Home › The Cardinal Nation Forums › Open Forum › Why Jordan Walker will start the season in AAA – not MLB
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mudville.
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May 15, 2023 at 5:15 am #220523
Maybe Walkergate and Catchergate are symptoms of the same sickness.
I did notice that Walker finally had a better game at the plate in Memphis, including a double. Due to small sample size he raised his BA from .150ish to .190ish. He has not been tearing it up down there. Hopefully he is working on his hitting approach and continuing work on his defense. My thinking is he should put in most of the year in AAA. Unless he is a big disappointment, burning the option year shouldn’t matter. But the apparent deficiency above his pay grade may be the bigger issue.
May 15, 2023 at 10:27 am #220551The CBA was modified to grant teams an extra MLB draft pick if a player wins rookie of the year or an extra international draft pick if they finish second or third. Hopefully that wasn’t part of the Cardinals’ calculation when he was brought north out of spring training because that seems like a fool’s errand to me.
May 15, 2023 at 11:17 am #220553Maybe Mo didn’t want the PR pushback of demoting Walker at the end of ST?
Or maybe Bill wanted to show off his shiny new hot ticket seller?
Who knows. If we could move O’Neill by the deadline and Walker continues to develop a lagging BB/K, possibly we see him in the 2nd half.
May 15, 2023 at 11:24 am #220554because that seems like a fool’s errand to me.
gscott, they’ve been erranding their legs off the last few months.
Maybe somebody can enlighten me, did Walker’s launch angle/lift drop significantly in his short time in StL compared to last year’s results? No surprise that overall results would go down against better pitching, but doesn’t seem like launch angle/lift would necessarily go down. Maybe so, but I’ve never thought about that or looked at stats on it.
Or did his swing change, and they’re trying to change it back? A lot of moving parts, with both relevant and confounding variables, that make these kinds of mechanical issues tough to solve.
May 15, 2023 at 11:35 am #220555I wonder if Burleson has officially passed O’Neill in the OF pecking order now. That could come into play whenever Walker is ready to return. It seems like there will need to be an OF glove man on the bench.
May 15, 2023 at 2:15 pm #220564I wonder if Burleson has officially passed O’Neill in the OF pecking order now.
I hope not because I don’t have enough Maalox to watch Burleson play “defense”.
If it were up to me I would have a LF platoon of Donovan/O’Neill. They could then play Gorman at 2B with a platoon of PDJ/Edman at SS and a platoon of Burleson/Yepez at DH or they could use a DH platoon of Gorman/Yepez with PDJ at SS and Edman at 2B. With this roster there is a thousand different scenarios and alignments and very little clarity, which is why we have so many different lineups by the manager.
May 15, 2023 at 6:54 pm #220580O’Neill ahead of Burleson when O’Neill returns. Bow tie needs O’Neill to temporarily raise his trade value because he’s not worthy of a 7.5mil to 8mil arb3 salary next season.
The issue isn’t what you could get in return for O’Neill and others at the deadline, it’s O’Neills 2024 arb3 salary atop an outfield logjamb of cheaper, better players.
Mo needs O’Neill to follow PDJ’s lead and play above his recent norm, and stay off the IL.
May 15, 2023 at 8:19 pm #220598I believe Walker has been down long enough that he would be a Super two if called up tomorrow, so the Cards would have control through 2029.
May 15, 2023 at 9:01 pm #220636Less than 20 days down can still earn a full service year.
Once a player exceeds the 20 days down, there is no mathematical way to accumulate a full service year in that season.
BW records Walker demoted 4-26-2023 on the roster matrix. If we count that as day 1, today is day 20.
May 16, 2023 at 11:47 am #220684Super2 is a salary class of players, not to be confused with club control and player free agency. For Walker Super2 is a couple years down the road and very hard to speculate about this early.
Appears Walker has spent 20 days down so I would agree on club control through 2029. The only way for him to get a full service year this season, would be if it were awarded to him by mlb for finishing 1st or 2nd in the NL ROY voting. TBD.
May 29, 2023 at 9:22 pm #222686As many suspected…
Jordan Walker was sent down to Memphis to get him to hit the ball in the air more.
That got to his head and led to struggles.
Now, the #1 prospect in baseball is getting back to himself.
"There's no point if I try to hit the ball in the air if I'm not hitting the ball at all." pic.twitter.com/bEwqoyomYJ
— Matt Infield (@Matt_Infield) May 29, 2023
May 29, 2023 at 10:30 pm #222693So they did to Walker in a couple months what it took years to do to Carpenter. They also were pretty quick with Donovan. Is it any wonder they often whiff on prospects?
Did Walker unilaterally decide to scrap the lift-the-ball approach or was everybody in on it. He said “I” a lot, and not “we” so it’s hard to tell from that clip. That could be an area of concern.
May 30, 2023 at 1:36 pm #222796The P-D’s version of the story…
Cardinals prospect Jordan Walker's mechanical tweaks unleash his potential in Memphis https://t.co/0M9M0YOjwH
— STL Cardinals News (@STLCardsNews) May 30, 2023
May 30, 2023 at 1:48 pm #222798So, the Big League team feels they have a better chance with Mercado?
May 30, 2023 at 2:10 pm #222801BenFred: Cardinals outfield is making it easy to advocate for Jordan Walker's return https://t.co/daou85B6G0
— STLToday Sports News (@STL_SportsNews) May 30, 2023
May 30, 2023 at 2:12 pm #222802So, the Big League team feels they have a better chance with Mercado?
Why not have both? Send Yepez and Burly back to Memphis.
May 30, 2023 at 3:47 pm #222807Over his last 15 games . . .
How can you argue with evidence like that.
May 30, 2023 at 4:36 pm #222812He only had eight bad games before he was sent down.
June 1, 2023 at 6:03 pm #222968The Cardinals are recalling Jordan Walker, a source with direct knowledge says. He’ll join the active roster tomorrow in Pittsburgh.
— Jeff Jones (@jmjones) June 1, 2023
June 1, 2023 at 6:32 pm #222971I’m happy for him, but don’t the Redbird bosses feel we have a better chance with guys like Motter and Mercado?
June 1, 2023 at 6:53 pm #222972We all saw that the big hole in Walker’s swing is those fadeaway sliders. Can’t lay off the ones too far away and pulls off the rest so he can’t get good wood, or any wood, on them. It got to where he was seeing a steady diet of them, and he undoubtedly will again. I am not sure what the polo shirts thought his launch angle had to do with that. Anyway, it takes longer than a few weeks to rework your hitting approach and have it MLB ready. The one positive thing is he might have learned a valuable lesson about letting the wonks tell him how to hit.
June 1, 2023 at 7:16 pm #222974I think his defense needed more work than his bat. That is what I will be watching.
June 2, 2023 at 3:55 am #222983In a season that seems to be pointed downward, perhaps it would be wiser to leave Walker down in the minors for more work and experience, then bring him up next year (or at the end of this year) for a fresh start.
June 2, 2023 at 5:25 am #222984One whole month of AAA experience doesn’t make any actual real world sense. Maybe the whiz bangs sent him down to fix his swing because they figured he couldn’t win ROY hitting ground balls.
June 2, 2023 at 1:32 pm #223001OF Lars Nootbaar (lower back contusion) has been placed on the 10-day IL, retroactive to May 30.
OF Jordan Walker has been recalled from Memphis (AAA). pic.twitter.com/ueO5Qg2bqG
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) June 2, 2023
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