Cardinals’ Walker is much improved with the glove. Now he has to hit
This is the third season Jordan Walker has spent in the major leagues with the St. Louis Cardinals, but it’s the first in which he’s played big league games in the month of May.
In each of his first two seasons, he fell into a familiar pattern – struggles in the middle of April gave way to a stretch of work away from the field, and then devolved into a demotion to the minors.
This year has started in a very similar fashion, save for the demotion. That’s the result of the design the Cardinals have carried into the season, and to ask those in charge of his crucial development is to hear that this time is different.
“There are very clear things that he needs to do to have success, and he knows what they are,” manager Oli Marmol said. “I will do everything possible to make sure that Jordan Walker is the Jordan Walker that we think he’s capable of being. Our staff is highly, highly committed to that.
“If it means a couple extra days off, that’s nothing to us. In the grand scheme of things, if that’s what we think is going to help him, then we’re going to do it. But the end game is to make sure he reaches his full potential.”
To that end, the Cardinals decided to take a week-long homestand as an opportunity to put Walker through his paces with tools that are less readily available on the road. By utilizing extra batting cage space, as well as the Trajekt – a machine which plays video of a pitcher’s motion and then delivers pitches precisely tuned to simulate big league deliveries – Walker can put in a full day of work without ever stepping between the white lines.
That intentionality is why his May playing time has been sparse, playing in only two of the team’s first five games on the homestand, one of which was the second half of a doubleheader. And while the May flowers started to bloom, entering play Wednesday, Walker was still looking for a hit to blossom this month from the barrel of his bat.
What’s missing is the anxiety that existed the last two seasons around staying in the majors. When the Cardinals discussed runway and opportunity for younger players, they were considering Walker as the poster boy. They are committed to his presence for the long haul, and the hope is that confidence makes the difference.
“I have no complaints about the talks lately,” Walker said. “They’ve been open with how they wanted to do things, they have a plan with me, and then they talk it through, how I’m feeling. I think it’s just us being on the same basis and then getting back to what I was doing at the beginning of the season.”
Through April 13, Walker was hitting .275 with two home runs and six runs batted in, albeit with a strikeout rate that crept just north of 30 percent. That was the date of his last multi-hit game; in his following 16 appearances, Walker went just 7-for-57 with 20 strikeouts and only two doubles, good for an anemic .338 OPS over that stretch.
There’s plenty of available runway, but those numbers simply do not represent a major league-quality hitter. Given that Walker was once baseball’s best prospect and the quality of the contact he showed in his first big league season, the Cardinals are absolutely certain that his true form is represented by the player who showed up in the season’s first three weeks rather than its most recent three.
One area where Walker has made tremendous strides is defensively. After tracking as a significantly negative fielder in his first two seasons while he learned right field on the job, Walker is now in the upper percentiles for defensive performance among outfielders in the early going. MLB’s Baseball Savant graded him through added success rate as a -4% right fielder in 2023 and -5% in 2024; this season, he’s added 1%, and is also in the positive range with one out recorded above average.
“I think it started with us in the offseason,” said Cardinals coach Jon Jay, whose portfolio largely includes the defensive work of the team’s outfield. “He had a good attitude in spring training, and you’re seeing that his hard work is paying off.”
Jay spent most of the winter commuting from his Miami home to the team’s complex in Jupiter, putting Walker, Victor Scott II and others through their paces in an attempt to refine the skills that Jay solidified over his decade-long career in the big leagues. His work, and the work of the outfielders in return, has drawn raves from Marmol. And Jay’s proximity to his playing career – his last season was 2021 – has helped bridge a communication gap that can be difficult with players trying to put the modern game in its proper context.
Marmol described an occasion last season when Walker came to his home before a game for a frank conversation, and the manager was concerned that the player was speaking with his “guard up.” That creates a nearly impossible learning environment, and is the sort of thing that causes a runway to cut off. If the work in the big leagues becomes counterproductive, then it has to take place elsewhere, in a lower pressure environment.
By contrast, Marmol described Walker as “communicating at an entirely different level. How he’s feeling, it’s a different – it’s not even close.”
All that’s left is for him to hit.
“Just trying to get back to it,” Walker said. “I feel like I’ve taken some good swings lately, and, you know, we’re gonna get back to it, for sure.”
