Jordan Walker might have finally figured it out with the Cardinals

There might just be a new chapter in the Jordan Walker saga for St. Louis Cardinals fans. After an above average rookie season and two miserable years where Jordan Walker was, statistically speaking, one of the worst hitters in baseball, the opening to the 2026 has been a revelation for Walker thus far. Before we continue, let’s go ahead and issue the small sample size warning – at the time of this writing, there have been seven games. I know that’s not enough games to draw any firm conclusions, and you do too, but let’s try to understand what’s brought him this far greater success in the very early going.

Over on our Redbird Rundown podcast we actually used an advanced stats guess game as a method to review the performance of several players so far. Jordan Walker certainly came up on that episode, so if you’d like more coverage, we certainly have it for you! (Apple and Spotify) 

I wrote about why Jordan Walker has struggled so mightily in the last two years here, but to summarize, Walker has two key issues – he swings far too much at the wrong pitches leading to poor contact and when he does make good contact, he hits it on the ground far too often to really leverage his power. It’s like ordering hot dog burnt ends at Busch, putting the wrong condiment on them, and then dropping them on the ground. It’s a rough go, and it has been for Walker, too.

Jordan Walker's swing path might be fixing his largest overall issue

The good news is that he appears to be truly fixing one of his big issues. According to data compiled by the great Eno Sarris, Walker’s swing path looks to be different so far. On X, Sarris notes that he’s getting more tilt and upward angle on the bat. Walker has always had some of the highest exit velocities in baseball, that matters a lot. Let me translate that for any of you allergic to stats out there because you’ll like the result – when Walker makes good contact, he hits the ball harder than almost anyone. You can see why the Cardinals keep running him out there every day. The raw power is literally at the top of the scale in the highest baseball league in the world (really, the universe that we know of – maybe the Artemis astronauts can confirm for us). If the bat path is going to truly produce more loft on the ball, then you’re going to get more highlights like this:

That, folks, is a projectile that the Artemis astronauts might see in orbit around the earth: 113.7 mph. When he hits the ball well it literally sounds different. Let’s hope this bat path change holds, because Walker has been known to retreat to what is comfortable to him before when times get tough. That’s natural. His innate baseball abilities carried him to the top of the prospect heap in his early 20s and had him debuting in St. Louis far ahead of schedule. But, everyone has to adopt in the big leagues, so this bat path change is a crucial element to his success.

Walker is also swinging at the right pitches, and taking the right pitches. That's a great combo.

As you’ll recall though, that’s only one of his issues. The other is that he was swinging far too often at pitches out of the zone that were difficult to make contact with. I’ve got good news on that front as well. First of all, his chase percentage is down to 23.1% from 34.1% last year. What’s that mean? Just what it says, he’s swinging at balls out of the strike zone far less than he did last year. What about balls in the zone? Well, that’s gone from 66.9% to 75% so far this season. The eye test confirms it. He’s swinging early in counts at balls in the zone far more often. That’s good! If that’s not enough good news for you, the most hilarious stat of all is in a great spot, too. His meatball swing percentage was 67.4% last season – this year it’s at 80%. Those fastballs right down the middle he would take and make you want to pull your hair out (or what’s left of it anyway), well this season his swinging at those at a much higher clip. If you scroll back up and take a look at the location of the pitch on that grand slam, you’ll find that pitch was meatball city and Walker destroyed it.

Could all this progress fall apart? Undoubtedly. Let’s all remember that at the time of this writing there have been seven games played and Walker hasn’t played in all of them. But, this feels closer than he’s ever been to unlocking that immense talent. He’s still just 23 years old. That’s the same age as the much-heralded (with good reason!) JJ Wetherholt. Prospect evaluators don’t make players consensus top five prospects in all of baseball as April Fool's jokes. Jordan Walker has otherworldly natural gifts and he appears to be on the path to unlocking those gifts at the major league level.

At the time of this writing, he’s currently running an eye-popping .296/.367/.593 slash line with a 174 wRC+. He’s got his highest ever walk rate of 10% and a very manageable strikeout rate of 23.3%. The underlying stats tell the story of what we’re watching: this, so far, is a new Jordan Walker. 

He’s someone I’ll be rooting for as the season continues. I’d suggest all of Cardinals Nation do the same.

If you are interested in #evenmorecoverage, you can find me @mksmith86 on X where I'll do some analysis during games or our podcast @redbirdrundown2 where we'll do even more in-game analysis! Let's go, Cards!