{"id":560373,"date":"2026-02-07T23:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/560373\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T23:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T23:52:12","slug":"why-jordan-walker-is-struggling-with-the-cardinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/560373\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Jordan Walker is struggling with the Cardinals"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Jordan Walker was flying through the minors, St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> fans thought they had a potential budding superstar on their hands. He was ranked fourth<\/a> in MLB.com<\/a>\u2019s prospect rankings. That ranking had him rubbing shoulders in the VIP area with Gunnar Henderson and Corbin Carroll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now, he\u2019s our missing superstar. I probably don\u2019t need to tell you the whole sordid history of position changes<\/a>, demotions to the minors<\/a>, and struggles in the majors<\/a> \u2014 you\u2019ve felt that pain enough if you\u2019ve watched him play the last couple of years. On top of that, there have been questions about his coachability and work ethic<\/a>. It\u2019s gone about as well as it did for the Americans in the spy race against the Soviets in the Cold War.<\/p>\n

Which brings us to today. On the precipice of spring training 2026, this is it for Jordan Walker. Joshua Baez is coming. The Cardinals have more draft picks than the OKC Thunder and a stable of high-strikeout pitching prospects to make whatever trade they want to in order to bolster a pitiful outfield. It\u2019s time to ask the question of all questions: How do you fix Jordan Walker?<\/p>\n

This journey we\u2019re embarking on may be more arduous than Odysseus trying to make his way back home. (Please tell me you\u2019re planning to see the Christopher Nolan Odyssey film this summer. It\u2019s going to be a banger<\/a>.) So, we need to agree on some things up front \u2013 lodestars for our journey. There are three key things that hitters can be good at to my eye: make contact, hit the ball hard, and swing at pitches that allow this kind of damage. Let\u2019s all recall Albert Pujols for a moment. Ah, the glory. Did he do all three of these things well? He did. Ok, case closed on the three keys to hitting.<\/p>\n

Diagnosing the problem<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, there is some excellent news in the profile of Jordan Walker if we\u2019re going to solve the case of the missing superstar. Nobody in baseball swings harder than him. According to Baseball Savant<\/a> (an incredible resource!), he\u2019s in the 99th percentile in swing speed. This translates into a 91st percentile in average exit velocity, 87th percentile in hard hit percentage, and 66th percentile in barrel percentage. Jordan Walker is swinging the bat like John Henry against the machine<\/a>. (Yes, John Henry died from exhaustion, and that\u2019s a harsh parallel, but Walker\u2019s career is on life support here.) If you prefer a baseball metaphor, and please read this in a whisper, he\u2019s built like Aaron Judge and has that type of raw power. This is why the Cardinals haven\u2019t given up in their quest to solve the case. Jordan Walker is a potential SAM missile battery.<\/p>\n

Oh boy, is there bad news though. It\u2019s baseball bad news on the scale of the doctor walking into your exam room with a look on her face that makes your stomach drop. Jordan Walker makes horrifically bad contact. What\u2019s worse is that it\u2019s two kinds of bad contact. His whiff percentage is in the first percentile. First. One. No one is baseball had a worse whiff percentage than his last year. That\u2019s devastating. He swings at low and away sliders like your dog that just will not stop playing in the road. Pitchers could send Walker a picture of their slider grip before the game, tell him exactly when they\u2019re planning to throw it, and he\u2019d still swing and miss by a mile.<\/p>\n

Remember I said there were two kinds of bad contact, though. Yeah, we\u2019re not done. His launch angle sweet spot is also fifth percentile in all of baseball. Let me tell you what that means, although you can feel it in your bones like a storm on the horizon. The contact he\u2019s making is not at an angle to do damage. He hits missiles\u2026straight into the dirt. In golf they are colloquially known as worm burners, and there\u2019s no doubt the Busch Stadium grounds crew can feel them.<\/p>\n

The fix<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve sleuthed our way to a double contact issue. Now, is there any hope? I\u2019m happy to report there is. In July of last season, Walker ran a .304\/.373\/.435 for a 130 wRC+. What did he do differently? First of all, he was far more selective at the plate. Because of the All-Star game, July was his lowest total games played in a month (besides an injury-riddled June), but his second highest walk total. Hitters in the MLB always do better when they are ahead in counts. Walker\u2019s wRC+ when controlling the count were 216, 171, 121, 151. When behind in the count, those numbers falls to microscopic 27, 35, 22, and a downright laughable -37. That\u2019s Siberia cold. Step one in the reclamation project is for Jordan Walker to display more patience at the plate. He can. He has done that before. And he must again to save his career.<\/p>\n

The other clear fix is in what pitches Walker swings at. The good news is that the patient approach will help with this issue. Last year, Jordan Walker swung at more pitches out of the zone than at any time in his career and swung at the fewest pitches in the zone. This is a bad recipe, and we all watched the behemoth with slumped shoulders trudge back to the dugout too many times last year as evidence. This explains how a guy that hits scud missiles can have such bad contact quality. He\u2019s scalding the pitches that pitchers want him to swing at. This will kill his career if it\u2019s not corrected.<\/p>\n

At 23 years old, this is it. If the missing superstar is ever going to rise, it\u2019s going to be in this season. Here\u2019s one thing I can guarantee: If I can find the fixes for Jordan Walker then I know that Brant Brown already knows them. Jordan, be coachable, I\u2019m begging you. Hang out with Lars Nootbaar and become more selective. I still think it\u2019s possible for the superstar to bloom in the middle of the Cardinals order, but pressing for results will only exacerbate the problem. The answer to this case is calm and patience. Relax, Jordan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jordan Walker was flying through the minors, St. Louis Cardinals fans thought they had a potential budding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,4,673,67,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-560373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cardinals","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-st-louis","12":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","13":"tag-stlouis","14":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116032041545535807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}