It might not seem like it, but it was just a few years ago that Jordan Walker was a consensus top five prospect in all of baseball. Walker entered the 2023 season as a trendy Rookie of the Year pick in the NL and was widely expected to make a big impact for the Cardinals. That, of course, didn’t pan out. Walker turned in a solid but unspectacular rookie campaign where he posted a 116 wRC+ while struggling badly defensively in the outfield. He followed that up with brutal performances in 2024 and ’25, combining for a .211/.270/.324 (68 wRC+) slash line in 574 plate appearances that left him closer to the bubble of the team’s roster than the middle of the lineup.
12 games into the 2026 season, things could not be more different. The Cardinals entered the year with few expectations of competing as they embark on a rebuild that led them to trade Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Nolan Arenado, and Brendan Donovan over the winter. With those trades (and Lars Nootbaar beginning the year on the injured list), the Cards had plenty of room in the lineup to give Walker another shot, even in spite of his previous deep struggles. That’s paying off in a big way so far, as Walker has started to look like the player he was expected to be as a prospect. In 49 plate appearances to start the year, Walker has slashed .295/.367/.682 with a wRC+ of 191. He’s already hit five home runs this year after hitting that same number in 51 games during the 2024 season and hitting just one more across 111 games last year.
It’s hard to imagine a better start to the season than Walker has had, but it’s still fair to wonder how much of it is real. After all, 49 plate appearances is a minuscule sample. A 43-PA stretch from July 19 to July 29 last year saw Walker slash .342/.419/.500 with far less fanfare surrounding it. The same can be said of a 51-PA stretch from September 1 to September 18 in 2024, where he hit .271/.314/.583. Those short outbursts of productivity serve as cautionary tales for leaning too far into early-season small samples, and it’s certainly all but guaranteed that Walker’s numbers will come back down to Earth on at least some level in due time.
With that being said, however, it’s worth noting that the underlying metrics are a lot more confident in Walker’s performance now than they have been in the past. That aforementioned stretch from July 2025 saw Walker carry a completely unsustainable .481 BABIP. This year, by contrast, Walker has a .320 BABIP to this point that is more or less in line with his career figure of .310. His 10.2% walk rate is better than it’s ever been in his career, and his 23.3% barrel rate to this point borders on absurd. Walker’s expected batting average (.309) and slugging percentage (.712) are both even better than his actual production this year, and his .453 xwOBA largely supports his .457 wOBA.
Those are all very encouraging signs, but there are still some red flags that will need to be reckoned with. Walker’s 28.6% strikeout rate this year remains very high, and shows no signs of coming down any time soon. It’s not impossible to succeed when punching out that frequently, but it’s certainly more difficult. Of the top 30 qualified hitters in the majors last year by wRC+, just four of them had a strikeout rate north of 26%. Those four players were Cal Raleigh, Kyle Schwarber, Byron Buxton, and Rafael Devers. All of them hit at least 35 homers, with Raleigh and Schwarber famously hitting far more than that. Buxton’s 27.3% strikeout rate led the group, and that’s more than a full point below where Walker’s currently sits.
While Walker may be on a 68-homer pace right now, it’s an open question whether he’ll be able to get into the 40-homer territory that would be necessary to make him one of the league’s top hitters by the end of the year. Of course, he doesn’t need to be among the league’s biggest stars to be a productive major leaguer. Wyatt Langford hit just 22 homers last year with a strikeout rate of 26.9%, and still posted a 118 wRC+ thanks to a high walk rate. Even Lawrence Butler‘s 2025 season, where he struck out 28.4% of the time against a 9.4% walk rate with 21 homers and a wRC+ of 96, would be a big win for Walker considering where he was entering 2026. That all feels attainable at the moment, though all it would take is one big slump for Walker’s hot start to look like yet another flash in the pan from the talented but mercurial 24-year-old.
How do MLBTR readers expect Walker’s 2026 campaign to turn out? Will he emerge as the cornerstone piece the Cardinals thought they had when he flew up prospect rankings a few years ago? Will this prove to be a blip in what otherwise winds up being another disappointing year? Or will he finish somewhere in the middle with optimism that he can be a solid regular going forward? Have your say in the poll below:
Must be a smart guy. Seem to remember he turned down Duke. Maybe he’s figuring it out.
You can’t trick exit velocity
Doesn’t he always get off to a hot start before the inevitable face plant?
No
He did his rookie season, but not the last couple of years.
Walker’s 97.4 mph EV is crazy. I know it’s early but averaging that over even 50 PAs is solid work.
I don’t think he’ll be in the top 30 this year, but I think he’ll be a regular on that list in another year or two. He’s 23.
The poll is sending positive vibes his way at least.
He seems to be seeing the ball better. Taking breaking balls he had been flailing at the other way with some authority. Taking more walks. He looked lost at the plate most of spring training, so hopefully he can keep this up and work through the in season slumps that have plagued him for too long of periods the last couple seasons.
You’ve got him listed as 24, but he’s still 23 years old. He’s less than four months older than Wetherholt. He’s still so young, and this is a very encouraging streak he’s on. Maybe most importantly, he’s using all fields and chasing so much less.
This is technically his age 24 season because he turns 24 before June 1st.
Looking at his splits vs right-handed pitchers I would say he hasn’t proven he is necessarily going to break out. Not yet at least.
He is the 100th percentile in bat speed, there is no luck in that
Dude looks like he’s 45.
Top 30 in NL? Maybe
In game….heck no
I’d call it a hot streak for now. Check back in a couple weeks.
He’s 23 so I don’t understand why he was already considered left for dead by some people. He will probably trail off some because I just scooped him off waivers today, but his exit velocities are insane and to me that is suggestive of something real going on. I’m not going to try and guess what percentile he’ll finish in compared to the league but yes I do think we are watching his breakout.
I’d say yes he’s breaking out, I definitely noticed some acne.
Jordan Walker has finally figured it out. He is going to have some ups and downs but will have 30 HRs in 2026 and bat in the middle of the lineup for the whole year. I believe in his talent, hard work, and dedication to his craft! At 23, he will succeed and produce at a high level IMO! Time will tell…
Walker has skills. He was the #4 overall prospect going into the 2023 season. I don’t believe he is a 199 OPS+ hitter, but I think he will be an above average hitter when all is said and done this season. Maybe even better than his rookie season.
Starting a sentence with a numeral? Ouch. Ouch, ouch, ouch.