3 players the St. Louis Cardinals need to remain patient with and 2 they should not

Remain patient with: Jordan Walker

No, the Cardinals and hopefully none of their fans have come close to giving up on Jordan Walker's future as a high-level talent. But what the Cardinals need to do now that they have called him up to the big leagues is remain patient with him.

They already used up some relational capital with Walker when they sent him down the Memphis after his brief stint with the club to start the year. If he struggles in St. Louis, they need to ride it out with him for a longer period of time than they did last time, or risk really creating a mess.

I addressed this in an article recently (you can read that here), but much was made by the media and fan base about the decision to send Walker down to work on his swing. While I would have preferred the Cardinals to keep Walker on the Major League roster, he did have a league-high ground ball rate that indicated huge regression was coming, and so they wanted him to make a few minor swing adjustments to help him in the present and the future as a player.

Now that he's back in St. Louis, the Cardinals must let him go through his struggles as they come. Every single player has slumps, just look at this year's roster. I can't name one player who has not had at least a week-long slump during this season alone. All baseball players go through that. Walker needs the freedom to fail now, and with how talented he is, I'm sure he'll find great success most of the time.