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It’s OK. Goldy’s resurgence doesn’t have to take away from what the Cardinals are doing this season. It wasn’t a trade, so folks in St. Louis don’t have to root against former Cardinal Paul Goldschmidt’s continued success for the sake of “winning” the deal.

There need not be sour grapes about Goldschmidt’s bounce-back year for the first-place New York Yankees as he regularly bats in the top half of the order for the third-highest-scoring offense in the majors at the start of this week.

After all, he told us that he wasn’t done at the end of last year. Despite his down season and the gray in his beard — he wasn’t deterred.

With free agency looming and his future uncertain, Goldschmidt pushed back against the notion that age caused his struggles. Even if you thought that he may not have seen pitches out of the pitcher’s hand the way he once had, he certainly saw the question from your resident knucklehead with a notebook coming from a mile away.

“You’re not hurting my feelings, don’t worry,” Goldschmidt said to me before a wide smile crept across his face when I brought up his age following his final home game in September at Busch Stadium. “To say that when I’m 37 now, you’re going to be the same as when you’re 27. That’s just not the truth, but you can still perform at that age or at my age. We’ve seen guys do it.

“I’m confident that’s not holding me back, but it’s part of what goes on in your career. As you get older, you’ve got to make adjustments, and you’ve got to adapt.”

Goldschmidt stopped short of calling his shot or predicting a comeback year, but he expressed confidence that he could play at a high level.

He offered his version of Adam Wainwright’s response to a reporter in his final season when the reporter repeatedly used the past tense to reference his accomplishments. Wainwright cut the reporter off mid-sentence and fired back, “Don’t put me in a grave just yet!”

Goldy was slightly more measured.

“Just because you get older doesn’t mean you can’t play,” Goldschmidt said. “It means you’ve got to do some things differently. Some things are not the same as when you were 23, 24, 25. ... But there’s some advantages of having been through it as well. So it’s not all negative. But on that physical side, because you asked, I’ve got to do things differently.”

Last year, Goldschmidt scuffled through the worst statistical season of his career since he played just 48 games in his debut season of 2011. Two years removed from his National League MVP season with the Cardinals, Goldschmidt had many observers wondering if age had caught up with him and Father Time had started to turn his bat into an anvil.

This time last year, there were reasons to believe we’d entered the “golden years” of Goldy’s career as his production pushed him seemingly closer to retirement.

After all, his struggles at the plate grew so pronounced by early May that Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol gave Goldschmidt multiple “work days” out of the lineup to try to get his swing right.

One of those work days came in Milwaukee during that same series when the Cardinals turned around a season that appeared destined for a losing record.

The Cardinals, eight games under .500 on Mother’s Day 2024, went 12 games over .500 from that point forward last season.

Goldschmidt’s offense also experienced an uptick but not to that same extent.

Through his first 53 games, he slashed .221/.305/.356 with seven home runs. Overall, in his final season with the Cardinals, Goldschmidt slashed .245/.302/.414 with 22 home runs.

His August and September looked more like him as he posted a slash line of .273/.325/.475, but the preceding months and a dreadful spring training were hard to dismiss.

The Cardinals let Goldschmidt’s contract expire, and they turned over first base to internal options. Willson Contreras moved from catcher, paving the way for Ivan Herrera and Pedro Pages behind the plate.

Cardinals first basemen ranked in the middle of the majors in on-base plus slugging percentage (.727, 15th) and 14th in batting average (.258) entering Monday.

Perhaps more importantly, at least for this season, they’ve been able to use first base to get Alec Burleson and Contreras at-bats and subsequently used designated hitter to keep Herrera’s bat in the lineup.

So far, a clean-shaven Goldschmidt has proven that “adjust” and “adapt” weren’t just buzzwords. They’re real things, and they’ve produced real results through 58 games this season. He’s batting .333 with a .388 on-base percentage and a .486 slugging percentage (.874 OPS) and six home runs.

Goldschmidt has swung and missed at a significantly lower rate (27.4% whiff rate in 2024, 18.8% in 2025) and struck out at a lower clip (26.5% in 2024, 15.1% in 2025).

Even though he hit the ball harder in his last season with the Cardinals — higher average exit velocity and hard-hit rate than 2025 — he seems to have found a sweet spot with his swing, in more ways than one.

MLB Statcast data measures what percentage of a balls put in play by a player’s swing fall within what it calls the launch-angle sweep spot. Last season, Goldschmidt was at 34.3%. This year, that’s up to 40.3%.

If that doesn’t sound like a lot, try these figures: Last year, he was just barely in the top half of the majors in sweet spot percentage. This year, he’s among the top 8% of all hitters in the majors.

Goldschmidt’s line-drive percentage (25.4%) is also the highest of any full-length season of his career (not including the pandemic-shortened 2020 year).

The Cardinals moved on and served the youth on their roster, and Goldschmidt is having a renaissance at the plate. This is a win all around, even if Goldschmidt’s team ultimately ends up with more wins.