ST. LOUIS -- Rebounding from appendicitis that cost him three weeks of the season coming out of the All-Star break, Jordan Walker strung together his most solid 13-game stretch of 2025, and he appeared to be poised to salvage an otherwise forgettable third season.
However, the hot stretch that included six doubles and an .808 OPS didn’t last long for the 6-foot-6 Walker, who soon went back to chasing far too many pitches off the plate and striking out again at an alarming rate. Not only did he whiff 25 times in August, but he endured a six-game stretch with 10 strikeouts -- a drought that knocked him out of the starting lineup on Tuesday when the Cardinals defeated the Athletics, 2-1, behind a two-run home run by Iván Herrera.
Not only would the Cardinals like to see a strong finish to the season from the former top prospect in MLB, but they also want to see him be more receptive to making the changes needed to potentially make him more consistent at the plate. And, quite frankly, the club’s patience seems to be wearing thin with the 23-year-old outfielder's receptiveness to the changes they have asked him to make.
“We have not seen the consistency that we would have hoped for by now,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “Our hope is that changes. He’s still young, and this could flip at any moment. We’ve seen other players where that’s the case -- on this team or another -- where they are an offseason away. But there’s real work to be done and there’s a real level of dedication and consistency that needs to come with that.
“I need to see Jordan have a sense of urgency for the things that need to take place to give him consistent results. That goes with his moves toward the ball, his preparation in the cage and his approach in games.”
The Cardinals are clearly trying to sound the alarm to Walker, who is slashing just .220/.274/.313 (.587 OPS) with 11 doubles, five home runs and 34 RBIs in 91 games. Positioned well off the plate and at the back of the box in hopes of getting his arms extended, Walker has instead chased too many pitches, as evidenced by his 104 strikeouts and 21 walks.
When Walker makes contact, most of the numbers are sound. His average exit velocity of 92.3 mph ranks in MLB’s 90th percentile, and his hard-hit rate of 49.8 percent is in MLB’s 85th percentile. However, Walker’s squared-up rate of 18.1 percent is in baseball’s bottom 1 percentile and his launch angle sweet spot contact -- long a point of contention with the coaching staff -- is 28.4 percent, which is in the bottom 3 percentile.
Then, there’s the troubling swing and miss in his game. Walker, who played in just 51 MLB games between multiple Triple-A stints in 2024, has seen jumps in his chase rate (32.4% to 34.3%), strikeout rate (28.1% to 31.7%) and whiff rate (31.6% to 34.7%) in 2025.
Walker has been open about how his struggles have worn on him, but he’s tried to find joy in friendships with teammates and his short bursts of success.
“You have to [stay positive] because once you're negative about yourself, that's when it all goes down the toilet,” Walker said. “It's obviously hard to stay positive, but I’m doing everything I can to do that and find things that make me comfortable and make me happy. Hanging out with my teammates, watching them hit, it's pretty sick. So, pretty much it’s all those things combined.”
While many Cardinals hitters have benefitted from working with fiery new hitting coach Brant Brown -- such as Alec Burleson, Brendan Donovan and Herrera -- Walker’s response to the adjustments asked of him has been disjointed at best. Initially, Walker’s buy-in to the changes was as strong as it’s been in three years, Marmol said, but the outfielder has often wavered when success faded.
“It's more approach-wise and plate discipline-wise and that’s why I'm swinging out of the zone so much and getting out so much,” he said. “I see [the ball] good sometimes, see it bad sometimes and I'm just in the bad part of this stretch with my new adjustment. Soon, I'll get back to hitting the ball hard, driving it up the middle and staying short.”
Time is running out for Walker to enact those changes in 2025, Marmol said.
“Real adjustments have to be made, physically and approach-wise,” he said. “[Brown] is doing a really nice job of providing him ways of doing that. Now, he has to take hold of that and put it in play.”