Cardinals call out work ethic, preparation of young outfielder
However their playing time decisions and roster movement foibles may have impacted the course of his career to date, the St. Louis Cardinals have been meticulous in their public messaging around outfielder Jordan Walker.
They have been willing to accept fits and starts and slow progress for as long as it appeared there was indeed progress being made, but limits are bound to be reached eventually. Runway, launchpad, or somewhere in between, it is still Major League Baseball.
“I need to see Jordan have a sense of urgency for the things that need to take place in order to give him consistent results,” manager Oli Marmol said Tuesday. “That goes with his move toward the ball [in the outfield], his preparation in the cage, but also his approach in a game.”
“I don’t think I can force myself to really rush anything, but I do want to see results, obviously,” Walker said when asked about his manager’s comments. “I think just getting back to where it was right after the All-Star break, I really liked my approach there and really just working with [hitting coach Brant Brown] is honestly the best answer I have for you. I honestly don’t quite understand the urgency part. That might just be on me.”
Understanding is on Walker. Adjusting is on Walker. The publicly-donned kid gloves were quite clearly traded in for an open challenge, and that will shape what happens next.
What drove so much of Tuesday’s conversation was commentary offered by Brown during Marmol’s weekly radio appearance on KMOX. In an interview with Tom Ackerman, Bernie Miklasz and Chris Rongey, Miklasz asked Brown about Walker and the young hitter’s work at the plate this season.
Brown was unflinching.
“At some point in time, he’s going to have to devote more focus on preparation,” Brown said. “We’ve had long conversations with this. It’s not only looking at film on the starter, but also being able to come in and the first day of a series, just take a look at all the bullpen guys, all the information and videos available, just so we’re not getting snuck up on when a guy comes in.”
Whether Brown was speaking off the cuff and whether he intended to turn over this particular rock or not, there’s no putting back in the shadow what has seen the sun. None of his comments came as a particular surprise to anyone who has spent significant time around the team over the last three seasons, but none of them have ever been really even approached by any on-the-record discussions over that time, either.
Brown did go out of his way to make sure the team’s approach as a whole, and the roster-wide tendency to lock in on particular pitches, also caught mention. But it’s Walker’s struggles that drive so much notice, especially if the team believes – and is starting to say – they are in part the result of controllable variables.
Walker’s batting average and on base percentage have ticked up slightly from last season’s low points, but not nearly enough to justify time as a big league regular. And even as he’s picked up in those areas, his slugging percentage has dipped down below .320, and was as low as .293 on July 19.
The uptick from there corresponds with the post-break period in which Walker said he felt most comfortable in his swing and approach, and the eye test corresponds to that. Those results, though, weren’t sticky, and he has just three extra-base hits – a double and two homers – since August 1.
“I think it’s a huge step for me to be taking my walks,” he said. “I think once I take my walks with the ability that I know that I have, I’ll become an elite hitter.”
The Cardinals would love nothing more than to see that happen, but Walker is in the bottom 14 percent of the league in chase rate and the bottom 2 percent in both swing-and-miss and strikeout percentage. When he’s not making contact, it’s not because he’s walking – it’s because he’s whiffing.
After recovering from appendicitis at the end of June, the Cardinals sent Walker on an extended rehab assignment to Double-A Springfield, where hitting coach Casey Chenoweth and assistant hitting coordinator Brock Hammit were among those tasked with helping him rebuild a productive base. If that process seemed to go slowly, it was at least in part by design; maximizing the rehab assignment kept Walker from being sent down, allowing him to both save face and make a big league salary while putting in minor league game time.
At the same time, another quiet benefit of that decision was to preserve Walker’s one remaining option year. If the Cardinals do indeed reach the point of believing that their best way to benefit from his obvious skill set is to move on in a trade, that remaining option could be attractive to a team that would no doubt be looking at him as a candidate for a hard reset and a fresh start.
It’s far from clear that the team is anywhere close to reaching that determination, especially given the opacity around the perspective of incoming president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom. What is clear is that the team will be in the business of stockpiling young talent rather than shipping it out; it will be on Walker, at this point, to demonstrate he’s capable of remaining in that category.
“We have not seen the consistency that we would have hoped for by now,” Marmol acknowledged. “Our hope is that changes. He is still young, and this could flip at any moment…but there’s real work to be done there, and there’s a real level of dedication and consistency that needs to come with that.”
