Bernie: What Are The Cardinals Doing To Jordan Walker’s Career? Intervene, Bill DeWitt Jr., And Put An End To The Madness.

Imagine what it would be like for Jordan Walker if he’d been drafted by an organization that knew what the heck it was doing in the development of players. And as Walker returns to the minors after spending a weird and wasted week with the cray-cray Cardinals, he should think of the more pleasant times ahead.

Unless something big and bold and decisive takes place to change the trajectory of this troubled franchise, Walker one day will be dealt to a more astute organization that knows how to develop young hitters. An organization with an enlightened staff, and all of the available technology. An organization that can find ways to pull struggling youngsters out of slumps and get them back on track. It won’t be a cuckoo, outdated operation that’s been in place and stagnating for way too long.

Unless new front-office leadership takes over and installs a more capable and stable manager and puts together a more industrious and innovative coaching staff in time to rescue his career, Walker can look forward to becoming a member of The Fresh Start Club. And this will liberate him from the madness in St. Louis.

Make room, Randy Arozarena, and Dylan Carlson, and Adolis Garcia, and Tyler O’Neill and Lane Thomas. I’m sure I’m forgetting about another six or eight members of The Fresh Start Club … but that doesn’t change my message: there is hope for you, young Jordan Walker. There is hope.

Walker wasn’t drafted by a team that knew how to guide his career with expertise. He was selected in the 2020 draft by the Cardinals. He arrived just as a declining, increasingly dysfunctional franchise was slowly but surely making its way to express check-in line at The Loony Tunes Hotel.

Before Tuesday’s home game against the first-place Brewers – who must be laughing – the Cardinals made a sequence of roster moves.

– Walker was optioned to Memphis after spending seven days with the Cardinals after his upbeat promotion from Triple A Memphis on Aug. 12. He started three of the team’s six games and saw action in another. The big call-up

– Summoned to St. Louis in the switch-out was Luken Baker, the hulking first baseman who has heavy right-handed power. He’s larruped 32 home runs at Triple A Memphis this season after crushing 33 homers there in 2023.

– Matt Carpenter was reinstated from the 10-day Injured List.

– To accommodate Carpenter’s return, the Cardinals released the ancient infielder Brandon Crawford. Through no fault of his own, Crawford occupied a spot on the Cardinals’ 26-man roster that could have been utilized in any number of more valuable ways. Crawford departs with a .169 batting average. But, he was a leader or something, right? What was the point of all of this?

And what was the point of bringing Walker back to St. Louis? After an extremely challenging spring and summer, Walker had finally found his misplaced hitting talent. He hit up a storm for a couple of weeks, and looked ready to reenter a wheezing St. Louis lineup. The big man, still only 22, would resume a career that still has so much promise.

That’s when manager Oli Marmol hatched a plan to reduce Walker to a platoon gig. Walker would be in the lineup against left-handed starting pitchers. He would sit on the bench when the other side started a right-handed starting pitcher.

This made no sense for several reasons. I went over these last week, but it’s a good idea to revisit the short list.

1) If you’re going to put an end to Walker’s relentless assault on Triple A pitching just when he’d finally found what he was looking for, he had to play every day for the Cards. He can’t sit around, have a disruption in routine, lose the rhythm and the timing and the confidence and all of that good stuff. Walker needs reps, reps, reps, reps. Otherwise, keep him in Memphis.

2) Walker is a right-handed hitter that’s ineffective against lefty pitchers. And the easy-to-find stats show us that Walker is more robust against righty pitchers. Compared to his performance vs. lefties, Walker’s OPS is 78 points higher than when attacking righthanders. More power. Higher batting average. More everything. So Marmol came up with this swell idea to have Walker on call to face lefties … even though Walker doesn’t hit lefties. Not yet, anyway.

3) Meanwhile, with the Cardinals offense choking on its own exhaust fumes, Walker should have had a regular spot in the lineup because he can blast righthanders. In 356 big-league at-bats against RHP, Walker has 19 doubles, 12 homers, and a .447 slugging percentage. What, the Cardinals are so loaded offensively that they had no place for Walker in the lineup? The guy who ended up with really terrific numbers by the end of a tumultuous rookie season? Seriously: is Marmol feeling OK? Is he seeking conflict?

