I have a question that I don’t have an answer to, but it might be the key between the St. Louis Cardinals well-publicized rebuild lasting half a decade or a year or two. Is it possible that the newly-deployed player development tools that the St. Louis Cardinals have put into place can fix Nolan Gorman and/or Jordan Walker or are they too far gone?
If you haven’t already checked out the excellent “The St. Louis Cardinals: Baseball meets Technology” article, I highly recommend it. It’s a deep dive into the many new tools and technologies the Cardinals have now deployed that will help optimize player development. That includes Force plates, ArmCare Strength and Range of Motion Sensor, Trajekt, Trackman, Rapsodo 2.0, Kinatrax, Edgertronics, Hawkeye, NordBord, Groinbar and I could go on and on and on. The St. Louis Cardinals have also hired a myriad of personnel to help players maximize all of these tools. We unfortunately can’t turn back time to when Nolan Gorman was drafted by the Cardinals in 2018 and put all of these great tools and people in his path, but could they somehow turn around him and Jordan Walker now? The answer is likely different for both players.
Nolan Gorman is currently 25 years old and has no minor league options left. He’ll turn 26 in May. He’s about to begin his 5th major league baseball season. If you look at Nolan’s major league stats, they’ve all but flatlined. He did reduce his strikeout percentage by an eyelash last season compared to 2024, but it’s still a completely unacceptable 33.8%. Even if you just look at his numbers versus the fastball, his average is barely above the Mendoza line. His performance versus breaking pitches declined last year compared to the year prior. Gorman’s hard-hit rate did improve slightly in 2025, but his barreling percentage practically fell through the floor falling from 16.7% in 2024 to a paltry 9.1% last season. It would seem that the major league arms he’s facing have found the holes in his swing and he has been unsuccessful in adapting and that’s probably the biggest understatement in Viva El Birdos history. If you’re asking me, I’m afraid no technology will be able to turn Gorman around at this point in his career, but I’d love to be wrong about that.
Jordan Walker is 23 years old and will turn 24 slightly less than 2 weeks after Gorman’s birthday in May. He still has one lone minor league option left and I’d love to see him take it by starting the 2026 season in Memphis. While Jordan’s major league numbers are poor, there is a glimmer of hope in his batting metrics if you look hard enough. His exit velocity and barrel rate has slowly (another big understatement) climbed from the 2023 season through 2025. Barrel rate progress of 7.5 in 2023 to 9.5 in 2024 to 10.9 in 2025 is at least heading the right direction. Jordan’s batting average versus fastballs and breaking balls has improved also, but average versus off-speed pitches overall declined last season. Call it wishful thinking, but I’m not convinced that Jordan wouldn’t benefit from another significant deployment in the minors to see if he can turn a promising career around from a dumpster fire to at least part of what many of us hoped it would be.
The one wild card for both Gorman and Walker is approach and dedication to putting the work in. Most of us are well aware of the challenge that manager Oli Marmol and hitting coach Brant Brown threw out at Jordan Walker late last year. They questioned his urgency and he responded by saying he recognized his plate discipline and approach were a part of the problem, but also defended his acceptance of their critiques. If he completely buys in to the adjustments he must make, I still think Walker has elite talent that could be rediscovered with a lengthy Memphis stay, but I don’t think he gets fixed doing a 2 to 4 week stint.
My fear is that we’ll see Jordan Walker as the starting right fielder for the St. Louis Cardinals as the outfield outlook right now is poor. I think he stands the best chance at still becoming a significant offensive threat if only someone can convince him to completely rethink his approach at the plate and the hard work behind the scenes. Would it be too much to ask to have Albert Pujols join the organization and help Jordan understand the extremely disciplined process he took for every single at-bat.
I remember Tony La Russa describing how Albert would go into the video room between every at-bat to look at how he was pitched and anticipating what the pitcher would do during his next at-bat. If only he could convince Jordan Walker to adapt that kind of approach to hitting, imagine what the results might be.
I am of the belief that holding on to Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker this off-season was the right move as the Cardinals would have been selling extremely low on both players. I was one of the naive people that thought there was a chance we’d see Gorman or Walker break out and show the growth they needed during the infamous “runway season” last year. That obviously didn’t come close to happening. I fear that Nolan Gorman has developed too many bad habits and has passed the point of no return, but I’d love to be proven wrong about that. I’m still bullish on Jordan Walker at least having an opportunity to scratch the surface of his potential, but the end of his development time is fast approaching.
