Given that the best two weeks of his season at Triple-A Memphis coincided with a midsummer swoon for the St. Louis Cardinals , it should not come as a surprise that prized outfield prospect Jordan Walker has found his way back to the big leagues.
In his last two series in the minors, Walker slugged four homers and put up a 1.102 OPS across 57 plate appearances.
While Matt Carpenter’s injury may technically have opened a spot on the roster, it strains credulity to think a 38-year-old pro baseball player hasn’t been dealing with a stiff back for a good portion of the season. The Cardinals have remained non-committal throughout the months when asked about Walker’s return path, but evidently it became clear that there had been sufficient progress made at the plate – and sufficient regression in front of him.
Despite acquiring Tommy Pham at the trade deadline with an eye toward a role targeting lefties, the Cardinals have deployed him in more or less an every day role in his first two weeks back in St. Louis. Michael Siani’s oblique strain created an opening for Victor Scott II, so Pham’s appearances haven’t spiked in response to that. Instead, manager Oli Marmol has clearly begun crafting lineups with an eye on limiting the exposure of two struggling lefties, necessitating time for Pham even against some righties.
Entering play Tuesday, Lars Nootbaar has a slugging percentage lower than his on-base percentage over the last 28 days, and his OPS over that stretch is a paltry .611. The numbers get worse the closer the split is cut; he has just a .385 OPS over his last two weeks, and over the last week, put up a mere 1-for-13.
Nolan Gorman, meanwhile, continues to chase down the record for highest strikeout rate for a qualified hitter over a full season and has seen his power threat almost entirely neutralized. His OPS over the last 28 days is .642, hitting just two homers, and it’s .593 in the last two weeks without a long ball to be found. He does enter play Tuesday with six hits in his last 18 at bats, but as a player who will always be vexed by strikeouts, he simply has to hit for more power to hold down a lineup spot.
That power outage, combined with a season-long defensive dip that the club is working to manage, leaves the Cardinals in a position where Walker perhaps knocked firmly on the door more than kicked it down, but also a position in which they have been more than willing to open it.
Brendan Donovan has had some dips but generally remains a productive offensive player with the ability to flex between, primarily, left field and second base. As a result, Pham’s arrival has seen increasing days of Donovan at second and Gorman on the bench.
Alec Burleson has also trended back toward the mean after an extended stretch of hot hitting, making his at bats somewhat less paramount than they may have been a month ago.
Those factors all combine into a situation where Walker’s developmental path was forced to take a back seat to a desire to win now. The Cardinals are sliding almost entirely out of the race for the NL Central with the Milwaukee Brewers surging in first place. That leaves them scrapping among a small handful of teams for the third and final wild card spot, and they’re doing so even as they enter the toughest stretch their schedule presented to them this season.
That’s not to say, of course, that the best thing for Walker may not be to be back in the big leagues. It remains stunning that a hitter who finished as strong as he did in 2023 would look as lost as he did in the opening weeks of 2024. Hitting in the big leagues is hard, and a player in his second year will of course endure adjustments from opponents. Walker, though, has always been advanced beyond his level, and seemed to find himself in a position where negative reinforcement dug his hole much deeper than it otherwise may have been.
This season has not been a waste for Walker as long as he is able to turn the changes made to his process into more consistent results. For all of the screaming about the team’s focus on his launch angle at the expense of hitting the ball hard, that is simply where the hits are. Burleson’s progress this season has come in the wake of a climbing line drive rate. Hitting the ball hard but on the ground doesn’t generate results; hitting it hard and in the air will push players around the bases.
Throughout a year of missing his production, the Cardinals have maintained confidence in their plan for Walker and his ability to execute it. Even when progress seemed slow in May and June, those around the organization felt like the only question was when, and not if.
When, it turns out, is now. And if the work done was truly revealing itself in the last two weeks, then the Cardinals may have grabbed onto a helpful lifeline for their season at one of the last available moments. If it doesn’t work out, that’s not on Jordan Walker.
It’s on those who steered the ship all year and couldn’t quite stop it from taking on water.
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