THE REDBIRD REVIEW
Cardinals manager Oli Marmol will stay with Masyn Winn as his No. 4 hitter in the lineup, even if the very early results are underwhelming.
Nothing about this, however, is set in Missouri granite down at the St. Francois Mountains, in the southeastern part of our state.
And yes, Jordan Walker could be considered for the prestigious job of batting cleanup, though Marmol is in no rush to do so.
In our weekly Tuesday visit with Marmol on the KMOX “Gashouse Gang,” I asked Marmol about the possibility of Walker moving into the four-hole role. It would be a seamless transition, because Marmol strongly prefers a right-handed batter in the anchor spot, in between the left-handed hitters betting third and fifth respectively. Winn and Walker both hit from the right side.
So whaddya think about it, Oli?
“I love that it’s a question,” Marmol said. “Because I think a couple weeks ago you would have been questioning, hey, does [Walker] start every day? So the fact that we're even talking about this I think is an awesome thing. And a credit to Jordan for being ‘head down’ and just continuing to work even when things weren't going his way, right? So the fact that this is a topic is awesome to me. It really is and it should be.”
Less than a month ago at spring training, Walker seemed totally lost at home plate. I don’t have to supply any stats here because every Cardinal fan knew this. Walker was virtually defenseless against even the most ordinary pitches thrown by randos passing through the Grapefruit League before heading to the minors. It was sad. It was frustrating. Was Walker a hopeless case? I wondered about that in a video earlier in March.
Marmol was exasperated at times but didn’t give up on Walker. And the big man finally clicked in just before the Cardinals left Jupiter and headed home to Missouri. Walker went 3 for 7 and boomed a home run during his final two spring-game appearances.
In the first four games of the regular season, a more confident and composed Walker reintroduced himself to Cardinals fans by batting .385 with a .500 onbase rate and .769 slugging percentage.
Walker’s sliver-sized sample includes two doubles, a three-run homer, six runs scored, three walks and one strikeout.
Now, you can belch and spew “small sample, only four games!” as many times as you’d like … even though the dear denizens who pay attention to the Cardinals already know this. My seventh-month old cat, Betty, knows this.
And I know this: this early-bird St. Louis Walker ain’t nothing like the Jupiter Walker. We can only hope that it stays that way.
There’s some other nuggets – crazy stuff – about Walker’s early showing that I’ll get to later as I continue to slap the keys and write this here screed.
The point is, if Walker keeps doing the St. Louis Walker thing and never returns to the Jupiter Walker thing … well … the Cardinals could have themselves a 6-6, 250-pound enforcer who rates in the 84th percentile sprint speed … a terrifying sight with a man coming around third base and headed for home like a runaway truck.
Walker also has 99th-percentile bat speed, and is smashing a violent hard-hit rate that exists in the 98th percentile.
Lawd have mercy. I don’t know if this will last … but Holy Mother of Pearl … It’s only four games. This could be, it might be, gone soon. As in a tease.
“I love that he's off to a good start,” Marmol said. “I do think what he's doing is something he can sustain. I don't think this is just kind of a one-week thing.”
OK, so if that turns out to be true, then even Oli Marmol would tell the skipper – uh, that would be him – that Walker must eventually move to the anchor position. The fourth position. Perhaps sooner than later. But I’m not freaking out over this. There’s no need for that.
Here’s Marmol, on KMOX, talking about the possibility of Jordan batting fourth:
“Now we want to make sure we're setting everybody up for success, right? And part of that is slotting them in the right spot in order for them to handle the pressures of the big leagues and continue to have success and build off of it.
“But at a certain point, should that be in the mix? Sure. I'm more stoked that we're even talking about it because I'll say it again, I don't think this was on anybody's mind (about Walker) four weeks ago.
“So that's why I don't want to react too quickly because I think that's when you make mistakes.”
Yes. It sure is.
