Much ink has been spilled over the last three seasons trying to diagnose and correct the errors that have led to the Cardinals unceremonious tumble from the top of the National League Central division. While I can see the arguments for poor player development, lack of ownership spending, or the inability to keep and trade the right players, the real answer may be simpler than that. After years of benefiting from the whims of the baseball Gods, the Cardinals finally ran out of Devil Magic. Perhaps
the magic was stolen by the motley Brew Crew to the North. Perhaps it was taken as a debt owed for David Freese and Pete Kozma. I do not know why it is gone, but I know that it must be returned to its rightful place to restore the cosmic balance that lingers over the baseball universe. This balance cannot be restored by building the best farm system in baseball or giving out multi-hundred-million-dollar contracts to top free agents. I certainly hope the Cardinals do both of these, but the Devil Magic can only be returned when an unheralded prospect or castoff banished from another organization takes on a leading role in bringing glory back to the hallowed halls of Busch Stadium. José Fermín may not be the hero we asked for, but he is the one we need.
Before we get into the fun stuff, a quick aside on the current roster construction. For Fermín to make good on his Devil Magic promise, there will need to be an opportunity. This, more than salary relief, is why trading Nolan Arenado is so necessary. It doesn’t really help the long-term trajectory of the Cardinals if Arenado were to have a bounce-back season. But if Jose Fermín, Thomas Saggase, or some other “depth piece” can rip off a 3+ WAR season, suddenly the Cardinals have another huge asset to deploy. If the season started today, the Cardinals would be returning 88% of the total team plate appearances from 2025, having only divested of 700 plate appearances so far. Putting the Walker and Gorman question to the side, the Cardinals have three rookie-eligible players with legitimate starter upside ready for the chance at the major league level in JJ Wetherholt, Jimmy Crooks, and Nathan Church. You hope to get more playing time out of Ivan Herrera and Masyn Winn next year as well.
Now, back to Fermín… The former Cleveland castoff has put together a 141 wRC+ over parts of three Memphis seasons. Many people, myself included, wrote him off after his horrendous cup of coffee in 2024 that led to a -0.7 WAR in just 79 plate appearances. Fermín flipped the narrative in 2025 with his excellent 70 plate appearance cameo, finishing with a 129 wRC+.
Fermín has two specific skills that jump out; his ability to make contact and his ability to lay off pitches outside the zone. These two skills are plus to elite, so why hasn’t he already gotten a real shot? His swing speed and exit velocity metrics are easily in the bottom 10-20% of big leaguers. For hitters like Fermín, who will never win on raw power, the question is whether elite swing decisions plus optimized contact shape can produce real offensive ceilings.
Focusing on these three attributes, I set out to find similar players to Fermín and see what else they do to be successful. Looking first at contact rate, Fermín has run an in-zone contact rate of 93% with Triple-A contact data supporting this level. This is well above the league average 85.4%. Fermín has swung at only 19.2% of pitches out-of-zone in his MLB plate appearances, slightly better than his Triple-A rate, so there might be a little regression there. The MLB average is 28.1%. Finally, Fermín’s 90th percentile exit velocity of 100.8 MPH is well below the league average of 105.1 MPH.
Using these three metrics as a starting point, we can start to dig into potential comps for Fermín. The pool of players with a 90%+ contact rate, an out-of-zone swing % below 24% and a 90th percentile exit velocity below 103 MPH in 2025 is:
I left the parameters wide to illustrate what this skillset looks like with players who have a bit more power (Bregman, Cronenworth, Gasper), better contact and even less power (Kwan), and lack the ability to get the ball off the ground (Meidroth and Young). While the context is helpful, these players aren’t really perfect Fermín comps, so we are left with:
Of these players, Caleb Durbin is shockingly similar based on these metrics. Interestingly, Steamer projects both for identical 106 wRC+ figures in 2026. This would be an excellent outcome offensively, and depending on how Fermín’s defense grades out over a full season, could easily support an above-average WAR total. While Durbin feels like a solid comp, all these players have remarkably similar underlying metrics, so what is separating Perdomo and Urias? One was a legitimate MVP candidate and the other just signed a minor league contract with the Brewers. These two players illustrate the tightrope that low-exit-velocity hitters must walk to be successful.
One of the critical components to doing damage without hitting the ball hard is pulling the ball in the air. This is the skill that players like Nolan Arenado, Alex Bregman, and Mookie Betts have ridden to excellent offensive performances with below-average raw power. This was one of the areas Perdomo improved on during his breakout 2025 performance going from a 15.1% (16.7% league average) rate of pulling the ball in the air, to a well above average rate of 19.9%. Surprisingly, Urias also excels in this arena putting up an almost identical 20% rate in 2025. The area that Perdomo separates himself from Urias is in Launch Angle Sweet-Spot %. This is a statistic that measures the percentage of times a batter hits a ball between 8 and 32 degrees. Balls hit between these angles are the result of higher quality contact and are correlated with higher batting averages and slugging percentages. This was the real key to Perdomo’s breakout as he went from the 5th percentile in this statistic to the 70th percentile year over year. Urias was 13th percentile in sweet spot contact. This explains how he was able to have similar average launch angles, pulling the ball in the air, but still not doing any damage. Too much of his contact resulted in lazy flyballs and popups.
So, if this Launch Angle sweet spot is a critical ingredient for hitters with Fermín’s skillset, how does he stack up? In his limited big-league action in 2025, he ranked in the 65th percentile with a LA Sweet-Spot of 35.3%. This is encouraging, but with limited data, let’s look at his minor league numbers to see what we can find. Looking at both 2024 and 2025 Triple-A numbers, Fermín had 35.2% LA Sweet-Spot %, right in line with his major league performance. Both his average launch angle and LA Sweet-Spot % were up dramatically from his 2023 Memphis performance. While this might be small sample size variance, it seems likely that this was an intentional adjustment to try to drive the ball more. One final data point is that Fermín’s average bat speed is right in line with Perdomo, Durbin, and Urias.
I would like to see Fermín start 2026 in the every day lineup. He might go the way of Urias did in 2025 and not have the quality of contact sufficient to leverage his discipline and contact ability. Most likely, he will put up close to a league average hitting line and be a quality part-timer or low-end regular. However, without projecting some crazy increase in bat speed or exit velocity, if Fermín maintains the profile he had in Memphis and flashed briefly in St. Louis, there is a real chance he could hit a 120 wRC+ hitting line and be the next “where did he come from?” guy to drive other teams crazy. It would be a mistake for the Cardinals not to find out what they have in Fermín.
