May 26, 2026: Lots of Jordan Walker thoughts, the potential value and uses of Bryan Torres, and an update on the rotation's strikeout issues
Let's talk Cards just ahead of a big game in Milwaukee on Tuesday night
After getting suffocated by Jacob Misiorowski and his otherworldly velocity on Monday, the Cardinals at this writing have dropped five of their last seven. That gives us occasion to worry/wonder whether the team’s very ordinary underlying performance -- see just below -- is about to hold sway. That’s always the concern when a team’s overall record is propped up by success in one-run games (the Cardinals are 10-4 in such affairs this season) and extra-inning games (7-2, with some overlap). With that caution flag duly raised, let’s jump in.
First, this week’s temperature check ...
Record: 29-23, second place in NL Central, in second wild card spot
Run differential: minus-3
Third-order record: 25-27
FanGraphs playoff odds: 27.5%
Strength of schedule: .511 opponents’ average winning percentage, eighth in MLB
Remaining strength of schedule: .512 opponents’ average winning percentage, seventh in MLB
Average home attendance per game: 27,736; 16th in MLB
Now let’s talk it out.
Jordan Walker thoughts
He just keeps doing it, doesn’t he? He’s coming off an 0 for 3 against Misiorowki and the Brewers, but his only strikeout probably should’ve been a walk. However, plate ump Marvin Hudson declined to ask for help on his checked-swing strike three call in the fourth inning. Just prior to that, Walker homered twice in as many days in Cincinnati. At this writing, he’s second in the National League with a 3.1 WAR and tied for the NL lead in OPS+ with a mark of 172. In very much related matters, Walker this season is flashing elite batted-ball quality, and he’s whittled his K% down from 31.8 in 2025 to 25.7 this season. His groundball percentage is a career low by a wide margin, and his rate of pulled balls in the air is a career high by a wide margin. Eyeball his xwOBAs against all the various pitch types, and they’re all at least respectable versus the offerings he’s faced in any meaningful number. He’s simply a different hitter, and the sample at this writing is up to 218 plate appearances.
Now let’s approach this from an angle that’s very uncharitable toward Walker. Let’s throw out that season-opening heater he was on when he homered eight times in his first 16 games. Here’s what he’s done since that power streak ended (including the slump that immediately followed his eighth homer of the season on April 13):
Walker is batting .281/.355/.504 since April 14 with seven home runs and nine doubles in 35 games and 152 plate appearances since April 14. That’s good for a wOBA of .370.
While his xwOBA of .334 is a bit lower than his wOBA, Walker over this span has a higher barrel rate than he does overall in 2026 (18.4% versus 16.4% -- both elite figures), and his average exit velocity since April 14 is 93.5 mph.
His K% is 25.0 over this same span, slightly lower than his overall figure.
His groundball rate since April 14 of 41.8% is slightly higher than his overall mark of 39.3%, but it would still be a career low. It’s also lower than the league-average mark of 42.9%.
Know what we’d be saying if the above were his overall 2026 numbers instead of the MVP-caliber outputs he has in reality? We’d still be saying Walker has finally leveled up and that all his assiduous work in the cages on grooving his latest suite of mechanical changes has allowed him to be what we hoped he’d be. There is, of course, absolutely no reason to throw out those first 16 games of his 2026 season, but doing so makes the point that Walker is far more than “just” that thunderous start to his age-24 campaign.
This leads me to a couple of questions about Walker, one near-term and one a more longer-term consideration. First, should he be the No. 2 hitter in Oli Marmol’s lineup? I pose this question not as any kind of indictment of the current No. 2 hitter Iván Herrera, who himself an excellent batsman. Rather, this is an acknowledgement that Walker is probably the team’s best hitter on what I believe is a sustainable basis. Putting your best hitter in the two hole is the sweet spot between maximizing plate appearances and RBI opportunities behind what is ideally an on-base threat in the leadoff spot (JJ Wetherholt with his .359 OBP and 11.8 BB% certainly qualifies). As well, Walker thanks in part to his deceptive speed is a much less of a double play threat than Herrera, and as a fellow righty swinger he’d keep the lefty-righty lineup balance that Marmol wisely favors. Walker has a couple of career starts at the No. 2 spot, so it’s not entirely unfamiliar territory to him. Maybe there’s a case to be made for his comfort level in the three or four spot, but that seems like a reach. The point is I kind of like the look of this possible lineup in another week or so:
JJ Wetherholt, 2B
Jordan Walker, RF
Alec Burleson, 1B
Ivan Herrera, DH
Lars Nootbaar, LF
Masyn Winn, SS
Nolan Gorman, 3B
Pedro Pagés, C*
Bryan Torres, CF**
*I prefer Jimmy Crooks, as recently detailed in this space, but I’m bowing to realities.
**Hold your fire, more on this in a moment. I’m not married to the idea.
The bottom half of the lineup is going to remain a problem, but I’d love Walker’s thump just behind Wetherholt along with the possibility of getting him an extra trip to the plate.
As for that long-term consideration, is it time to approach Walker about a long-term contract extension? Increasingly, I have my doubts that we’re going to see any pre-arb extensions any time soon. Wetherholt’s age is a complicating factor, as he and his reps probably aren’t fond of hitting the free agent market for the first time when he’s shin-deep into this thirties (that would be the case with any extension that buys out multiple free agent years). As for Winn, Chaim Bloom and company may want to see a higher gear at the plate before committing to him beyond his team-control years.
That brings us back to Walker. He entered the current season with just a bit more than two years of MLB service time, which means he’s going to be arbitration-eligible this coming winter. That also means he’s in line to be a free agent after the 2029 season, when he’ll still be just 27 years of age. A 27-year-old with big-time power and the ability to capably man an outfield corner with speed and a big arm is going to get paid on the market.
There’s risk here, of course. It’s possible that Walker’s 2026 performance to date turns out to be illusory on some level or that his fine-tuned swing mechanics get lost all too often over the longer haul. Every day, I find this to be less and less likely, but the possibility is still there. That said, I don’t find going in on Walker long-term to be any riskier than, say, committing the better part of a decade to a player who has yet to reach the majors, which a number of teams have done. The other side of this is that Walker probably becomes less and less willing to sign an extension the longer this general level of production keeps up and the nearer his free agency creeps.
As for comparable extensions, Bobby Witt Jr.’s with the Royals may be a high-end model. He was 24 with exactly two years of MLB service time when he inked his 11-year, $288.8 million pact with KC prior to the 2024 season. Witt was a former No. 2 overall pick coming off a 2023 campaign in which he finished seventh in the American League MVP vote and a credible rookie season in 2022. As such, he was more of a known quantity than Walker is now, so a discount may be in order. Perhaps we’re talking about the ground between Witt’s extension and the seven-year, $106.5 million deal that Andrés Giménez signed prior to the 2023 season. At that point, Giménez was also 24 years of age with a bit more than two years of service time. A Walker deal would heavily lean toward the Witt side of that continuum, I suspect. Would something in the $240-250 million neighborhood be enough to buy out a slew of Walker’s free agent years? From the front office standpoint, this is, I think, something worth seriously pondering and seriously pondering very soon.
