Walker continues tear, matches '25 HR total in less than 3 weeks

ST. LOUIS -- Well, it took him all the way until April 11 to do it, but Jordan Walker has finally matched his season home run total from 2025.

Sarcasm aside, the renaissance to Walker’s production in the heart of the Cardinals lineup has been arguably the most welcomed storyline of the young season for St. Louis.

Even as the Cardinals fell to the Red Sox on Saturday at Busch Stadium, 7-1, in an otherwise quiet game for the St. Louis offense -- Walker couldn’t help but do something loud.

After the Cardinals lineup slogged through seven scoreless innings -- Boston starter Ranger Suarez righted his ship in a major way with six scoreless frames -- Walker came to the plate in the eighth inning looking to jolt some life into the St. Louis dugout.

He did more than that, bringing an entire building to its feet. Walker launched his sixth home run of the season to center field, cutting the deficit to 2-1 with a blast that traveled 429 feet and landed halfway up the berm of Freese’s Lawn.

Walker’s sixth homer, achieved in his 14th game of 2026, lands him at the same total as he amassed a season ago across 111 games and 396 plate appearances. He ended Saturday tied for the Major League home run lead with Gunnar Henderson and Yordan Alvarez.

Walker, who ranks in the 99th percentile across MLB in Statcast’s swing speed metric, whipped his bat through the zone at 82.3 mph to turn around a 94.3 mph sinker from Garrett Whitlock. The lightning-quick stroke produced an exit velocity of 109.6 mph and registered as the fastest swing of Saturday’s game on a ball in play by a full 2.5 mph.

Entering Saturday, only five home run swings across the Majors this season had been hit with a faster swing speed than the mark set by Walker in Saturday's eighth inning.

All of this makes Walker’s own thoughts on his swing speed -- which, on average, is tied for third-fastest in baseball behind only Junior Caminero and Giancarlo Stanton -- particularly revealing when it comes to how he’s processing this early-season success.

“Honestly, I think when I try to swing hard, that’s when I miss,” Walker said. “So I need to just find a barrel, in all honesty. Then, hopefully, the rest will work out for itself.”

It’s a fascinating aspect of Walker’s return to prominence. Here’s a player who came into the league in 2023 with all the prospect hype in the world, but quickly found out that the adage that baseball really is a game of adjustments is an adage for a reason -- especially in the big leagues.

He’s had a winding path over the past two years, posting a .619 OPS in 2024 and a .584 OPS in 2025. Narratives surrounding mechanics and alterations to his approach, batting stance and swing have been major topics of conversation surrounding Walker -- to the point of beating the topic into the ground with as many questions as he’s had to answer about the minutiae of his game throughout that period.

So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, with Walker again finding a semblance of the hitter he was seemingly always destined to become, the man himself couldn’t want to do anything less than talk about his mechanics.

“Just shutting my brain off as best as I can,” Walker said. “It’s never possible to shut everything off, but just as best as I can -- and not think about my mechanics. Then when it’s out there, just, swing.”

Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol hasn’t grown tired of being asked about Walker’s resurgence.

“My hope is I can answer this question every day,” Marmol said, when asked where he thought Walker’s power surge came from. “I have no problem with that.”

While the results have been the inspiration behind the barrage of questions on the 23-year-old slugger, Marmol is, like Walker, steadfast that the consistency of his process has been the key to unlocking his current production.

“It’s probably why every time I’ve answered the question, it’s been more around the work being put in than the result,” Marmol said. “Because that’s what matters. ... He’s getting in the box, and what he’s thinking about is competing against the pitcher. He’s not thinking about ‘Where are my hips? Where are my hands? Where’s my stride?’ He’s just competing -- and that’s when you’re in a good spot.”