It was the great orator Lars Nootbaar who perfectly summed up the historic run legendary Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols went on in 2022 when he said, “If you look in the record books, there’s Albert Pujols and a bunch of guys in black and white.”
With apologies to Nootbaar, if you look at MLB’s rookie record books these days, there’s a picture of fresh-faced Cardinals blossoming star Jordan Walker and a former MLB player who not only has a black and white mug shot, but someone who was born in … 1891!
Before this past week, John Edward “Honest Eddie” Murphy -- no, not that Eddie Murphy -- was the last 20-year-old player to rack up a hit in his first 12 games at the MLB level, doing so for the Philadelphia A’s in 1912. Now, Murphy’s 111-year-old record has some company with Walker -- who is still five weeks shy of his 21st birthday -- showing off the consistency and maturity of someone well beyond his years.
Back in Spring Training, MLB.com documented Walker’s strong upbringing and more recently, the blossoming star talked about getting simplistic advice from Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith and how he’s never been intimidated by being the youngest player in a league, as he is this MLB season.
Walker’s maturity has shown itself in how he has handled a start and a streak that would have made most young players crumble. Instead, Walker is 12 games into his MLB career and the 6-foot-6, 245-pound man-child still doesn’t know what it feels like to go hitless in an MLB game. He set the Cardinals record for consecutive games with a hit to start a career when he got to 10, topped Ted Williams at 11 and equaled Murphy’s 1912 record in Wednesday’s win.
“It’s pretty cool, obviously. I’d be lying to say it wasn’t cool,” Walker said, after pushing his hitting streak to 12 games. “Even if [the hitting streak] isn’t my main focus, it’s still pretty cool to have that accomplishment.”
For someone who never played a day at the Triple-A level, Walker has made the transition to the big leagues look ridiculously easy. To wit:
• He’s hitting .333 at home and .304 on the road.
• He’s hitting .313 when the Cardinals are ahead and .391 when they trail.
• He’s hitting .368 in wins and a respectable .286 in losses.
• He’s hitting .333 as the seventh-place hitter and .300 at No. 8.
• He’s hitting .400 both with runners in scoring position and with RISP and two outs.
• He’s hitting .375 on the first pitch, .500 when ahead in the count, .188 when behind in the count and .316 when he’s even in the count.
• He’s smashing righties (.342) and is holding up against limited lefties (.222).
Walker, who is slashing .319/.360/.489 (.849 OPS) with two homers and eight RBIs, said recently that looks can sometimes be deceiving. He’s actually fighting as hard as he can every at-bat against big league pitching, he said.
“It’s been difficult, for sure,” said Walker, who has 19 hard-hit balls (95-plus mph exit velocity, according to Statcast) -- two more than Aaron Judge, Mike Trout and Julio Rodriguez and three more than Shohei Ohtani. “The pitchers at this level keep changing their gameplans, whether it’s barraging you with fastballs or coming at me with offspeed and sliders. I am going to have to keep adjusting to their gameplans. That’s just how it goes in this game.”
Just twice during his 12 MLB games has Walker needed a hit in his final at-bat to keep the streak alive -- a seventh-inning double in his third game for his first extra-base hit and Wednesday’s ninth-inning single when his bat shattered upon contact. Not even a bout of altitude sickness, a bloody nose or a questionable strike three call in his previous at-bat could derail him.
“That’s the reason we were so comfortable bringing him [to the big leagues] -- his ability to not speed up or make something too big,” Cardinals manager Oli Marmol said. “You never hope to see somebody struggle, but when things didn’t go his way toward the end of Spring Training, it was good to see how he reacted.
“He’s taken a quality at-bat almost every time and he hasn’t given away at-bats. He’s doing it off fastballs and he’s doing it off spin. It’s been really good and it’s legit. He’s using the whole field and he’s stayed through the middle of the field on the breaking ball. He’s not just some one-trick pony doing it with power. He’s been really good.”