The Cardinals thought they had a future star on their hands during outfielder Jordan Walker‘s first couple of years in the organization. Drafted 21st overall out of high school in 2020, the former third baseman tore through the Single-A, High-A and Double-A levels with a combined .310/.388/.525 line through 2022.
Widely considered one of the game’s five best prospects entering 2023, Walker cracked the Cardinals’ Opening Day roster as a 20-year-old and avoided Triple-A time. That may have been too aggressive on the Cardinals’ part, as Walker’s career has not gone smoothly. However, now in his fourth season in St. Louis, signs are pointing to Walker finally living up to the hype at age 24.
With Nolan Arenado entrenched as the Cardinals’ third baseman three years ago, they shifted Walker to right field. He got the lion’s share of playing time there during the initial few weeks of his rookie campaign and turned heads during a career-opening 12-game hitting streak. Although Walker batted a respectable .279/.329/.412 with two home runs in his first 20 games in the bigs, it was discouraging that he drew just three walks against 20 strikeouts. With Walker also struggling to adjust to a different position, the Cardinals sent him to Triple-A Memphis for the first time in late April.
Walker mustered a subpar .239/.349/.398 line in 135 plate appearances during what amounted to a 29-game trip to Memphis, but his walk, strikeout and ground-ball rates all trended in the right direction. The Cardinals saw enough progress to summon the 6-foot-6, 250-pounder back to the majors at the beginning of June. He held his own from then on and finished a 117-game, 465-plate appearance first season in St. Louis with a strong .277/.346/.455 line (116 wRC+), 16 homers, and walk (8.0%) and strikeout (22.4%) rates that hovered around league average. He drew negative marks in right (minus-7 Defensive Runs Saved, minus-7 Outs Above Average, minus-6 Fielding Run Value), but that didn’t come as a surprise for a young player transitioning to a new spot.
The Cardinals and Walker likely went into his second season with the expectation they would never again send him to the minors for performance-based reasons. It didn’t work out that way. Walker’s offensive production plummeted in 2024, during which the Cardinals optioned him twice, and didn’t recover last year. He played in exactly 162 major league games from 2024-25 and hit a dreadful .211/.270/.324 with 11 homers, a 30.7% strikeout rate and a 6.8% walk rate over 574 plate appearances. Among 291 hitters who amassed at least 550 trips to the plate during that two-year span, Walker ranked last in fWAR (minus-1.9) and seventh from the bottom in wRC+ (68). He didn’t make up for it in the field, where he continued to receive poor grades (minus-15 DRS, minus-12 FRV, minus-8 OAA).
Last September, a few weeks before a miserable year for Walker and the Cardinals ended, hitting coach Brant Brown and manager Oliver Marmol asked for more from the former prized prospect. Brown said Walker would “have to devote more focus on preparation.” Meanwhile, Marmol called for “a sense of urgency” from Walker, though he made sure to note, “I’m nowhere close to giving up on Jordan Walker.”
John Mozeliak, who drafted Walker, stepped down as the Cardinals’ president of baseball operations after last season. Former Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom then assumed the reins in St. Louis. Bloom has been a member of the Cardinals’ front office since 2024, meaning he witnessed Walker’s severe two-year slump firsthand. But Bloom, like Marmol, was not ready to wave the white flag on Walker coming into this season.
When Bill Ladson of MLB.com asked Bloom about Walker’s woes in March, the executive answered: “We all know that ultimately this is a results business, but we get to the results by having a great process. Jordan’s process this offseason is as good as I’ve seen since I’ve been in this organization.”
Bloom added he had “a lot of optimism” about Walker turning his career around, though it looked like more of the same in spring training. Walker took 47 trips to the plate in 14 exhibition games and batted a meek .205/.255/.273 with one homer, 16 strikeouts and three walks. He nonetheless entered 2026 as the Cardinals’ starting right fielder. If you were expecting another rough season from Walker, odds are you had plenty of company. But roughly a third of the way through, Walker has been a revelation. His performance has been a key factor in a surprising 29-23 start for the Cardinals, who hold a wild-card spot as June nears. FanGraphs gave the Cardinals a measly 8.5% chance to make the playoffs before the season began in late March. Now at 27.6%, those odds have more than tripled two months later.
The Cardinals’ offense has gotten significant contributions from stud rookie second baseman JJ Wetherholt, DH/catcher Iván Herrera and first baseman Alec Burleson, but Walker has easily been their greatest threat. Across 51 games and 218 plate appearances, Walker has slashed .297/.367/.585 with improved strikeout and walk percentages of 25.7 and 9.2, respectively. He sits fourth in the majors in wRC+ (168), seventh in ISO (.287), tied for seventh in HRs (15) and tied for 14th in fWAR (2.2). Same-handed pitchers were especially tough on the righty-swinging Walker from 2024-25, but he has put up a matching 168 wRC+ against them and lefties this year. While inconsistency was another glaring problem for Walker in previous years, there have been no drawn-out slumps so far. The season is 62 days old, and Walker’s OPS has been .900-plus for 57 of them.
Diving deeper, this looks more like a true breakout than a fluke. Over his first three seasons, Walker paired a 47.9% ground-ball rate with a 37.5% fly ball percentage. That prevented him from tapping into his power potential and taking advantage of his elite bat speed. He is now hitting grounders at a 39.3% clip and fly balls 44.3% of the time. That bodes well for someone whose bat speed ranks in the 100th percentile. He boasted 99th percentile bat speed last year, but that was one of the few red marks on a Baseball Savant page that featured far too much blue. It is draped in red this year, as Walker is also close to the top of the league in expected batting average (81st percentile), expected weighted on-base average (90th) and expected slugging percentage (93rd). Those are just a few Statcast categories that support his offensive explosion.
If you’re looking for a potential cause of negative regression, it is easy to point to Walker’s .344 batting average on balls in play. He’s a fast runner whose sprint speed falls into the 92nd percentile, but fewer than 10 players typically sustain that high of a BABIP in a given season. Even if that comes down, it may not be a drastic fall for a player who came into 2026 with an above-average lifetime BABIP of .310 (the league mean is .286). Less BABIP luck would damage Walker’s .412 wOBA, which is fifth-best in the game, but his .383 xwOBA isn’t indicative of someone whose numbers are going to careen off a cliff.
Turning to the defensive side, Walker has started 49 of the Cardinals’ 52 games in right field. The reviews have been mixed, which is a step up from the across-the-board negatives he earned in prior seasons. Walker has been worth 6 DRS, which is tied for sixth among outfielders. His 99th percentile arm strength was on full display when he threw out the Brewers’ Christian Yelich on a play at the plate on Memorial Day. That was one of Walker’s league-high five outfield assists. Despite the positive developments, OAA and FRV (minus-2 apiece) remain bearish on his work in the grass.
While Walker’s defensive metrics vary, there is no debating that he has been among the fiercest sluggers in the game two months into 2026. As the six-year anniversary of the 2020 draft approaches, it looks as if Walker has finally blossomed into a cornerstone player for the Cardinals. He is due to make his first of three potential trips through arbitration over the winter, but Walker may soon emerge as a priority extension candidate for Bloom if he continues terrorizing opposing pitchers.
