{"id":659196,"date":"2026-04-02T17:26:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:26:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/659196\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T17:26:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T17:26:20","slug":"resurrection-or-reality-is-there-hope-for-the-cardinals-jordan-walker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/659196\/","title":{"rendered":"Resurrection or Reality: Is There Hope for the Cardinals\u2019 Jordan Walker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thank you for the warm reception from my debut article. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll have missteps along the way, but I\u2019m aiming to live up to the high standard VEB<\/a> has set. Expect to see me weekly going forward. I\u2019ll see you in the comments!<\/p>\n

This season is the year of reckoning for Jordan Walker. He comes from a seemingly endless line of Cardinals prospects over the years to never live up to the expectations put on them from a \u201cdraft and develop franchise<\/a>.\u201d Let\u2019s rip the bandaid off and mention some names: Carlson, Reyes, Luke Weaver, Delvin Perez, even Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty to a certain extent. The Cardinals lost their way in prospect development in the same way if Walmart turned into a real estate company \u2013 you have to nail the stated mission if it\u2019s going to be your stated mission.<\/p>\n

This leads me to ask the ultimate existential question about the career of Jordan Walker: on this Easter weekend, is the resurrection of his career that we all want so bad even possible? Is there any historical precedent for becoming a productive hitter after essentially being the worst hitter in Major League Baseball? Or, have Jordan Walker and the Cardinals tag teamed this like Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber and wrung the head off<\/a> a career that had so much promise?<\/p>\n

Before I get into the historical precedents (kind of sounds like a journey through important Supreme Court cases \u2013 honestly it\u2019s approaching that level of importance for the Cardinals), Jordan Walker deserves some praise for the early, early, early, early, (yes it\u2019s early!) returns from this season. After struggling mightily in spring training and being banished to the hitting lab to adjust, Jordan Walker seems to have, well, adjusted. At the time of this writing, Walker is running a cool .294\/.400\/.538 line, good for a 180 wRC+. I can\u2019t remember the last time he had a five game stretch that was this awesome. Here\u2019s the kicker though, despite a recent rash of strikeouts, Walker is running a 15% K rate with a 15% walk rate. Those are Wetherholtian numbers (wow does that guy look electric!).<\/p>\n

Yes it\u2019s early, early, early, early, early (yes I\u2019m still aware), but he has talked about his approach changing and simplifying the mental game. The Cardinals tried to change his launch angle (which did need to be fixed), and like a golf swing that needs work, opened up 2-3 other crisis level issues which combined to make him The Worst Hitter in Baseball (the capitals felt right for that distinction). If he can maintain this performance on a simplified track, perhaps there is hope. We discussed this further on our last episode of Redbird Rundown If you\u2019d like more coverage and audio\/visual is your thing. (Apple<\/a> and Spotify<\/a> links!)<\/p>\n

Now, to tackle the original question of the article. Can we have an Easter resurrection of Jordan Walker\u2019s career? Yes, it\u2019s mostly been a crown of thorns so far, but is there any hope? I went searching for players in their age 21 to 23 seasons with an OPS+ between 60 and 80 and at least 500 PA. The results came back with 118 players \u2013 a ton of guys have struggled in their first attempts at Major League Baseball!<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not pull any punches. Jordan Walker is dancing on a knife\u2019s edge. The list is littered with guys that never made it offensively. In fact, from the list of players who met those statistical measures, a vast majority of them never made it. You didn\u2019t need me to tell you that Jordan Walker\u2019s career is on life support, but the historical record helped check him right into the ICU. But, we\u2019re simply looking for what\u2019s possible here, so where\u2019s the resurrection hope? It exists on this list, too.<\/p>\n

There are several hall of fame players (and hall of very good players!) populating the early-struggler list: Ron Santo, Carlos Gomez, Carlon Beltran, and Pete Rose among them. But a few specific results really stood out to me if we\u2019re interested in rolling away the stone from the tomb of Jordan Walker\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

Mike Schmidt put together a .196\/.324\/.373 line as a 23 year old with a 30.7% K rate and no power to speak of \u2013 we all know how his career turned out. Aaron Judge didn\u2019t even play in the MLB from age 21 to 23, and at age 24 came up for a cup of coffee and struck out 44.7% of the time. Byron Buxton appeared to be a spectacular failure as the number one prospect in baseball and then ran wRC+ lower than Walker in his first two partial season before it came together for him.<\/p>\n

I want to make sure and drive home an important point here though: The last two paragraphs were me cherry picking the absolute best case scenarios for the resurrection of Jordan Walker. It\u2019s possible, but it\u2019s not likely. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m rooting for him to finally figure it out. With apologies to cleanup hitter Masyn Winn, we could use another power bat right in the middle of the lineup for years to come. The extremely early returns are encouraging thus far in 2026, but the hole that has been dug is quite deep. It turns out though, there is still hope for a resurrection from the historical record.<\/p>\n

Let me know what you think in the comments! It was interesting to do this deep dive on Walker. If you\u2019re interested in more thoughts and analysis live during games you can find me on twitter @mksmith86<\/a> or tons more in-game analysis and commentary from our podcast twitter @redbirdrundown2<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thank you for the warm reception from my debut article. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll have missteps along the way,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,4558,4,673,67,65076,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-659196","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-general","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-st-louis","13":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","14":"tag-st-louis-cardinals-analysis","15":"tag-stlouis","16":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659196","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=659196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}