Jordan Walker is showing what kind of difference-maker he can be at the Major League level.
After breaking camp with the Cardinals, the top prospect spent most of April in the majors before they decided to send him down. He was playing pretty well, but there were areas the team wanted to see him refine both at the dish and in the field.
Walker is now back up, and while the defense remains a work in progress, his offense seems to have been unlocked. He has a league-leading 13-game hitting streak, and since getting called back up he’s hitting .339 with a whopping 1.011 OPS.
“Man, he’s settling in,” Cardinals manager Oli Marmol said in his weekly appearance on Total Information AM. “He’s starting to slow the game down. If you look at when we sent him down compared to where he’s at today, the walk rate is much higher, hard-hit rate is much higher and he’s doing a really, really nice job. We have a really scary hitter on our hands, especially when he starts to slow the game down.”
Walker’s bat always has been his biggest weapon, but the Cardinals are confident he’ll improve defensively. A natural third baseman, the Cardinals shifted Walker to the outfield with Nolan Arenado blocking his path to playing time at the hot corner.
He can handle himself well enough in the field, but locking down some of the fundamentals is a point of emphasis.
“He’s doing a really nice job. He will continue to get better defensively,” Marmol said. “He’s out there with Willie (McGee) every day, working on different aspects of the outfield – hitting the cutoff man, playing balls off the wall, all the things that you want to see him fundamentally get better at.
“His mentality and overall personality and work ethic leads to him improving daily. It’s going to take time, but he’s definitely working at it.”
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