4) If Marmol wanted a right-handed batter coming off the bench who could do some damage, then why not ask the front office to give the assignment to Luken Baker? Baker didn’t do much with an expanded major-league trial last summer, but it’s too soon to write him off. At Triple A this year Baker has walloped lefty pitchers for a wicked .698 slugging percentage, and cranked a home run every 8.9 at-bats. These numbers warrant more of a look at the big-league level. Baker can be used as a DH when the opponents go with a left-handed starter. He can also play first base. But this is someone to tab for a part-time, assignment specific role. It was ridiculous to try and squeeze Walker into such a confining spot when he needs to play.

Marmol’s stance in this matter was counter to Mozeliak’s strong and consistent belief in playing young players if you think enough of them to put them in the big leagues. There’s no need to rush a developing hitter up here to a part-timer. This does nothing for his hitting progress in real time – and nothing for his hitting advancement in the long term. The idea was goofy from the start.

It sure looks like Marmol defied Mozeliak. Hey, if you want to swallow the soft explanations and propaganda, then go for it. The Cardinals will appreciate you for it. But anyone who doesn’t see the obvious disagreement and disconnect here is being sweetly naive.

The latest spin: well, the Cardinals are going to face a lot of right-handed starting pitchers over the next couple of weeks, so Walker wouldn’t be getting enough starts. Never mind that – and pardon my shouting – Walker is BETTER AGAINST RIGHT-HANDED PITCHING!

“He was swinging the bat really well down there (Memphis), and (we) definitely wanted to take a look at what he’s doing and where he’s at,” Mozeliak told reporters at Busch Stadium on Tuesday. “But as you look at what we’re facing over the next week and a half, he just wasn’t going to get much playing time. Obviously, someone at his age is developing if he’s not playing, it doesn’t make sense for him to be here.”

Then why bring Walker up in the first place?

I mean, are the Cardinals incapable of studying the upcoming schedule of the next several opponents, get a good read on what they can expect in the pitching (left or right) matchup, then consider the information and conclude that it’s best for Walker to keep bombing away in Memphis instead of jerking him all around again? This dude is massively important to the Cardinals’ future. He isn’t a Yo-Yo.

(Sidebar: I may be misinterpreting this, but Mozeliak said something Tuesday when meeting with reporters that sounded like a concession speech, or something like that. “There are a lot of demands on our roster now,” he said. “We are going to see some changes over the course of the next few weeks. And we also wanted to have the ability to start to take a look at some players before this season wraps up.”)

Hmmm. We’ll see where this goes, but Marmol’s job security has to be on shakier ground now. And Mozeliak is only reinforcing the idea that he’s been around too long, can’t connect with his own managers, and it sure as hell looks like another Mozeliak managerial hiring is on the way to another divorce. Oh, and Cardinals could be headed to a consecutive losing season (in a full season) since 1958-1959. Conclusion: it’s imperative to start over at the top of the baseball pyramid.

If chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. wakes up, he’ll move Mozeliak aside (or out), give the post to a new president of baseball operations, and have the new POBO hire the next manager.

DeWitt should be asking tough, tough questions of Marmol and Mozeliak.

Where was the communication between them?

Why was there a disconnect?

Why weren’t they on the same page?

How could Marmol go lone wolf here when he knows Mozeliak’s philosophy on how to handle young hitters that graduate to the Cardinals?

Did Mozeliak make his feelings known to Marmol – stating with absolute certainty – that Walker’s promotion required a regular presence in the lineup?

Given Mozeliak’s up-front policy on this, which has been in place for many years, I find it inconceivable that the manager would be oblivious to management’s expectations on deploying Walker.

Did Marmol agree with Mozeliak on principle, only to pivot and defy his direct superior?