Like when the Cardinals rushed Walker, age 20, to the big leagues too soon. They didn’t teach the kid to play right field after moving him there from third base. Like the way they didn’t take their time with Jordan to correct his ground-ball machine swing before he reached the show. They had him skip Triple A.
Which is why I think it’s funny – crazily so – to rush Walker into the cleanup spot just because (a) Winn hasn’t been good there, and (b) Walker has kicked ass for the first four games of the season. Where are all the “it’s only four games” shouters? Why doesn’t this cautionary warning apply in this case? I guess we learned nothing from rushing Walker in 2023?
Marmol wants to keep his lineup in the set order of left-right-left. That, as Marmol has explained many times, is to discourage the other dugout from bringing in their killer lefty reliever in the late innings to take on two of the Cardinals’ best left-handed hitters in a row. Or maybe a row of four, with three lefty bats and one right-handed hitter. Marmol’s thinking makes sense.
This is what he’s been doing with the lineup against right-handed starting pitchers:
1–JJ Wetherholt, bats left
2–Ivan Herrera, bats right
3–Alec Burleson, L
4–Winn, R
5–Nolan Gorman, L
6–Walker, R
7–Nathan Church, L
8–Pedro Pages, R
9–Victor Scott, L
Walker’s first four games were excellent. But as we’ve said six bazillion times already … it’s only four games.
Winn is hardly my definition of an ideal No. 4 hitter, but this is no crisis. It isn’t even an emergency.
It’s a rebuilding season. You can play an tinker with the lineup. You can experiment and try different things. And lineup construction is overrated, anyway.
The St. Louis offense has made a lot of noise, even with a small two-run output in Monday’s loss to the Mets.
Going into Tuesday’s engagement, the Cardinals are tied for third in the 15-team National League in runs per game, are tied for first in home runs, rank first in Isolated Power, are fourth in slugging, fifth in batting average and sixth in OPS. Among NL teams only the Dodgers have a lower (as in better) strikeout rate than the Cardinals.
In case you missed it, which you didn’t, through the first four games the St. Louis pitchers rank 28th in ERA (6.32) and have been strafed for 51 hits (the most) and a .319 batting average (the worst.)
On a list of things to holla about less than a week into the schedule, vulnerable pitching would be my choice of whine. Winn at No. 4? OK, I’ve sighed about it. That’s my protest.
I say give Walker more time to reinforce his presence, his panache, his belief. If you want to know if he’s for real … then let’s give WALKER the time to make sure that he knows he’s for real.
Marmol explained his thinking in a follow-up question I asked him on KMOX.
“At some point, I'm sure we'll talk about it again and you won't be shy to bring it up,” he said. “But at the moment, I think ‘let him have some success’ there. Let him feel it and enjoy actually catching up to the league and doing some things that continue to spur these type of conversations.”
Later on I asked Marmol why he believes the early performances of Walker and Gorman are sustainable.
(Note: I’m talking reasonably sustainable. Not like “hey, one of them fellers may win the Triple Crown!” sustainable.)
Gorman hasn’t drawn a walk, but he’s cut way down on his strikeouts (to 21%) and is taking professional, intelligent at-bats.
Gorman has rocketed a couple of homers, and he’s driven in five runs, and his .714 slugging percentage puts him on the early leaderboard of the top 10 major league hitters. The OPS+ – which is 78 percent above league average offensively – is shiny.
Gorman had an RBI in each of the first four games of the season. And his RBI count (5) is tied for fifth in MLB.
There are some red flags in Gorman’s hitting profile so far – not enough hard contact – but some of this can be attributed to his change in approach. The Calming of Nolan Gorman.
In short: Gorman ain’t trying to murder every pitch he swings at. He’s been more patient, more methodical, and is making sounder swing decisions.
And by slowing down in the box instead of trying to go NASA and send every pitch to the moon, he’s got an easier, lighter stroke working for him. Especially when certain situations call for it.
