The national media is officially waking up to Cardinals' Jordan Walker breakout

Sometimes, there are just players that you believe in. For whatever reason, you look past their struggles to buy into the foundation they've laid.

Jordan Walker is that player on the St. Louis Cardinals for me. Over the offseason, I vouched for the 23-year-old slugger, citing his bat speed, pull-side power, and raw physical gifts as a reason to buy back his sinking stock.

Well, through the first 12 games of 2026, he's given me a pretty darn good return on my investment. He's hitting a robust .295/.367/.682 (191 wRC+) while blasting a league-leading five home runs. For that excellent work, he's already been awarded 0.8 fWAR, which nearly matches his output from his breakout rookie season in 2023 (1.0 fWAR).

Unsurprisingly, the national media is starting to take notice of his offensive bonanza:

There's still a long season ahead, but so far, so good on getting the Jordan Walker hype train back on the tracks.

Jordan Walker is finally making good on his potential, giving Cardianls an early win in rebuild

Walker has taken well to hitting cleanup in Oli Marmol's lineup, producing a majority of his season-long power output over the past week. As usual, he's absolutely torching left-handed pitchers this year (390 wRC+!!!), but he's also been effective against righties as well, submitting a .734 OPS without the handedness advantage.

The good news is that the data backs up the results. The right fielder ranks top-five in the league in xwOBA (expected wOBA) and xSLG (expected slugging percentage), supporting his ridiculous rate stats. Plus, his exit velocity, barrel rate, hard-hit rate, and swing speed all rank in the 99th percentile or above among all qualified hitters, which is utterly preposterous; that's Aaron Judge territory if he can keep it up over the whole campaign.

If you're looking for a reason to be pessimistic, Walker is still chasing outside the zone far too often, and he's whiffed on nearly one-third of his swings this year. But you can live with those flaws when the contact quality metrics all jump off the page as much as his do.

It's fair to exercise a bit of caution when it comes to Walker, seeing as he's been prone to white-hot streaks in the past. However, the underlying data has never been this promising, nor has he ever looked this comfortable at the plate.

Sometimes, it takes even the best prospects a long while to adjust to the top level. It appears that Walker may finally have gotten over that hump.