July 9, 2026: An appreciation of Jordan Walker, the ongoing 40-player roster crunch, third base woes, and more
Let's talk Cardinals as the first half of the 2026 season draws to a close
The Cardinals snapped a four-game losing streak with their win over the Brewers on Wednesday night, and a win on Thursday night means they’ll salvage a pair of wins from the five-game series – which is really a four-game series stretched to five because of a makeup game. A win on Thursday behind Andre Pallante plus taking two of three from the Braves, who are below .500 since the start of June, means the Cardinals can go into the break having gone 8-6 during a stretch of schedule that saw them play 14 games in 13 days against some of the NL’s best teams. We’ll take that, will we not? Frankly, we should also regard a 7-7 record over this block as something north of adequate.
The other part of this picture is found in Miami. The increasingly pesky Marlins at this writing have won five in a row and are a sparkling 25-8 since the calendar flipped to June with a plus-56 run differential over that span. The Marlins do have a slightly more challenging remaining schedule than the Cardinals have, but on the downside the Cards have no more head-to-head games against Miami, who have a two-game edge in the chase for the third and final wild card spot in the NL. That’s not what you want when you’re in chase position.
That general sense of things presents a good spot for this week’s temperature check:
Record: 48-43, third place in NL Central, two games out of third NL wild card spot
Lottery position: 18th, 0.23% chance of getting top overall pick
Run differential: plus-7
Third-order record: 45.7-45.3
FanGraphs playoff odds: 33.3%
Strength of schedule: .511 opponents’ average winning percentage, second in MLB
Remaining strength of schedule: .503 opponents’ average winning percentage, 10th in MLB
Average home attendance per game: 27,554; 18th in MLB
Now let’s dive in.
Jordan Walker, All-Star and Home Run Derby combatant
Walker, the Cardinals’ 24-year-old lineup fulcrum, recently earned his first career All-Star selection thanks to his impressive and frankly unexpected power breakout in 2026. Walker was overlooked by fans and his player peers in the voting process, but he wound up being one of six NL selections made by the league. I don’t particularly care about how he made it to Philly. I do care that he made it after such a prolonged period of strife, struggle, and doubt. Plainly, the All-Star laurel wreath meant a great deal to Walker, manager Oli Marmol, and the rest of the team:
Walker since becoming the 21st overall pick in 2020 and then arriving (prematurely) in the majors in 2023 as a 20-year-old to lots of ballyhoo has dealt with the unexampled challenges of being a “COVID era” prospect, shown immense promise, cratered, been returned to the minors, struggled more, gone back to the minors, reached new depths, tinkered, rebuilt, seen it come to nothing, worked more, confronted doubts, and – finally – thrived. That’s a rare arc for anyone, let alone a player who’s still so young. I can say I had a difficult time still believing in him coming into this season, especially after a punchless spring in which he was pulled from games and sent to the cage and lab for what struck me as desperate remedial work.
Well, the work worked. Walker’s gone through droughts this season, but each time the man has punched his way out of them and turned back to the true north foundation of his swing to get him back to being what he’s been across 380 plate appearances this season – one of the best hitters in baseball. That Walker has also achieved this while making a parallel journey from a Todd Hundley-grade defensive outfielder to a playable one makes it all even more remarkable. In this era of All-Star roster bloat and increasingly at a time when some All-Stars would quite understandably just prefer to have the days off, it’s damn cool to see the honor be just that, an honor, for a player who was so recently lost in the boggy mire of unmet expectations. Here’s to Jordan Walker, is what I’m saying.
To put Walker’s journey in numerical terms, consider:
Walker in 2026: .379 wOBA, .363 xwOBA, 3.5 WAR.
He’s reconstructed himself as a hitter as much as those numbers would lead you to believe. He swings faster and hits the ball harder than ever, and at the same time he’s finally hitting the ball in the air, often to the pull side, while also reducing his strikeout and whiff rates. Walker’s a different hitter now, and all signs point to this being a sustainable level for him.
As for Walker’s participation in the Home Run Derby, let’s just enjoy it, shall we? Given Walker’s bat speed, thunderous power, and newfound propensity for elevating the ball and finding the ideal attack angle on incoming pitches, he’s the kind of hitter who can thrive. And, no, there’s still no evidence that participating in the Derby is bad for a hitter’s swing or future production. If anything, the Derby with its simple and raw mandate to “hit the ball hard and in the air as far as you can” could align well with Walker’s ongoing mission to stay out of his own head at the plate. Let’s just enjoy Walker enjoying being in the Derby and at the All-Star Game and, one hopes, watch him put on a show and claim some hardware. He’s earned all of it.