Gorman’s contact rate on strikes (91%) is way up from where he’s been over the past two years. And that’s how he’s doing the damage to the pitchers instead of doing as much damage to himself.
“Gorman,” Marmol said, “when you look at his entire spring, there was a lot more contact, less swing and miss, more control in the strike zone, more direct to the ball, using the big part of the field, which when he's going well, that's what he does. Then when he's in that type of headspace, it doesn't matter (if he’s facing) righty or lefty.
“If you actually look at when he's gone on certain runs, it's usually started by facing a couple left-handed starters, and it gets him kind of on plane and using left center, which allows him to stay on track with everything else.
“So we saw it all spring, which was good to see, and we're continuing to see him take his shots, but then kind of downshift and put more balls in play the other day when we stole second base, and then he kind of shortened up and hit that single at the middle.
“Those are the type of at-bats that you need, over the course of a full year, man, you pick your spots of when you try to jump ship and hit a homer, but then there's other spots where you need to be a hitter, and he's starting to understand that part of it, where (Monday) he took his (home-run) shot, and he got one.
“And there's other times where, ‘runners on base, they're pitching me tough, I gotta shorten up, be more direct,’ and we're seeing more of that adjustability with him, which gives me a ton of optimism.”
Marmol is excited by the way Walker is going about his business – and how that’s paying off for the fourth-year Cardinal.
“On Jordan's end, a couple of the things that we were talking about throughout the offseason and the spring, man, it was frustrating because at the beginning of the spring, it wasn't coming into play, but his work was there,” Marmol said. “You could no longer say, ‘Man, (we) wish you would work differently or harder.’
“Like, there was none of that. It just wasn't coming into play during those games, and then towards the end, you started to see some at-bats that looked the way you wanted them to look … and it's carried into the first four games here in the season. And I do believe in Jordan, and I think he can carry this.”
I know it’s early, but …
EARLY THINGS THAT ARE CHANGING WITH JORDAN WALKER
1. His strikeout rate across 2024 and 2025 was 30.7 percent. Early this season, his strikeout rate is 6.3%.
2. His walk rate over the past two seasons was 6.8 percent; in the dawn of this season it’s 18.%
3. Coming into this season, Walker’s career ground-ball rate was just under 48 percent. In his first four games of the new year, the GB rate was 33.3%.
4. His fly-ball rate, 37.5 percent before this season; was 50 percent through the first four games of ‘26.
5. Walker’s pulled-pitch rate was 24 percent over the previous two seasons; according to Baseball Reference that’s up to 41% in the 2026 start-up.
6. Using the Statcast version of the swing-chase rate on pitches out of the strike zone, Walker had a career percentage of 28% coming into 2026. Early this season: 15.4%.
7. Walker has barreled pitches with 25 percent frequency early in ‘26. Over the previous two seasons, Walker had a barrel rate of 8.5%.
8. Walker’s squared-up contact rate was 28 percent over the past two seasons. Early this year, he’s doubled that rate to 56%.
9. His fast-swing rate – the number of swings that reach 75 miles per hour or higher – was around 74 percent over the previous two seasons. That’s really good. But this year’s 91.3% fast-swing clocking is, well, incredible.
10. A new metric: blast-level contact. (I like new toys!) It’s what happens when a hitter squares up a pitch with turbo bat speed. Walker had a blast-level contact rate of 19.5 percent over the past two seasons. Early this year, that blast-level contact rate is just under 44%. Which explains why his hard-contact rate is 75% early this season. That’s up 25% from 2025.
11. How about a defensive stat before I shut the hell up? In his first three MLB seasons playing right field, Walker averaged minus 7 outs below average. Which, frankly, is horrendous. But Walker came out of his first four games of the new baseball year in the plus column: +1 outs above average.
Yes, it’s early. Very early. But it's never too early to show that it’s never too late to improve.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015.
Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams.
Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball.
Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows.
And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.