In discussing his improbable but inspirational triumph in the 2026 Home Run Derby, Jordan Walker said something that stirred my curiosity.
“What I told myself was keep my head up,” Walker said when asked about surviving the tumult of his 2024 and 2025 seasons. “Just where I was last year to this year, I mean life turns around fast. In all honesty it was tough to keep my head up at times but I kept going.”
Life turns around fast …
In Walker’s case, life turned around very fast. And in an incredibly dramatic way. So, I did some late-night checking.
I wanted to find the answer to this question: what was Jordan Walker doing last year at this time on July 13, 2025 – exactly one year from making his epic star turn in the 2026 HR Derby?
Walker, who went on the IL with appendicitis, was feeling better during a rehab assignment that put him with Double A Springfield.
On July 13, Walker was in the lineup for Springfield’s Texas League game at Corpus Christi. He had homered the night before, but now it was time to get some more at-bats in a competitive game.
In Springfield’s win, Walker drew a walk in the first inning. He struck out (looking) in the second. Next time up, he doubled in the fifth and scored a run. Then came the final two at-bats in his rehab stint before returning to St. Louis to rejoin the Cardinals.
Sixth inning: Walker hit into a 5-4-3 ground-ball double play.
Eighth inning: Walker hit into another 5-4-3 ground-ball double play.
In his 10 games with Springfield during the get-well, sharpen-up visit, Walker had six hits in 38 at-bats (.158) with a .651 OPS and 29 percent strikeout rate. And he pounded his way into five ground-ball double plays.
In fact, 17 of his 38 at-bats for Springfield ended in either a strikeout or a GIDP. He did, however, put up three doubles and two homers. The appendicitis hit him after he’d missed time with wrist inflammation, a malady that put him at Triple A Memphis for a four-game tune-up. Combining the Memphis-Springfield stats, Walker batted .185 and had a .619 OPS. It was a quiet time for him. And probably a challenging, difficult time.
Before being slowed by the sore wrist and the illness, Walker’s last game for the Cardinals occurred on June 22 of the ‘25 season. At that time, in 55 games and 191 plate appearances for the Cards, Walker hit .210 with three homers, a .295 slugging percentage and a 33% strikeout rate.
Life turns around fast …
It wasn’t turning around fast – and in a positive direction – for Walker. After returning to the Cardinals on July 18, he didn’t do much over the remaining weeks of the season. In 56 games and 205 plate appearances he batted .219 with a .603 OPS, three homers and a 31% strikeout rate. That bleak set of stats closed out another lost season – his second in a row – in the majors.
Life turns around fast …
Well, not in 2026 spring training. Walker looked lost again. Confused. Frustrated. His offensive utility prompted the Cardinals to pull him from exhibition games late in camp, and retreat to the hitting lab for some remedial work.
Looking back at that passage of time – to the cruel sequence of events and setbacks – it’s nearly incomprehensible to look at Walker now, at midsummer 2026, and see an entirely different hitter who is everything the Cardinals hoped and dreamed he’d be.
Life turns around fast …
Yes, after some delay and disruptions, Walker’s career, and his life, turned around fast and in a way that no one could really imagine … not if they were entirely speaking the truth.
Before heading to Philadelphia for the All-Star Game – as a first time All-Star – Walker became only the third Cardinal in franchise history to amass at least 22 home runs, 74 RBIs and 13 stolen bases during a player’s first 93 games of the season. As I noted earlier, the other two were Rogers Hornsby and Ray Lankford. And Walker’s 74 RBIs were the most in the majors at the break.
What we’re seeing is an emphatic, stunning and transformative rebound from Walker following his depressing performance across 2024 and 2025.
The before and after looks are shocking.
— In those two lost seasons, combined, he had a slash line of .211/.270./324/ … with a .595 OPS … a wRC+ that was 32 percent below league average offensively … he totaled 11 home runs and 61 RBIs … his fWAR was minus 1.9 – the absolute worst by a MLB position player over the two seasons.
