How the St. Louis Cardinals Are Embracing Baseball’s Tech Revolution

The St. Louis Cardinals are quietly overhauling their approach. This transformation isn’t about big-name free agents—it’s about data, biomechanics, and how the whole organization works together.

They’ve spent years on top-tier baseball tech. But after all that, it turned out they were missing people—specialists who could actually turn all that raw info into something useful on the field.

Let’s look at how the Cardinals are shaking up their player development model, starting from scratch in some ways.

The Technology Was Always There—The Integration Wasn’t

For most of the past decade, the Cardinals matched other MLB teams in technology. They had force plates, Kinatrax motion capture, and a bunch of other biomechanical systems.

The gear was there. The real issue? Coordination just wasn’t happening.

Each system pumped out mountains of data. But every dataset sat in its own little world, with different specialists handling them—and those folks barely spoke the same language as the coaches.

Without everyone on the same page, all that info didn’t really turn into better performance or fewer injuries.

From Raw Data to Real Baseball Decisions

Modern baseball data isn’t exactly plug-and-play. Force plates give you ground reaction forces. Motion capture tracks joints. Workload monitoring looks at fatigue.

You need experts for each, and even more important, you need a shared philosophy so everyone’s pulling in the same direction.

Carl Kochan and a New Performance Vision

Bringing in Carl Kochan as Director of Performance changed things. He came in to pull together departments that used to do their own thing—performance, medical, nutrition, and player development.

Kochan’s focus is especially heavy on the minor leagues. That’s where managing workload and keeping players healthy for the long haul really matters.

Instead of just reacting to injuries, the Cardinals want to see them coming—and stop them before they start.

A Department That Tripled in Size

The change is honestly pretty dramatic. Since 2020, the Performance Department went from about two people to a 19-person squad.

Now you’ll find:

Performance isn’t just a support role anymore. It’s become a core part of how the Cardinals develop players.

Player Development Gets a Rebuild

Performance wasn’t the only focus. The player development staff jumped to 29, part of a bigger overhaul led by folks like Larry Day.

The idea is to have one message, one approach—from rookie ball all the way to Triple-A. No more mixed signals.

They’re even looking for a Biomechanist right now. That shows how much they care about tying advanced motion analysis directly to coaching on the field.

When Biomechanics Solved a Velocity Drop

Take lefty Matthew Liberatore as an example. He lost velocity midseason, and at first, everyone worried he might be hurt.

Biomechanical analysis told a different story—his timing was off, and he was fatigued, but there wasn’t any structural damage.

So instead of just giving him time off, the staff targeted his conditioning and tweaked his mechanics. That only happened because the data folks, coaches, and performance team actually worked together.

The Challenges of Big Data Baseball

Progress brings its own headaches. The Cardinals are now drowning in metrics, and there’s not always agreement on which ones matter most.

Centralizing biomechanical data, avoiding mixed messages from outside partners, and keeping everyone on the same page are still big challenges. It’s a work in progress, for sure.

Cultural and Geographic Stovepipes

Implementation gets tricky when you factor in cultural and geographic realities. Language barriers among international prospects add a real challenge.

Some folks have more technological expertise than others, which makes things uneven. Plus, the physical distance between affiliates—from Palm Beach to Springfield—just creates more friction.

The Cardinals seem pretty serious about building a data-driven future. They’re not just leaning on technology, but on people who can actually make sense of all that information.

 
Here is the source article for this story: The St. Louis Cardinals: Adapting to the MLB tech revolution