Swing tweak helps Walker stay red-hot as Cards win 6th straight

ST. LOUIS -- Jordan Walker widened his stance. Everything else suddenly started looking a whole lot bigger.

After making a minor adjustment with hitting coach Brant Brown prior to Friday’s series opener, Walker stayed scorching hot Saturday night, blasting a two-run homer and helping power the Cardinals to a 3-2 win over the Dodgers at Busch Stadium.

The homer -- a 110 mph rocket to left field off a splitter after Walker fell behind 0-2 -- gave St. Louis a commanding three-run cushion in the third inning and extended Walker’s absurd start to the series. After going 4-for-4 on Friday, Walker opened Saturday 2-for-2 against Los Angeles. He finished the day 2-for-4.

For a player already in the midst of the best stretch of his young career, the adjustment wasn’t about reinventing himself. It was about getting back to the version of Walker that looked nearly unstoppable earlier this season.

Walker entered the Dodgers series coming off a quieter couple of weeks at the plate after an explosive opening month that saw him emerge as one of the Cardinals’ most dangerous hitters. Pitchers began attacking him differently, and Walker admitted he started feeling slightly out of rhythm timing-wise at the plate.

That’s where the conversations with Brown came in.

“It just feels nice,” Walker said. “The work that I put in during the offseason showing up here and now, the main focus is just getting consistent. It feels like I know what it feels like now. If things get off, I know how to get back to what makes me good.”

The Cardinals’ offense again leaned into what has quietly become one of the defining traits of this recent surge: relentless pressure, paired with power. Iván Herrera and Alec Burleson opened the third inning with back-to-back doubles before Walker delivered the game’s biggest swing moments later.

Even more impressive than the homer itself was the at-bat leading up to it.

After falling behind 0-2 against Dodgers right-hander Roki Sasaki, Walker stayed calm, fouled off multiple pitches and refused to expand the zone before finally getting a splitter he could hammer into the left-field seats.

“It was kind of just see ball, hit ball,” Walker said. “He has good stuff. Throws hard, good splitter. I just tried to fight.”

Manager Oliver Marmol saw something more in the sequence.

A year ago, an 0-2 count against a pitcher with Sasaki’s arsenal may have sped Walker up. Instead, the Cardinals’ skipper saw a hitter staying controlled, trusting his setup and letting the at-bat come to him.

“That’s what it takes to have success at this level,” Marmol said. “You have to constantly make adjustments and not settle.”

Marmol said the organization now feels Walker has something tangible to “anchor” himself to mechanically when things drift off course -- something that wasn’t always present during previous stretches of inconsistency.

“There’s something he’s anchored to now,” Marmol said. “When it comes to having success, you’re going to get off-track from time to time, but now we know what we need to get back to in order to continue to have success.”

Walker’s swing was all the support Michael McGreevy needed.

The right-hander carved through the Dodgers’ lineup across six scoreless innings, allowing just three hits while working efficiently all night. McGreevy consistently generated weak contact, aided by three momentum-shifting double plays behind him. He finished with three strikeouts and three walks.

McGreevy later admitted he didn’t feel he had his best stuff, making the defense behind him even more important.

The defense supplied one of the game’s defining moments early, when JJ Wetherholt laid out with a Superman-style dive to rob Shohei Ohtani of a hit before quickly getting Alex Freeland doubled off first base.

Wetherholt said Walker’s recent stretch at the plate has changed the feel of the lineup entirely.

“He’s just dangerous every single time he’s up there,” Wetherholt said. “Pitchers know they’ve got to be perfect against him, and when they’re not, he makes them pay.”

The Dodgers didn’t go quietly in the ninth. After the Cardinals carried a shutout into the inning, Los Angeles pieced together a two-out rally to cut the deficit to one and bring the tying run to second base. Riley O’Brien ultimately slammed the door before the comeback could fully materialize.

After opening the series with a 7-2 victory Friday night, the Cardinals have now won six straight games while taking the first two contests against the reigning World Series champions.

And increasingly, Walker looks like one of the biggest reasons why.