A month ago, if I had written a column or yapped into a camera or microphone to make this particular forecast, I wonder what you would have said at the time.
The prediction: 15 games into the new season, St. Louis right fielder Jordan Walker would have …
– More home runs than Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Cal Raleigh and Kyle Schwarber.
– More RBIs than Freddie Freeman, Yordan Alvarez, Bryce Harper, Bo Bichette, Giancarlo Stanton, and Corey Seager.
– An OPS that’s 480 points higher than Kyle Tucker’s OPS – and a slugging percentage that’s 429 points better than Tucker’s. How much is Tucker making this season as a Dodger?
– Have a career-best 1.2 Wins Above Replacement, which is currently more than the WAR posted thus far by Bobby Witt Jr., Mike Trout, Jose Ramirez, Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Vlad Guerrero Jr., and Brendan Donovan.
I think y’all would have said something along the lines of …
Bernie, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but I want to offer my help.
Bernie, when’s the last time you made an appointment to see a doctor?
Bernie, are you experimenting with some sort of psychedelic concoction?
Is everything OK? Are you walking around outside in a bathrobe, muttering to yourself, scaring strangers, in the manner of Vincent “Chin” Gigante, the late New York mobster?
Bern, tell me the truth: have you been bitten by any rabid animals?
And I get it. And I wouldn’t have taken offense to any of your concerns about my mental and physical state.
Yep, you would have thought my mind had snapped and broken into little morsels you’d find in a smashed package of saltines.
But all of the comparisons I offered a few paragraphs ago were true facts. Yeah, I know it’s early. But who cares? Do you enjoy watching Walker power up, grow up, move up, slug up, clean up and wise up as a hitter? Do you like the home-run barrage, or would you prefer 67,000 ground-ball outs?
It’s early? Yes, it’s early. But this is also entertainment. This is fun. This is crazy, sure. But what Walker is doing is crazy good, spectacularly good. No matter how long this blast lasts – one week, one month, six months, two years, 10 years – just enjoy it. That’s what Walker is doing.
Notes, Quotes From the Walker File
1. Good news: In the past eight games, Walker splattered six pitches for home runs, batted .406, got on base in 46 percent of his plate appearances, slugged a preposterous .969, broiled a 1.426 OPS, thwacked in 11 RBIs, and may have inspired 17 or possibly 20 extra Cardinals fans to come to the ballpark.
2. More good news: Walker’s 1.2 WAR already represents his career best in a season. He did this in only 15 games. As a rookie in 2023, Walker put up 1.0 WAR – but that was accrued over 117 games. I think he’s improved.
3. Some bad news: while Jordan was taking enemy pitchers over the wall for six home runs in 32 at-bats over the last eight games, his teammates hit three home runs in 224 at-bats. And the rest of the team batted .201 with a quiet .277 slugging percentage. In the eight games Walker homered every 5.3 at-bats. His teammates homered every 74.6 at-bats. The big man needs some help.
4. Let’s look at a Walker stat that tells us a lot. It’s a metric known as SLGCON. What does it mean? The stat measures a hitter’s power specifically when he puts the ball in play. Unlike the basic slugging percentage, which includes strikeouts, SLGCON strips strikeouts from the equation to focus entirely on the quality of contact. I guess we can say that Walker is doing pretty well with this new-toy metric SLGCON. Let’s use it to trace his major-league career.
2023: standard .445 percentage, .592 SLGCON.
2024: standard .366 slug percentage, .526 SLGCON.
2025: standard .306 slug percentage, .468 SLGCON.
2026: standard .745 slug percentage, 1.079 SLGCON. Whoa!
5. Walker’s early season HR rate is “McGwired.” Let’s update to include the two sultan-o-swat tributes he cranked against the Red Sox. This is simply a progress report, a fun note – and not a prediction.
Top 3 rates of home runs per 100 at-bats in a season by a Cardinals hitter:
+ Mark McGwire, 13.75 homers per 100 ABs in 1998.
+ Jordan Walker, 12.73 home runs per 100 ABs in 2026.
+ McGwire, 12.48 home runs per 100 ABs in 1999.
This works. Don’t worry about Walker sustaining this pace. He won’t do that, but he can have a monster-mash type of season. I’m not here to push a narrative that he can break someone’s record. I’m just here to marvel at this early-season power-rock show.
6. Walker continues to move up in the MLB rankings: Going into Monday, Walker was 1st in the majors in homers, 1st in isolated power, tied for 2nd in WAR, 3rd in slugging, 4th in wRC+, 4th overall in OPS, and tied for 5th in RBIs.
7. Commentary from Daniel Epstein of Baseball Prospectus: “Walker still isn’t pulling many fly balls, and he probably never will. He’s just not that kind of hitter. Most of his pulled batted balls are on the ground, and most of his line drives and fly balls are to right or center field. That’s fine. There are two ways to hit a lot of home runs: 1) hit pulled fly balls down the line, and 2) be ridiculously strong. Walker fits into the second category, as do Giancarlo Stanton and James Wood, to name a few similar players.
“As long as he’s putting his best swing on pitches he’s hitting in the air, he has plenty of muscle to clear the fences in any part of the ballpark. If he could figure out how to pull the ball in the air too, that would be the difference between hitting 35-40 homers, like Wood or Juan Soto, and hitting 50-60 homers, like Cal Raleigh or Shohei Ohtani, but I don’t expect that to happen.”
8. Jim Bowden of The Athletic definitely believes in Walker’s hot start. “In 2023, I predicted Walker would win the NL Rookie of the Year Award and develop into a star. Three years later, the Cardinals outfielder hasn’t yet found stardom. I’ve taken grief from fans ever since and don’t blame them.
“However, Walker has started this year off with a bang, with seven homers and a 1.138 OPS in 15 games, and may finally be reaching that ceiling he held as a prospect.
“This strong start comes after he made some significant changes at the plate. He’s altered his stance, swing and approach following time at Driveline in the offseason and now has the confidence and mechanics to live up to my early expectations for his career. Barbra Streisand would be proud, as I believe that a star is born in St. Louis.”
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 STL Sports Central, 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.