The St. Louis Cardinals are amidst a rather disappointing stretch in recent years, sitting at 77-80 with 5 games remaining in the regular season. With the 2025 season being preceded by an 81-win season in 2024 and a 71-win season the year prior in 2023, the three-season stretch has been one of the gloomier eras in recent Cardinals history. Not a lot has gone right for St. Louis in this post-COVID era.

The one hope amidst the losing seasons was supposed to be Jordan Walker –– a standout high school player the Cardinals selected with their 2020 first-round draft pick. However, Walker has yet to turn into the player his pre-draft stock may have suggested. So the question now is, what went wrong?

Walker spent a lot of his early years bouncing around Minor League organizations before being called up to the official Cardinals roster on opening day 2023, but has since bounced back and forth between the Minor League and the main roster. Before being called up in 2023, Walker played 119 games for Double-A Springfield in 2022. This was his longest assignment before getting called up to play right fielder for the Cardinals.

Walker had always been a third baseman. That was until the Cardinals asked him to play right field for the first time in his playing career, a position he had never played before. He played 25 games at right field for Double-A and 12 more during the Arizona Fall League, a total of 37 games at right field before being asked to play the position in the Major League.

As expected, he had a rough showing at right field with the Cardinals. He’s been one of the worst defenders in the league at right field, with a -9 DRS, putting him in the bottom percentage of the entire league. While his defense was definitely a work in progress, fans were still excited to see him at bat. His raw power and athleticism led people to believe he’d still be a plus player, despite his defensive limitations. That was the idea when he was drafted, but that hasn’t exactly followed through.

Fans were excited to see Walker take the plate in spring training of 2023. However, Walker had a rather disappointing showing across his first 20 games with the Cardinals. He ended spring training with a ground ball percentage of 57%, 15 percentiles above league average at the time, leaving fans disappointed with his showing on the plate.

These concerns continued into the beginning of the regular season. Walker still struggled with hitting ground balls, as he ended his rookie season with a GB% of 47.

In April 2023, St. Louis sent Walker to Triple-A Memphis so he could alter his swing. He worked on changing his swing mechanics in an attempt to transfer his power to fly balls and line drives, as opposed to the usual ground balls. In the short term, this worked. By the end of 2023, he lowered his ground ball percentage from 67% to 46%. Fans would expect him to only improve, but this was not exactly the case.

Walker has shown very limited plate awareness, causing him to still be an extremely below average hitter. Walker ended 2025 with a strikeout percentage of 32.8, his worst mark to date. That, combined with his poor defense in the field, is why fans still show lots of skepticism.
However, there is still hope to be had that Walker’s hitting power and raw ability are enough for him to figure out some of his batting shortcomings.

Walker has spent his two seasons post 2023 bouncing in and out of Triple-A, showing glimpses of improvement, getting brought up, falling back into the same poor tendencies and then getting sent back down.

The hope for Cardinals fans going into 2026 is that management has veered in the direction of a full blown rebuild, with Chaim Bloom taking over John Mozeliak’s position as president of baseball operations, seemingly prioritizing player development, something that Walker would benefit greatly from.

While it has been a rough few years for Walker, he is not yet a finished product. Cardinals fans should be looking forward to seeing what Walker can do in seasons to come.

Edited by Killian Wright | [email protected]
Copy edited by Veronica Butler and Ava Mohror | [email protected]
Edited by Chase Pray | [email protected]