Nolan Gorman has 18 RBIs in 29 games, but the run total does not tell the whole story. He is hitting.214 with a.357 slugging percentage and a 79 wRC+, and the numbers are reviving an old argument about lineup protection that has followed power hitters for years.
Thomas Nes put it bluntly: RBIs do not tell you how good a hitter is. Gorman’s case matters today because the Cardinals are again asking whether the bat behind Jordan Walker changes the way pitchers treat Walker, and the answer may be more limited than the surface stats suggest.
Years ago, an article on this site looked at the performance of the No. 2 hitters in front of Albert Pujols, a reminder that this debate has been around long enough to outlast most seasons. Tom Tango later concluded that pitchers do pitch a little differently to hitters when a strong hitter is behind them than when there is not, but he also found that both walk percentage and strikeout percentage rise when a weak hitter is behind a batter.
That leaves the part that matters most once the bat meets the ball. Tango’s work found no difference in performance between protected and unprotected hitters when the ball is put into play, and the difference between a.395 wOBA and a.391 wOBA when counting only balls hit is not statistically significant. In other words, the gap is tiny enough that it does not prove protection is driving better contact.
Nes said the good news is that it does not seem like the hitter behind Walker matters at all when it comes to contact quality. He also said Gorman driving in runs has little to do with protection as it pertains to Walker, and that a pitcher seeing what Walker was doing would adjust the way he pitched to him anyway.
That is the friction in the discussion: Gorman’s RBI total looks useful at a glance, but the deeper numbers point the other way. Nes said you would rather face him than Jordan Walker, and even if prime Albert Pujols were hitting behind Walker, pitchers would still try their best to avoid letting Walker put the ball in play.
The conclusion is plain enough. Gorman’s run production may help the Cardinals in the box score, but it is not strong evidence that he is protecting Walker in any meaningful way, and it does not change the larger question of how pitchers choose to attack Walker in the first place.