Cardinals newest coaching staff members already has his first big project

St. Louis Cardinals add new coach to the big league staff and he already has his first project.

Last Thursday, the St. Louis Cardinals announced that they have made an addition to their big league coaching staff, bringing aboard Daniel Nicolaisen as the club’s third hitting coach.

Previously, Nicolaisen had been a softball coach at Seton Hall from 2018 to 2019 and had also served as an instructor with the Danish Softball Federation.

He first joined the Cardinals organization back in 2019, first serving as an instructor in the team’s Spring Training complex in Florida. He has worked his way through the system over the past few years and even served as a minor league assistant hitting coordinator last year.

Cardinals: New coaching staff member already has been assigned a project

Katie Woo of The Athletic recently tweeted that Nicolaisen has already begun working on his first big project with his new organization: fixing Paul DeJong.

Woo says that DeJong is going to be ditching the leg kick he has incorporated into his swing over the years and will be focusing on a limited/no-stride approach instead. DeJong has said that he wants to spend as much time as possible in the cage this winter in hopes of improving from last year’s dreadful performance, per Woo.

The runner-up in the 2017 NL Rookie of the Year race and 2019 All-Star selection has fallen from grace quite a bit recently. He hit 19 home runs in 2021 but managed a batting average of just .197 and an OPS+ of 85, meaning he was 15 percent below league average at the plate.

Then 2022 came around, and DeJong somehow became even worse. He managed to appear in just 77 contests for the Cardinals in a few separate stints, hitting six home runs and posting a ghastly .157 batting average. He struck out in over 33 percent of his plate appearances, posted an OPS+ of 53, and even got demoted to the minor leagues for a while to fix his game.

In Triple-A Memphis, DeJong hit 17 home runs in just 51 games, driving in 54 along the way and raising his batting average to .249, the highest we’ve seen out of him since 2020.

There is certainly still time for DeJong to turn things around, as he is only 29 years old. He has shown in the past that there’s potential for stardom in his game so it will be an interesting storyline to watch as Nicolaisen attempts to fix some holes in his swing.