— In his born-again, bopping-again 2026 season of renewal and redemption, Walker has a slash line of .294/.354/.532 plus an .887 OPS and a wRC+ that’s 43 percent above league average offensively. In 179 fewer plate appearances that he totaled in 2024-25, Walker had 22 home runs and 74 RBIs in 2026.
When we measure how much the “new” value exceeds the “old” value, the percentage of improvement for Jordan Walker from 2024-25 to 2026 is utterly remarkable.
Batting average: 39 percent improvement.
On-base percentage: 31% increase
Slugging percentage: 64% increase
OPS: 49% increase
wRC+: 110% increase
HR rate: up 300 percent
RBI rate: up 143%.
That’s phenomenal. And as if to verify that what we’ve been watching is true and real, Walker ventured into Kyle Schwarber’s home den in Philadelphia and staged a stunning against-all-odds comeback to triumph in the 2026 Home Run Derby.
Schwarber is the major-league Home Run King so far this season, leading the bigs and the Phillies with 32 homers – 10 more than Walker has for St. Louis. And in Monday’s HR Derby, Schwarber led off the final round by opening a huge 11-homer lead on the younger, less experienced Walker.
Going into the eight-hitter HR Derby competition, Schwarber was a heavy favorite of +310 at DraftKings. Walker was rated fifth at +750. An investor who wagered $100 on Walker to win collected $850, which includes the payback of the $100 wager.
The 15-swing format fundamentally changed the probability of the Derby finals. When Schwarber went first and hit 11 home runs on 15 swings, he set a scorching 73.3% home-run-per-swing pace.
Walker began his final turn staring at an 11-0 deficit before taking a single swing. To win outright without forcing an extra-round “swing-off,” Walker needed to hit 12 home runs on 15 swings – requiring a longshot 80% homer-per-swing pace. And more than 43,000 Philadelphia zealots were Walker’s enemies.
Walker's upset push was saved by the new Derby rule that allows a batter to keep going past their final swing as long as they homer in that final swing. From there, they can have as many swings as it takes to win as long as every swing results in a home run. A swing that doesn’t produce a home run means “game over.” (Or perhaps tied.)
Down to his final out Walker had to be flawless – perfect! – to survive, tie the HR count, then win the whole damn thing. The pressure was immense, but the gum-chomping Walker looked like the coolest dude in the arena. He displayed incredible poise and strength of mind. He made his successful and victorious charge at Schwarber with six consecutive home runs on six swings to walk off with a 12-11 win.
Actually, Walker walked on. His name blew up on social media. People who didn’t know him wanted to know all about him and went looking for information, biography, and video evidence.
Jordan Walker has entered the building. He has entered the mainstream. He is a fresh celebrity, someone new and interesting who has a fantastic family and an amiable disposition and talent galore.
What will the American sports media and fans do with a man like this? Where are the controversies, the scandals, the secrets? Where is the dirt? It doesn’t exist. Walker is a good guy with booming power who loves his mother and father and grandmother and brother and sister. And he’s the classic case of an athlete being counted out only to create his own narrative by overcoming the odds and the doubts to show us who he really is, and what he’s really made of.
Walker is also the same guy the Cardinals removed from exhibition games to move him out of sight for an emergency fix-it swing session – and now he was the biggest and baddest home-run hitter in the land. And he never flinched. That’s awesome.
"That's a pretty special thing that he was able to do," Schwarber told the media. “To lock it in there for those swings and to get them over (the wall.) He earned it.”
When Schwarber hit his seventh home run with five swings still remaining, Bryce Harper turned to his Philly teammates and declared: “It’s over."
It wasn’t over. Not with the “new” Jordan Walker swinging away, chomping that chewing gum, converting all of his joy and energy into a smashing, unexpected raid on The Bank ballpark.
"My goal is to win a World Series,” Walker said at one point in the post-Derby news conference.
Hopefully, he’ll want to be a Cardinal when the time comes for a World Series run. And we don’t know exactly when that will be. But with two franchise-caliber, foundational cornerstones in place – Walker and JJ Wetherholt – it’s good to dream again. It’s good to believe in what’s possible.
