The Walk of Life
Jordan is crossing into Busch. Can we remain calm?
The news came out Saturday night.
Cue whichever “It’s happening!” gif happens to be your favorite. Something that a month ago seemed fairly improbable and even a couple of weeks ago wasn’t a slam dunk (at least not to me) is now set in stone. The logistics still have to be worked out—the emergence of Taylor Motter as an infield alternative meant that the one and only 40-man spot went to him, so Walker sits in baseball limbo at the moment, a Cardinal but not a Cardinal—but the most recent player that fans have dreamed on has a number, a locker, and will be announced by John Ulett on Thursday. The future is now.
Let’s not ruin it.
What if he hits .220 with five homers in his first 135 plate appearances? Or .179 with four homers in 95 PA? What if he has an 81 OPS+ in 514 plate appearances? Are we disappointed? Do we write him off? After all, those numbers are the rookie years of Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, and Nolan Arenado. Seems like they developed into some reasonably good ballplayers.
You don’t even have to go that far back to find a guy that scuffled early when everyone projected him to take the world by storm. At the end of April last season, Julio Rodriguez was hitting .205 (after spending much of the month below the Mendoza line) with four double being his only extra-base hits. By the end of the year, he was Rookie of the Year, the leader of a playoff-bound Mariners team, and had made a name for himself in the Home Run Derby. I imagine there were some Mariner fans in April wondering if this guy was going to “be it” or not. Patience is a virtue.
Our expectations are everything. If Brendan Donovan hit 12 home runs this year, we’d marvel at the power surge and be touting him as the best utility man in the league. If Jordan Walker hit 12 homers, we’d wonder where the power was and whether he’d develop it. (I’m not saying that it’s wrong, just illustrating.) Walker is burdened not with glorious purpose but with the full attention of a fanbase wanting the next homemade Cardinal star.
I don’t think fans are going to boo Walker if he strikes out four times on Opening Day. While there are some that are probably going to get off the bandwagon more quickly than others, a guy that struggles in his first week in the majors isn’t going to raise many alarm bells. I do worry about what happens if he’s struggling all the way until June or July or if he gets demoted at some point before the All-Star Break. Not that he can’t still be good—I completely believe that—but I do wonder how people are going to deal with expectations not being immediately fulfilled.
All you have to do is look at Dylan Carlson, who was the next big offensive thing three years ago but scuffled a bit in a pandemic debut, had a strong sophomore season, then dealt with injuries and some other issues last year. Now there’s a portion of the fanbase that is ready to move on from him even though the talent is still there and he’s just starting his Age 24 season. I know that they are different players, but there’s enough similarity to the situations that it makes me wonder.
Of course, all of this is moot if Jordan Walker actually lives up to those expectations.
He got the action, he got the motion
Oh yeah, the boy can play
Dedication, devotion
Turning all the night time into the day
Dire Straits might not have been talking about baseball, but their chorus certainly rings true for Mr. Walker. There are going to be a lot of exciting moments this year in St. Louis and Jordan’s going to provide his fair share, I believe.
As for the rest of the roster, it seems the Cardinals for the most part lived up to the idea that spring training was a competition. No one even knew Tyler Motter’s name in January, yet due to his solid work in spring and Paul DeJong’s locked-up back, he’ll get to add his name to the roll of people that have worn the birds on the bat.
Even though there is some idea that the last outfield spot came down to Carlson versus Juan Yepez, a suggestion my Gateway cohost was a bit disturbed by, it would have made more sense for it to be Yepez versus Alec Burleson. Burleson had the better spring, at least by statistical measures, and the eye test seemed to go his way as well. Yepez wasn’t bad by any means—he had three fewer hits than Burleson in as many at bats and had more RBI—and in many other years his work last year in the majors plus his big postseason home run would have been enough to get the job done. Instead, he starts the year in Memphis, looking to prove himself and be ready whenever the opportunity comes. Because there’s no doubt that the opportunity will come—whether with St. Louis or with someone else.
Probably the only place that the competition wasn’t completely true was in the bullpen. You know I love me some Packy Naughton, what with that big ol’ 70 on his back, but you could make a strong case that Andrew Suarez should have had an Opening Day slot. However, Suarez wasn’t on the 40-man and we have already seen how hard it was to free up one slot and we still don’t know how they are getting Walker on the roster. Asking John Mozeliak to find three 40-man spots was a bridge too far.
The case for Naughton over someone like Genesis Cabrera is a little more interesting. Cabrera’s the established major leaguer, after all. He’s pitched significant portions of four seasons in St. Louis and at times has been quite the dominant force in the bullpen. Even the first part of last year, Cabrera teamed with Giovanny Gallegos and Ryan Helsley to make for a potent end of games chain. Yet things fell apart after he threw four innings against the Cubs (17 runs in 19.2 innings after that point) and he finished the season back in Memphis.
In the past, I don’t think that 2022 finish would have precluded him from an Opening Day slot in 2023. His spring wasn’t bad either, though it was interrupted by a trip to the World Baseball Classic. Still, seven innings, two runs, one homer, and most notably for Cabrera, no walks would have normally had him circling Busch in the back of a new Ford pickup. Instead, he starts 2023 where he ended 2022 and Naughton (whose final spring line was notably skewed by his blowup against the Astros but still was hit or miss this spring) gets the call. Not that I’m complaining about more of the Patron Pitcher, mind you.
Without looking it up, do you know who led the staff in strikeouts this spring?
Jake Woodford.
That might not be as much of a surprise given how well Woodford pitched (and it helped that he tied for second in innings thrown in the Grapefruit League) but it surely wouldn’t have been anyone’s pick for the team leader before spring training games began and I can prove it. Yet it took an aggressive leg day by Adam Wainwright at the WBC for him to get more than the middle inning, back up a short start kind of role that sometimes works out but often winds up as the “pitcher under glass” just because it’s a difficult role to manage.
There are benefits to having five established veteran starters in the rotation, but the downside of that is that it doesn’t allow for someone like Woodford (or Matthew Liberatore, who made an impression this spring as well) to be able to control their own destiny and make the rotation. No matter how people pitched this spring, the rotation was going to be Wainwright, Miles Mikolas, Jordan Montgomery, Jack Flaherty, and Steven Matz. All Woodford could do was pitch well and wait for someone to get hurt. He did and they did and now we wait and see what he does with the opportunity. Even if he does a Johnny VanderMeer, though, when Wainwright is healthy its back to that gray spot between starting and relieving.
The links:
This week’s Meet Me at Musial, which features the Bens from Cardinals Off Day and an announcement about what is coming up for the show.
This week’s Gateway to Baseball Heaven, where David and I try to make up for our “Walker is going to start at Memphis” pasts.
If you are into making predictions, we’ve got our MLB contest where you can pick the standings, the season-long Cardinal Six, and the Cardinal Six for the Toronto series that starts our game’s season as well.
Playing Pepper continues over at the blog. Twenty-four down, six left to go starting with the Cardinals later this morning.