In today’s audit, I want to take a more extensive look at the recent times and turbulence of Jordan Walker, and the sudden ice storm of a slump that has the BFIB feeling a bit unsettled.
So. Without additional preliminaries...
WHAT'S UP WITH JORDAN WALKER?
The Situation: Walker hasn’t homered since May 23 at Cincinnati. And since then, in his last eight games through June 2, Walker had a .161 average, .188 on-base percentage, .349 OPS, and no extra-base hits.
The Problem: It’s nothing unusual. Pitchers are trying to muddle his mind by emptying their pitch dispenser, giving him enough different looks to make his head gyrate. If Walker seems confused, well, he probably is. He’s seen 10 varieties of pitches over his last 31 at-bats. And the trickster hurlers are changing sequences on him … “pitching backwards” as the term goes.
Of his 10 strikeouts during this eight-game stretch, pitchers have attacked him with the geographical approach. What’s that?
North-south …
East-west …
Because Walker is falling behind in the count, those savvy pitchers have the advantage of heading to extreme pitch locations rather than challenging him over the plate.
And over the last week or so, we could see Walker guessing – really locking in on a pitch that he expected to see, only to have the pitcher do the exact opposite.
When a hitter – young or old – gets flustered and starts guessing … and guessing wrong … the pitcher has him. And even Jordan has said (many times) that he functions best when he takes a clear mind into the at-bat, free of all the mental clutter.
Here’s a little stat that tells us a lot about Walker’s struggles in these recent “game show” contests with pitchers.
Over the last eight games, Walker has 19 whiff swings and has watched 18 called strikes. So he’s swinging at too much stuff he should avoid, and he’s looking and staring at pitches he should crush … a lot of that comes down to the pitchers zigging when Walker thinks they’ll be zagging.
Walker struck out four times Monday against the Rangers, and opened Tuesday’s exercise with three more strikeouts. Gosh. A head-turning streak of seven consecutive strikeouts.
Here are the seven strikeout pitches in order: slider (1), slider (2), changeup (3), sinker (4), split-finger (5), four-seam (6) and curve (7).
Walker’s strikeout rate during the eight disorienting games was 31.2 percent. And to complete the nightmare scene, the ground-ball gremlins got to him again.
Walker put 21 balls in play in his last eight games and 11 were chopped or bounced or rolled or scorched on the ground.
Ten strikeouts and 11 grounders as the mix for 21 outs was a return to Jordan’s past, and no one (including him) wanted to see the big feller have a reunion with his “lost’ Jordan self. Nothin’ personal, but we don’t want to see that guy, that hitter, again.
Is This a Cause For Alarm? Look if you want to go to the Spotify app and cue the Rolling Stones classic “19th Nervous Breakdown” as the soundtrack to Walker’s at-bats … hey, go for it. I do not control your mind, or your mood. I have enough trouble maintaining stability within my own axis. And yeah, I’ll like seeing Walker get the heck out of 2024, escape 2025, and come back to the best of 2026.
Something To Keep In Brain Storage: Coming into the Texas series, Walker had played 10 weeks of baseball in the 2026 season. He had an above-average week offensively eight times, and I’d categorize five of the eight as great. And two of the 10 weeks were bad. Point is, he’s displayed the ability to realign, regroup, and resume.
Despite what your neighbor Claude might say about Walker, or if you’re hearing sky-is-falling clucking from your annoying cousin Vincent – truth is, Walker has been consistently good this season. You say I’m wrong? Is that because you only remember what you saw over the previous 48 hours and nothing else matters?
Take a look at what Walker did in March-April, and what he did in May. If I’m going to evaluate a hitter’s consistency, I prefer basing it on a larger sample size – by the month in this instance – instead of ending up on the floor, entangled in some lunatic Twister game from hell, every time J-Walk strikes out or chases a sweeper that turns him into a sleeper.
Anyway…
Walker in March-April: .906 OPS, .552 slugging pct, and a .154 wRC+ that translates to 54% above league average offensively.
Walker in month of May: .912 OPS, .551 slugging pct, and a .157 wRC+ that translates to 57% above league average.
Not identical, but almost. How cool is that? I mean, this shows Walker basically took his very big opening month of 2026 and repeated it – did the damn thing again! – in his second month of ‘26.
That said, I am also here for the worriers. I don’t want to just be mister bossy pants and dismiss Walker’s previous eight games as a bunch of nothing. (Or even his last 15 days and nights of baseball in which he’s hit .207 with a .328 slug.)
A little cold seven-game stretch, or a two-week chill can turn into a deep freeze.
So I like to look at the current trouble through this lens:
Is this just a small-sample disturbance, or does it show early signs of a broken process?
Here’s a Q&A with an ol’ scout friend of mine:
Q: Do you see a red alert here?
Answer: “Maybe yellow,” he said.
Q: Any specifics?
Answer: “Walker has long levers, so if his timing is off, you start to see him drift. The flaws resurface. The things that brought him down in 2024 and ‘25. More swing-and-miss on hard stuff up and in, and he can’t get the barrel there on time. Then more chase on off-speed away … low and away … he knows it’s a bad pitch but recognizes that too late. When he starts (the swing) early, he can’t hold up.
“Once they establish the threat of the high fastball, they flip the sweeper that starts middle-away and breaks completely out of the strike zone. When Walker isn’t comfortable, he gets a little jumpy and goes into the mode of protecting the zone, but he lunges at breaking balls that he normally would spit at when he’s ahead of the count. And other times they reverse the order of the approach. Finesse, then a hard finish."
Q: What’s the importance of the early-count battle with a developing hitter like Walker?
Answer: “He has to start doing damage on those early-count strikes. Just do his hunting in the strike zone, and concentrate on nothing else. Don’t think about anything except the next pitch and be ready to pounce if it’s in his hunting zone.”
Q: And if Walker doesn’t do that?
Answer: “Pitchers will continue feeding him this diet of elevated fastballs and tailing sliders and sweepers to get him in a two-strike count.”
Q: Do you think Walker is pressing? Does he look like a guy who feels like it’s up to him to carry the team? The St. Louis offense is stuck in a pretty extreme downturn. How does that affect him?
Answer: “Yes. He knows first hand the impact he has on a young team when he’s launching rockets and destroying earned-run averages. He is getting a lot more attention now. From the other team, the fans, the media, and the old baseball scouts who are taking notes. He can sense all of that. So it’s human nature – he wants to live up to it. He wants to be the guy who can lead his teammates into the fight and deliver the knockout.
“Most hitters go through this. You can see him try to ‘Hit’ his way out of this and pull his boys up instead of letting the game come to him. But he’ll be OK. I really do believe that. He’s a smart person. He’s been through a lot and earned a lot over the last couple of years. He just needs to remember all of the valuable work he invested to turn his career around. When in doubt, just apply what you know to be successful.”
Q: That’s a great point. When Walker was exploding during his best streaks in the first couple of months, he cut his chase rate down to 22% or so percent. And he was jumping on the juicy meatball pitches at an 80 percent rate. He was in command of the zone.
A: “Yeah, for sure. With Walker, smart swing decisions are critical to his success. It all starts there. He knows it. That’s why I think he’ll get back in sync.”
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.