Hello again!
As I tap away on the keyboard, there are just 29 days remaining until the Cardinals’ 2026 regular-season opener at Busch Stadium.
It’s time for our latest Spring Training Question and Answer of the Day.
Q: Has Jordan Walker finally seen the light? Or perhaps to put it a better way: has Walker finally seen enough low-and-away pitches located a quarter-mile from the strike zone to know that he should avoid swinging-lunging-whiffing on them? Or are we due for another Groundball Day, which is his version of Groundhog Day?
A: Cards manager Oli Marmol evidently thinks so. In an interview with MLB Radio, Marmol suggested there’s been a breakthrough.
And Walker sure does need to make a breakthrough, or else the Cardinals will have another breakdown while wondering if Walker is a lost-cause prospect.
For those who may have missed Walker’s at-bats over the last two seasons, here’s a brief statistical review of where he ranked among 291 big-league hitters who made a minimum 550 plate appearances over that time:
wRC+: #285 of 291
WAR: #291
OPS: #287
Slugging: #281
Isolated Power: #260
Batting Avg: #272
OBP: #246
Walk rate: #194
Strikeout rate: #276
Groundball rate: 48.9%, #264
Win Probability Added: #277
Last season, in defensive runs saved, Walker’s negative 11 ranked 24th among 27 MLB rightfielders that patrolled at least 500 innings out yonder.
I’m not trying to pile on here, but with such a depressing progress report, Jordan Walker was arguably the worst position player in the majors across 2024 and 2025.
Best I can tell, Walker has four things going for him:
1) Walker doesn’t turn 24 years old until May 22. So even though his chronic offensive failures are getting old, Walker is still young.
2) According to Statcast, Walker ranks in the 99th percentile for fastest bat speed. That is truly outstanding, and no, I’m not being sarcastic.
3) Statcast has Walker in the 91st percentile for highest average exit velocity. Very good.
4) And Statcast puts Walker in the 87th percentile for the highest hard-hit rate. Very strong.
OK, so Statcast likes Jordan Walker.
Statcast is definitely in the minority.
This is what a .211 batting average, .288 OBP, and a .324 slug over the past two seasons will do to a player’s popularity. Based on wRC+, Walker is 32 percent below league average offensively since the beginning of the 2024 season.
But is Walker figuring stuff out? Let’s get back to Marmol, who provided an informative answer when asked to describe what’s different about the Walker who is prepping for 2026. Marmol said a lot.
“Easy to sour on somebody when you've seen them repeat the same kind of swing or the same approach over and over,” Marmol said. “And I hate saying this but it's real … he's young and I do feel like when you get to the point where you're comfortable admitting the things that you don't do well and you can have a tough conversation and you can push back on things that don't feel good – that's when you start to get on the other side of some of the failure.
“And I feel like he's been a guy that hasn't been able to do that to the degree that you would want and when you give [him] certain information, we don't want it to feel like criticism. It's just about an opportunity to improve.
“I finally feel like we're there where this offseason man you can have real conversations with [him]. He’s giving you feedback and the guard is down … like you're just able to have a real talk.”
Marmol said Walker has been more receptive to advice from the manager, hitting coach Brant Brown and outfield coach Jon Jay.
“I feel like we're actually making progress and it’s not just optimism – I feel like we're actually headed somewhere,” Marmol said. “So my hope is that it kicks in sooner than later so he can have some confidence in continuing this process.
“Sometimes that's not the way it works out. You get punched in the mouth right off the gate so we're gonna continue to work.”
In 2023, when Walker began to struggle after a good start to his rookie season, I was aware of the of an increasingly sensitive issue and I never hesitated to speak about it on my KFNS radio show:
“He doesn’t accept coaching.”
What, Bernie?
“He doesn’t listen to coaches or follow through on the work after they suggest changes.”
I repeated this all over again in 2024. I got ripped by some fans because others in the media wouldn’t touch the work-ethic angle in Walker’s failure. I guess these folks thought I was making it up. Nah. The difference? I wasn’t reluctant, at all, to discuss this. Why? Because it was the truth. Period.
Accordingly. Early last September, live on KMOX radio, I asked Brant Brown about Walker – and what Walker needed to do to turn his season and career around.
Brown candidly pointed to Walker’s lack of urgency and a disappointing work ethic.
“At some point in time he’s going to have to devote more focus on preparation," Brown told me. “One thing with [Walker] is we’ve played a massive game of tennis, going back and forth with what he feels like he needs to do versus what he really needs to do.
“But for me,” Brown continued, “there’s a really easy way out. He might have to be a little bit more uncomfortable to be able to achieve what we wanted to achieve. He needs to study more and work harder off the field to improve his game on the field.”
Later that day, when other members of the media tried to follow up on Brown’s comments, Marmol was fully aligned with his batting coach and aired it out.
“We have not seen the consistency that we would have hoped for by now,” Marmol said. “Our hope is that it changes. He’s still young and this could flip at any moment. But there’s real work to be done and there’s a real level of dedication and consistency that needs to come with that.”
I write about this now because – as Marmol indicated – there’s been a change. Walker apparently got the message. It took too long for that message to sink in, but at least Walker has committed to paying attention to his manager and coaches. And he’s putting in the work. And this is a positive development.
It doesn’t mean Walker will cure his flaws and become a fearsome hitter. So far this spring he’s 1 for 5 in the exhibition games and three of his outs came on ground balls. So yeah, there’s a lot of work to do. But if Walker kept ignoring the people who have repeatedly tried to help him, he had no chance to improve. At least Jordan Walker has joined the effort to save Jordan Walker.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.