DeWitt must ask more comprehensive and critical questions: why does this organization mess up so many talented young hitters? Why do they get lost here? Why do we repeatedly fail to lead them to their full potential, then cut ties when their trade value has bottomed out and move them for an embarrassingly low return? Where are we going wrong in our evaluations, our coaching, our requirement to maximize their talent and help them reach their potential? Why, as the chairman of the Cardinals, do I have to keep seeing our lost-soul or overlooked young hitters move on from our organization and become much better players when going to work for a new organization, a new manager, new coaches, new instructors?

The Cardinals’ supervision and direction of Walker’s career is a travesty. It is just another tell-tale sign of how far this Midwest baseball empire has fallen.

Walker was one of the top prospects in baseball. A gem that must be handled with care.  Instead, the Cardinals have been too whimsical, too impatient and too impulsive with a new-generation star.

– Promote Walker to the big leagues at the end of 2023 spring training before he was ready. Look, he hit a ton of ground balls late in the exhibition game schedule, so the Cardinals were well aware of a potential problem – and the adjustments that needed to be made. Isn’t it smarter to have that education take place in Triple A? Until then, Walker had never played above Double A.

– After Walker began his major-league career with an exciting 12-game hitting streak, he cooled down (hardly a shock) and the Cardinals demoted him after his 20th game. Let’s retrace this. Walker gets a hit in 12 straight games … then goes 1 for 16 … then, in his final three games, goes 4 for 10. In other words: he reemerged from a brief slump, which is exactly what you want to see from a first-time major leaguer. And after the 4 for 10 … that’s when the Cardinals decided to put him in Memphis?

– Yeah, I know Walker was hitting too many ground balls and had to convert his abundant strength into home runs and doubles by driving more balls through the the air. I understood the thinking at the time, and it made sense, even though the first demotion was abrupt. But as the Cardinals continue to screw around with Walker, the less I trust them – and in retrospect, I shouldn’t have trusted their first decision to demote him in late April 2023. But I didn’t know then what I know now.

– Walker finished 2023 with a flourish, making the Cardinal people happy with the way he smashed pitches over his final 30 games. Walker batted .339, put up a .392 onbase percentage, and slugged .937 in his last 112 at-bats of the season. This was the young dynamo that everyone expected to see.

– Fast forward to 2024. Walker hit .155 in his first 20 games … and was routed to Memphis. Back to the minors after 20 games of the new season – just as it was after the first 20 games of the 2023 season.

– After his offense sparked in a big way at Triple A following a slow start to the campaign, Walker was promoted by the Cardinals on Aug. 12. He was gone a week later, riding back to Memphis after only 11 at-bats. What was the point to all of this? The incompetence is staggering.

I don’t think young hitters mind climbing their way through the minors as long as they’re putting in the work, seeing the improvement, and gaining confidence that they’ll be ready to go to the show when the call comes.

But you can’t put a young talent on a Tilt-A-Whirl ride and make his head spin. He’ll be confused. And he’ll probably resent the way he’s being treated.

This has definitely been a Tilt-A-Whirl for Walker.

A busted Tilt-A-Whirl.

In shorthand, here’s this preposterous ride has played out over the last two seasons:

2023 … open in the majors … demoted after 20 games … back to the majors with a happy ending to the year … 2024 … new season… 20 games in … back to the minors … three-plus months in the minors … back to the majors … six games in the majors … go back to the minors.

This is irresponsible. And inexcusable, especially when we take into account the Cardinals’ failures with too many talented, in-development hitters. You have a manager and president of baseball operations who (apparently) couldn’t agree on what would be the best plan for Walker. So who suffers the most? The player. Jordan Walker.

This is the craziest spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl yet. And the owner of the franchise is watching this all happen – time after time after time. And there are no repercussions for the men who should be guiding Walker to stardom – instead of guiding him on the map to go to and from Memphis to St. Louis to Memphis to St. Louis to Memphis to … maybe a new team? I hope not. But the only person who can intervene and stop this madness is Bill DeWitt.

Thanks for reading, and please pardon my typos…

–Bernie