data.
He was also tied for the fourth-most outs above average of any defender in the majors, regardless of position, through Wednesday’s games.
Scott most certainly taking advantage of current tools and resources, but he embraces the fact that he has old school elements of his game that share echoes of past Cardinals teams.
“Definitely the style and the way they played the game, I feel like that’s what my game is,” Scott said before he added an important addendum. “But taking things from present day in order to enhance that. It’s not just a me thing.
“Especially the guys on this staff, Jon Jay, Brant Brown, Willie, (Cardinals first base coach) Stubby (Clapp), (third base coach) Pop (Warner). It’s an all-inclusive thing to be able to grab information from these guys and say: OK, this is how I can improve my game. This is how I can increase my development.”
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