Should Cards extend Walker? What a deal might look like

This story was excerpted from Will Leitch's Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The Cardinals, and many throughout baseball, have long thought that Jordan Walker could be a star. That was part of the thinking in 2023, when the team had him in its Opening Day lineup when he was still 20 years old.

Initially, it looked like it might happen just like that. Walker got off to a good start, with an 11-game hitting streak, but then he regressed. And regressed some more. And then some more, until a nightmarish 2025 season that made many wonder if the Cardinals had run out of patience with him.

It’s a good thing they didn’t. Walker has exploded in 2026, tied for the NL lead in RBIs, fighting his way out of slumps that would have derailed him in the past and -- rather famously -- becoming the first Cardinal ever to win the Home Run Derby.

The Cardinals already believed that a star had been born. Now the rest of baseball knows.

That prompts an important question: Are the Cardinals and Walker going to be able to make sure he’s a part of this team for years to come?

Walker would seem, in every possible way, the sort of player the Cardinals and president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom would want to build around. He has that most rare of baseball qualities (pure, unadulterated power), and in 2026 he has learned to yield it consistently and put the ball in the air, a longtime bugaboo. He has also improved considerably in right field since his days as a Minor League third baseman, and his cannon of an arm is a weapon out there.

Walker is also getting better and better: His best month of the season so far has in fact been July (1.017 OPS through Monday). And, as he has gotten more and more comfortable, his natural charisma has come to the forefront. He is an extremely likable player to watch and to cheer for, and he has won over every single Cardinals fan who has seen him overcome his struggles. After that Home Run Derby, the world knows him and loves him. You’re about to see a whole bunch of him.

So you’ve got to extend him, right? Well, yeah. It particularly makes sense when you think of him and rookie second baseman JJ Wetherholt, whom the Cardinals just extended through the 2034 season, as players for the Cardinals to build around. Walker is only a few months older than Wetherholt -- the former turned 24 in May, the latter will do so in September -- so they are logical candidates to be linked.

But it’s a little more complicated than that. Unlike Wetherholt, Walker didn’t just arrive in St. Louis this year. He’s eligible for arbitration before next season and due to reach free agency after the 2029 campaign. If they wanted to secure his services for as long as they secured Wetherholt’s, they would have to buy out five full seasons of free agency, rather than three.

That would be a lot more expensive, and that’s not even accounting for the scarcity of Walker’s power and a star status that is just starting to bloom (and already far outpaces anyone else on the team). You also have to account for two other players on the exact same timeline as Walker that the Cardinals might consider part of their long-term future as well: Masyn Winn and Iván Herrera. Walker would, presumably, be in line ahead of both of them, but all three have showed how important they could be for this team moving forward.

What’s a potentially comparable deal for Walker, then? One that might provide some insight could come from the Cardinals’ rivals, the Cubs, who signed fellow All-Star Pete Crow-Armstrong to a six-year, $115 million extension in March. The extension doesn’t begin until 2027 and bought out two free-agent years for a player entering his age-24 season. If Walker signed a deal that also started in ’27, he would be one year closer to free agency.

Aside from that difference in service time, the two players’ skill sets are also different. While at the time of the deal Crow-Armstrong was coming off a tough second half in 2025, he still finished ninth in the NL MVP race, and his Gold Glove-winning center-field defense and speed on the bases gave him a higher floor than Walker has as a bat-first corner player. He also had the 10th-best-selling jersey in baseball, showing he was already a star.

Walker appears to have turned the corner on his struggles. But the Cardinals don’t have to look far in the past to remember them. There would be risk to both sides. Would Walker require more than PCA? Probably, if only because he’s closer to free agency. But Walker might want to capitalize while the iron is hot. Because it is very hot right now.

It is remarkable, when you take a step back from it, that we’re even discussing this about Walker: This is a player, after all, that many fans (including me) thought would begin this season at Triple-A. Now he is clearly one of the most important, and best, players on the team -- and quite vital to everything the Cardinals are trying to be, now and in the years to come. He’s a star. The Cardinals need stars. The figures will have to be hashed out. But the fit, for both sides, is now obvious.