And as Jordan Walker told us:
Life turns around fast …
The Buffet …
1. Contract extension for Jordan Walker? Yes. Of course. Ready. Set. Go. This will be a credibility test for Cardinals ownership.
2. But more than that, this is just a huge opportunity for the DeWitts to show their firm commitment to the draft-development plan that includes keeping their best drafted-developed players in place with contract extensions. The Cardinals should always be about stars, and they have two in JJ Wetherholt and Jordan Walker. Keep them together for a long time, build around them, make sure to cultivate a large supply of talented, power-arm starting pitchers – and the Cardinals will win big.
3. Walker is still only 24, he’s moving into a spectacular new realm in his career … learning and getting better through each new experience – and his best is yet to come. What impact will this triumph in the HR Derby have on Walker’s confidence and persona going forward? Let the pitchers be forewarned.
4. I hope Walker’s walk-on into stardom and his instant popularity among baseball fans everywhere outside of Philadelphia will warm up the relationship – the feelings – between Cardinal fans and their emerging star. This relationship should go into full-embrace mode. Cardinals fans were going crazy in delight with Walker’s heroics at Philly.
5. I think Walker followed in the footsteps of Chris Carpenter defeating Roy Halladay in the same Philly ballpark when the Cardinals upset the Phillies in the winner-take-all 2011 NLDS. That was an instant classic. So was the 2026 HR Derby.
6. Anyone who questioned or criticized the Cardinals for staying the course with Walker has nothing to apologize for. I saw a lot of self-righteous, insufferable, phony-baloney idiots on social media late Monday night, trying to shame their fellow Cardinal fans, and media, who expressed doubts over Walker. No honest person can say they never had any doubts about Walker. So let me say this politely: shaddup.
7. The longer the Cardinals wait on this, the more they’ll have to pay to ensure Walker spends his MLB career as a Cardinal.
8. Friendly request to my fellow media peoples: Wetherholt is extended, Walker should be extended, but let’s take a few deep breaths before writing or recording hot-take pleadings to extend just about every player on the team that’s homered, gotten a save, or pitched a quality start. This extension fever thing that runs through Cardinal-media veins is a peculiar obsession. The Redbirds have so many young talented prospects in development, the Cardinals can’t start throwing extensions around like they’re coupons for sandwich discounts.
9. Because a Cardinal won the HR Derby, I was stunned to see The Athletic write a story about the event. I’m thinking an editor had to text a writer to let the writer know who Jordan Walker is. And that he plays for the Cardinals. And that the Cardinals are an MLB team. I do believe Walker was mentioned at ESPN but I’ll have to double check.
10. Too many predictable, unoriginal national medias were a lot more interested in giving attention to the hissing, booing, snarling, play-acting Philly mob – as if Philadelphia sports fans had never booed opposing-team athletes before. This is a long-running Philadelphia act. It’s literally a performance. (And it’s funny.) It isn’t a new development. Besides: J. Walker kicked their asses, and left ‘em whining. That’s the story.
11. Spain vs. France in the first World Cup semifinal, slated for Tuesday afternoon. A classic collision of styles. Spain wants to control possession, France wants to set their attacking talent into the open space to impose relentless pressure on the opponent. France has the scoring machine Kylian Mbappé who has 20 career goals in 20 career World Cup matches. France has not allowed a goal in the knockout-round showdowns. France has another edge because of their mission to make history by becoming only the second Euro nation to compete in three consecutive World Cup finals. France 2, Spain 1.
12. Baseball America on the Cardinals’ 2026 MLB Draft class: “The Cardinals took an extremely well-rounded approach, as they had more picks than anyone and took a wide variety of interesting player types, including starter profiles, power-armed relievers, up-the-middle contact bats, bat-first data darlings and hyper-athletic scout favorites.” Baseball America – and many other draft-prospect evaluators – liked the selection of right-handed U. of Tennessee starting pitcher Tegan Kuhns with the 32 overall selection.
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, Keith Tkachuk, 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.