St. Louis Cardinals’ prospect Jordan Walker pounding at door for a roster spot in 2023

If you ask Jordan Walker, he’ll tell you that the most impressive play he made in Sunday’s 8-2 Cardinals victory over the Marlins started with losing a ball in the sun.

Walker is 20 years old and one of the five best prospects in baseball by any evaluation you might choose to trust. He crushed a 430-foot home run in his second plate appearance of spring and legged out an infield single on a routine ground ball immediately after fouling a ball off his foot in his third.

But it was the catch he made with his back against the outfield fence that caught his attention, as that was the play which posed a test of the work he’s been putting in as he transitions from third base to outfield.

“When it’s hit into the sun, I usually lose them,” Walker said Sunday afternoon, assessing his defensive progress. “Being able to pick it back up, I take a lot of pride in working with (José Oquendo) and working with Willie (McGee). We’ve been working on sun balls a lot ... it felt good to me because I’ve been working on that.”

The homer? That comes naturally.

Still, they don’t all come naturally at Roger Dean Stadium. Catcher Willson Contreras, in his first exhibition at bat with his new team, drove a pitch Saturday at 104 miles per hour off the bat and 27 degrees of launch; a drive, in other words, that ought to be a homer. Instead, it died on the track in center.

Walker’s did not die. It soared. And having played a half season in Low-A for Palm Beach, he is all too familiar with the trials and tribulations that come with putting a ball up into the heavy Florida jet stream.

“The ball dies here,” he laughed. “I’ve talked to a lot of pitchers, and they love pitching here.”

“You’ve seen some balls hit pretty hard lately that don’t get out (at Roger Dean),” second baseman Nolan Gorman said. “That was impressive. I knew right off the bat that thing had a really good chance of going.”

“That was fun to watch,” manager Oliver Marmol added. “He put something behind that one.”

The pitcher Walker tagged was Johnny Cueto, a long-time Cardinals nemesis who is 17 years Walker’s senior. Laughing with reporters in the Marlins clubhouse, Cueto acknowledged he’d received a report that identified Walker as a top prospect and half-heartedly blamed the pitch clock for leaving a meatball up for consumption on the first pitch of an at bat.

“I just sped up and threw the ball fast, and I just left it there. He took advantage of it,” Cueto said through a translator.

In the top of the third, facing Marlins top prospect pitcher Eury Pérez, Walker displayed another of the elite tools which has seen him rocket up prospect rankings. In a 2-2 count, he fouled an 89.1 mile per hour slider straight down off his left foot. Hobbling around the dirt circle, he was forced to hustle back to the box, the ever present pitch clock ticking in the background.

The next pitch was a routine ground ball to veteran infielder Jean Segura at third base. The routine dropped away quickly; Walker hauled his 6’5”, nearly 250-pound frame down the line at top speed, and spun an out into a hustling base hit.

‘Impressive and good to see’

Gorman called that play, “huge on (Walker)’s part.”

“Credit to him for listening to a lot of the older guys talking about always hustling,” Gorman said. “What he did today was impressive and good to see.”

The earliest impressions of Walker in camp were somewhat muted. Getting his first looks against teammates in live batting practice sessions, he often found himself flummoxed by a variety of offspeed pitches. Hitters are generally behind the preparation of pitchers at this point in the calendar, and young hitters facing big league breaking balls, arguably even moreso.

When a prospect who hasn’t hit above Double-A is way out in front of a slider from a closer who last year made the All-Star team, there’s no cause for panic. When the at bats get longer and more competitive, though, there’s reason for optimism. And as pitchers begin to wear down and become more likely to make mistakes, opportunities are presented.

Knock, knock

What could earn Walker a spot in the majors before even stopping over in Memphis is identifying those opportunities and adapting, quickly, in order to take advantage of them. There is no apparent brake being applied to the speed of his climb.

“You just can’t get discouraged in this game,” Walker said. “I just know that those arms I was facing, they are really good. I saw a lot of good stuff. I just can’t get discouraged if I had a bad at bat. Just learn something from it, and then try to make the adjustment.”

A player who can think the game like that while flashing the tools Walker displayed Sunday is a player who’s soon to be pounding down the door to the big league clubhouse.

Knock, knock.